EGR & Intake Manifold Clean Results

last post here I promise... just some photos

 

after 90 miles of driving, I’ve had a couple somewhat rough starts, nothing as bad as before the egr and intake manifold cleaning and new pcv... I see I now have a pending p0301 :-(

 

Crap!

 

Keep an eye on the engine coolant.

Maybe mark the level on the reservoir with a mark to verify if it is dropping or not.

 

I'm a little bit confused as to what is going on with my Prius. In previous posts in the last couple pages, I was updating on mpg's after doing PCV, OCC, EGR cleaning, etc. My car is definitely running stronger, better, smoother than before. My sister, who also drives a Prius was stunned with how much stronger and smoother mine is than hers. And she has a 2015. Mine is 2011. Before doing the work, I got between 47-48 mpg's consistently without much effort. I drive pretty conservatively. 70 on the highway, never too much above speed limit, and pulse and glide as much as I can around town when I'm thinking about it. I always found that highway miles seemed to reduce my overall mpg's slightly and around town, I could get it back up with good driving techniques. Now it's the opposite. Literally overnight after the full cleaning. But a huge difference. If I fill up and do a 200 straight miles of highway driving, I'm around 50 mpg's. That would be 100 miles one way and then back, so no predominance of down or uphill. But as soon as I hit towns or run errands or whatever, my mpg's plummet. If I fill up and reset my trip meter and just run around town/errands etc, I'm around 43mpg's. Much worse. Using same techniques as always. And this change happened immediately after doing all the cleaning's, etc. I'm combined around 45mpg's now, but most of that was highway miles. If I do a lot of around town driving, it drops fast. What could have possibly happened overnight? What can I check? It seems like hybrid battery might be failing, but it was a drastic change from before work to after the work. And nothing that I can think of makes sense. Confused....

 

Did you keep your 12V on a charger when you worked on the engine? If you disconnected the battery it could be your car relearning the fuel settings. It could also be an older hybrid battery with crystallized cells. You can maintain the hybrid battery with Hybrid Automotive's grid charger & discharger.

 

It was not on a charger. I did disconnect the battery for my seat replacement only. But I've driven over 3000 miles since doing all the work. I would think that it would have learned by now. There are 150,000 miles on my hybrid battery but it was totally normal before the work and a huge drop immediately after the work that has remained. I would think that battery degradation would be a slower decline, rather than instant and super coincidental that it was immediately after the cleanings. The only thing that is really different besides the EGR and intake being cleaner than ever before, is the addition of an OCC. If there were a vacuum leak somewhere in that system, would that cause such a huge drop in mpg's? But only during slower driving? Because on highway, it's better than ever.

 

Was anyone brave enough to try a power washer on an intake manifold? What was the result?

A power washer would either speed up the cleaning process or break the plastic What do you think?

 

I'm not sure it would even be necessary, overkill? Too, there's a fair amount of oily sludge in the intake; it might end up in a stream?

I cleaned mine first with brake cleaner (with brushes and rags), got it clean for practical purposes. Then got OCD, soaked it in Oxy, but it was turd polishing I think: the internal surfaces (in particular the EGR passages) are kinda rough/unfinished, I continued to get stuff, but it was never ending.

 

The angles to aim the power washer are limited when pointing into the manifold. Surface areas that gets the water blast will get cleaned while other crevices that doesn’t get touch by the blast would require actual physical and chemical rubdown.

 

No pressure washer here, but I did used compressed air off my air compressor to dry and blow any thing left inside of intake manifold after spray it with cleaner and water..

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

You don't really need a pressure washer for the intake.
I used Gunk. It does a GREAT job of cleaning out the oil.
And for the egr holes, a small gun bore brush in a drill with gunk and it cleaned it right out.
Less than 30 seconds per hole. Then gunk, and strong stream from the hose nozzle.
AFTER removing the electronics of course.

 

I power washed mine a couple weeks ago when I did my EGR cleaning. It may have not been necessary, but since I was blasting out the EGR pieces, I went ahead and did the intake manifold too. I also ran some cleaners through it (brake cleaner). No issues with it cracking. My MPG went up the last couple weeks from around 46/47mpg to 51/52mpg (119k). The overall cleaning definitely helped.

 

Cleaning the intake is necessary, it's part of the EGR circuit.

 

Agree. My explanation above sounds off. It may have not been necessary to power wash the intake manifold since I ran cleaners through it. I did both.

 

Can you eat off of it? NOT ME! YOU!

 

Thinking I'm finally going to get to working on tomorrow... other than I realized I don't have a new Fuel Injection Throttle Body Mounting Gasket. Thinking will be OK I hope and can most likely take a trip to the dealership if I need later. I do have one question however.

For the EGR, Air and PCV Valve circuit disassembly for the cleaning, is the 12V or HV battery required to be disconnected?

Reads like I need to be critical if I disassemble the EGR Valve cover and components, in regards to re-assembly of the valve closed.

I've not read where needed the 12V disconnected. I know the 12V needs to be disconnected for when working on the brakes... though otherwise... haven't read for the EGR and Intake.

 

You do not have to disconnect the 12V to clean the EGR circuit.
Or to replace the rear pads. Good idea to keep the key fob at least 20 feet
away from the car, or open the drivers door. Better safe than sorry.

But it won't hurt to disconnect it when working on the rear brakes.

 

Can I ask which catch can did you get?