Super deep-cleaned EGR cooler: Odd! Is this normal?

What did you use to clean it? Oven cleaner is the fastest and easiest.
It will "eat" the carbon.... It should be shinny, and moving the light around you should
be able to see through each slot.

 

It sounds like you only got the cooler partially cleaned.

Is this the first time you cleaned it? How many miles on the car?

 

Yes as long as you can run brown or blackish fluid out of it every time squirt some water through the other side you see the brown but first runs out until that stops You've got a blob in there I've got two coolers here that will never stop doing that they may never come clean they've been soaking for weeks and days I would have thought I would have ate the metal by now nope

 

Sounds like you’re using some sort of petroleum-based solvent?

what’s the miles on it?

Try a water-based, caustic solution. Corking the smaller end you only need about a cup per session, and 4~5 hour long soaks punctuated by rinses should get it clean.

With light build up of carbon a concentrated water solution of Oxi-Clean Versatile Stain Remover will suffice. For heavier deposits lye solution will be more effective, but use with caution.

 

You need to give it another day or two You really need to not have any brown coming out of it that indicates a clog a big clot sometimes air can help you especially if you've got that clot really liquefied and starting to get in a non-solid state more of a gel state. They get badly blocked and the flow is just about okay at best new or whatever so you want to try and get it super clean 50,000 mi or not because I think can go to rattling very quickly again even after your repair or whatever is going on here Don't push it because this thing will fail on you before you can say jackrabbit.

 

Did you spray the oven cleaner at both ends? Until it was completely full?
Then use the pressure washer?

You may have to get a bicycle spoke or a thin hard wire to clean out the passages.
With that many miles, and it never being cleaned, it will take a lot of work.
You may want to search on duck-duck-go for junk yards for a used cooler.
But if you just keep sraying the cooler with the oven cleaner and let it soak longer,
it will eventually clear it out. Others have had the same issue. You just have to be patient.

 

Try lye solution. Lye seems to be pulled from the shelves in hardware stores (used in methamphetamine production), but is readily available on Amazon as it’s an essential soap making ingredients. Cork the smaller end (check ID of the hole, but I believe it’s ~21 mm). It’ll take about a cup of cold water, but just determine by filling it, the pouring into something like a quart mason jar. Add the lye crystals a tablespoon or so at a time, stirring with an inert stirring stick (glass, inertia plastic, stainless steel), till no more will dissolve. Then carefully pour it in, being careful, use a plastic funnel.

maybe goes without saying:

the EGR cooler is stainless steel, should be ok, but wood, flesh, regular steel, aluminum, will all react vigorously with lye, it’s strongly caustic. Wear gloves, thick shirt, eye protection, take care.

smart money: put just a few drops on the cooler exterior first, check that it doesn’t react. Oven cleaner has lye, but a concentrated lye solution has a lot more.

 

I would buy lye crystals, mix with water till it stops dissolving. That's "concentrated solution".

Hmm: see it's much more readily available on Amazon.ca than Amazon.com. There are a few options with the latter though. Proper name is sodium hydroxide.

There's also drain cleaner, but that's morphed from being straight lye to a nasty cocktail, with even shredded bits of aluminum if I'm not mistaken. Not sure I'd wan't to be putting that in.

Straight lye is indispensable for soap making, so maybe a soap making craft store??

We've got something like a quart of it, for soap making. Again, relatively easy to purchase on Amazon.ca, but maybe they give you the gears importing it?

I'm thinking to give it a try next time, if only just for research. I''ve cleaned the EGR on ours twice, and have barely over 100k kms. Oxi-Clean has worked fine, but...

If this is your spare EGR cooler you can take your time, looking for crystalline lye crystals. It'd be interesting to find out its efficacy.

 

Obviously not. The easy fix is to run a stiff wire down each channel rotated by a drill. Otherwise the dangerous chemicals that could BLIND you can't get there.

Pretty common. Never buy a gen3 from an auction. I always recommended against ANY used gen3 regardless of the records. $20 can hide a hg for a couple of months before it is now worse.

Really bad advice and dangerous when you can buy a used one for $100 that was never totally clogged or a new one for $200. A glass eye costs way more.

 

Should have mentioned it was a spare.
Someone else used lye, and/or drain cleaner. Certainly another option.
Let it soak for a day or so, changing as needed....

And the failed head gasket wasn't free, you paid for it.

And since you seem to be able to do all the labor, cost is minimal for you.

 

Fastest? Raytheeagle cleaned 3 egrs in his backyard in 15 mins all carbon removed, mine being one of the egr without any chemicals solvent used at a Prius meet up!