I've Got The Egr Blues

[Aqualung666]

Merrily driving along on Friday lunchtime, noticed a sudden loss of power (and puff of black smoke behind me!), so jabbed the accelorater and things improved, for about 20 seconds and same happened with a bit of a kangeroo. Managed to get to the car park and went off to do some work, on return when starting up got fault messages, one of which said check 4X4 or similar and another one relating to the engine computer system. Fortunately or unfortunatley depending on how you loo at it, I was only a mile from a Toyota garage to stuttered my way there and asked if a mechanic could have a look and tell me what the problem was. Simple enough you'd think! Oh no, I was informed that they would have to fix it up to the computer to find out what the problem was, oh and that would take an hour and cost £70. Didn;t leave me with much choice as I had a meeting to go to and it was Friday at 1.30Pm.

Left it with them and went back after the meeting, where upon I was informed all was sorted and it was on it;s test drive and that it was a 'heavily sooted up EGR'. Was charged £66 in the end for the cleaning of the EGR. It seems ridiculous that basically I have to pay £66 for just the diagnosis, when a trained mechanic could have asked me what happened and immediatly worked out it was the EGR, without havinfg to run the computer diagnostic for an hour. I told the guy exactly what had happened and he just said 'hmmmm sounds serious '

Is it easy to clean the EGR myself at regular intervals? Surely can't be that complicated to DIY?

[The Striding Man]

There is a walkthrough of the procedure with pictures in the Technical Information- Hints and Tips stickied thread near the top page of the forum.

I don't have a diesel myself but it looks like a pretty straightforward DIY job that can save you £60-70 and improve your mpg. Some diesel owners avoid supermarket fuel as it may be more prone to sooting up the EGR.

[Big Kev]

Absolutely dead easy job, mucker, and as Arfa says, avoid use of supermarket fuel. Howz your oil usage and coolant levels?

[voyager t180]

£66 is fair IMO..MrT generally charge around £50 just for a diagnostic scan,so if they cleaned your EGR valve as well,then £66 isn't too bad..

Or did they charge you £66+£70?Its not really clear.

Its worth buying your own OBD scanner,(£15-20 from Amazon)for next time.

[Aqualung666]

I had oil topped up and coolant this week, it needed about half a litre of oil, it was full in september, but dont know how much coolant it needed as I didn't do it....why do you ask?

Total price for Egr diagnostic and clean was £66, but having read the above comments I think I'll leave it 4 months and then have a go at cleaning it myself. Where do you plud the scanner in?