2010- 3x EGR Valves, Preventive Maintenance

Good stuff. So would you think someone doing an EGR clean could be confident as long as the pintle depresses easily and returns freely? (Not that I wouldn't love an excuse to buy an impact tool )

 

Nice idea with the holes in the plank to imobilize the valve body.

 

The end you would be trying to 'depress' for that test is the end you need the impact tool to get to. If you leave the cap on, you have to reword your test to "pintle pulls outward easily and returns freely". But you would be trying to grab and pull a slippery round pintle sitting down in a recess. It's not easy to do. And pliers might mess it up.

If you could grab it and pull. you would feel and hear a soft whirring of the motor as you pulled the pintle out. You might then need to push it back in also; it has a return spring, but won't necessarily just whir its own motor to return to closed position without a little help from a thumb.

The 'impact tool' I would recommend for the job is something like the Lisle 62140. It doesn't twist the screws at all, just bonks on them while you gently and steadily turn with a wrench. That's all it takes. The kind of impact tool that imparts a twisting force has a higher chance of breaking one; they're not big screws.

 

I've had traditional, twist-imparting "impact drivers" for decades, but only got the Lisle seized-fastener remover in the last couple of years. It works on a different principle, where it simply strikes the bolt on axis while you gently turn with a wrench, and it is one of those sort of life-changing tools in the rapid success it delivers with a greatly reduced risk of stripping or breaking the fastener.

Whoever already has one tool or the other will probably use whichever one they have, but if I were starting and looking for an excuse to buy a tool, it would be the seized-fastener remover for sure.

 

Ah yes I remember now prying it up with a flat blade (and wondering how much damage I was doing). That Lisle set looks nice, they make good stuff.

And yeah, what were they thinking with that choice of fasteners? Tamper proofing??

 

They're just ordinary Phillips screws. I don't think the engineers had any extra goals in mind for them. They're just steel threaded into aluminum that gets hot, and they get very happy where they are.

 

If you could determine the dimensional details of those screws it would be very useful; you could replace them with a regular hex bolt, or torx socket. I'm guessing they're M5, coarse thread, about 16 mm long??

The simplest way to sort all of this out: take one of the valves to hardware store, try a few metric bolts for fit.

 

That's exactly what @m.wynn did.

A novel idea and functional.

 

Can you recall what they turned out to be?

Maybe he'll see your flag and chime in.

 

That was about 3 years ago. I've slept since then.

But he sent me a pic:



He's the outdoors type, so those are titanium bicycle water bottle bolts and a #10 washer.

Use whatcha got.

 

Or just bonkity-bonk the originals while loosening, they come right out.

 

That's what I've done about a dozen times, but there are solutions out there for those looking for alternatives.

 

Maybe a very thing application of anti-seize too. I have an old toothbrush that's just sorta anti-seize "contaminated": I'll brush threads with it, just gives them a hint of anti-seize.

 

Readily available if you have a water bottle on your bike and have some washers laying around.

But once every 50k miles is what our old 2010 was on before we parted ways.

I'll check out our Primes EGR circuit at 120k miles like I did our old 2010. And that circuit will not be as easy to access:



Not as simple, but worth the data and piece of mind.