I just bought an egr assembly off ebay - tube, cooler and valve all together. From what I can see without taking it apart, the insides are moderately dirty. Does anyone have any recommendations on what to use to clean these out and cause the least damage? Since I have a spare assembly, I can leave it soaking for weeks, if need be. Also, does anyone have a list of the replacement gaskets I'll need to install this? Lastly, I'm curious about people's opinions on what to do with the original parts. How often do these need to be cleaned out, or in other words, does it pay to keep a spare assembly hanging around for next time, or should I sell it?
you can use seafoam or purple power degreaser.clean every 40 to 50k miles.i would keep the extra part so there won't be down time bleaning
Purple power and carb cleaner did half the job of cleaning my spare cooler. A half dozen hour-long soaks in hot solutions of Oxiclean will make it look like a new part.
Here’s some dialog on my recent dealings with our 2010’s egr circuit: What did you do to ur Gen III Prius today???? What did you do to ur Gen III Prius today???? I’m in the middle of egr cooler soaks right now of carb cleaner which will then get to Oxi clean. I’d recommend keeping the cooler and doing the cycles when you are changing the engine coolant or have the wiper cowling off. Good luck with your Prius .
As others have said, start cleaning with carb cleaner or brake cleaner. If the ports are clogged up with soot, then use a metal poker wire to open up the ports. Then go through several warm oxiclean cycles to get it sparkling clean. Heard that easy off oven cleaner works well too.
I put about 3 heaping tablespoons in a measuring container, then added about 100~150 cc of the hottest tap water I could muster. Stirred the heck out of it, and dumped it in immediately after swirling. Then add another 50 cc or so hot tap water to the residue that stuck in the beaker, swirl and dump it in. A nice rubber stopper in one end of the cooler would be ideal; I made do with a wooden bung whittled from a piece of dowel and wrapped with a double layer of nitrile glove.
Here's some notes I made, regarding stopper sizes: Intake opening diameter (at exhaust): 20.9 mm (#3 stopper) exit opening diameter (at EGR valve): 25.7 mm (#5.5 stopper)
I bought the liquid Oxi Clean laundry detergent. Did roughly one part Oxi Clean, five part hot water. Worked out great.
Depends on ones definition of hot vs. boiling . Boiling water will be ~212 F whereas hot water can be anything above ambient . I used hot water out of our Kerig as we don’t have a tea kettle anymore. The hot water and Oxiclean solution works well after refluxing carb cleaner for a good while.
Yeah I think it's reaction of a caustic cleaner that's lifting and floating off the carbon, and oven cleaner is a little more caustic, IIRC oxi-clean is 11 and typical oven cleaner 13? Oxi's a little more benign, and it get's there, though I think you're right, oven cleaner will work faster. I'd vote no, and a bit more risky, and it's mostly the caustic quality that's doing the cleaning I think. Maybe boiling water would aid in dissolving more, but all in all I think tap water hot is fine. If you sprinkle lye into cold water it will heat up all on it's own, food for thought. Funny, was looking for lye the other day, for drain cleaning, and it's not for sale anymore, apparently used in meth manufacture.
