DIY EGR cleaning made easy

I'm going to give that a whirl maybe tonight. I've got two sitting here just like this ready to go.

 

If the cooler is completely clogged because of oil burning it won’t help

 

A couple of thoughts:

1. If Oxi-Clean doesn't do the trick, maybe try sodium hydroxide (lye) solution. I might try that if there's ever a next time. Only on the cooler, and while the pipe between valve and intake is also SS, lye (or even Oxi) is overkill. Do tread cautiously, there's some opinion here:

what grade of stainless steel for lye | Soapmaking Forum - Soap & Candle Forums.

2. Instead of using a bucket, with the EGR cooler (which is the only item really warranting this degree of attention), just put a rubber cork in one end, fill it up with solution (only takes about a cup), and prop it up in corner of laundry sink. Instead of one 12 hour soak, I've been using 4~5 one hour soaks, interspersed with rinse outs. Works well.

When cork shopping, here's relevant EGR cooler dimensions:

Intake opening diameter (at exhaust): 20.9 mm
exit opening diameter (at EGR valve): 25.7 mm

Note: definitely don't use Oxi (or lye) on anything other than the stainless steel components of the EGR system.

 

What kind of chemicals are in the Mean Green product? Sometimes combining cleaning supplies kills people...

 

Pressure wash first, then soak with oven cleaner for 30 minutes or so.
Pressure wash again.
Depending on how bad it is, you might have to repeat.

I just don't understand why everyone wants to spend hour and hours and days
cleaning something so simple. Oven cleaner is cheap!

If you have a spare, go for it.

 

Just editorial, oven cleaner is a lye solution.

 

Different people might be looking for ways of using stuff they already have around. Maybe some people have jugs of Mean Green or Oxi Clean already.

Back in the days before self-cleaning ovens, I guess lots of people had oven cleaner. (ick)

 

I still have some old cans of real easy off of and cleaner If it hits your hands it'll burn you badly this is like from I don't even know 79 to 82 I bought it on close out

 

I just need to get the mess cleaned up so I can put it back together and find out whether we still have this problem because I need to get this car down for inspection so I can keep using the tag on the generation 2 that I have no paperwork for which I've been driving for I don't know about 8 months now it seems like I don't care about the persona anymore I just need it once a year to drive down to the inspection station so they can do a safety inspection and I drive it home and park it and use its tag on the car stated so I'll drive the car stated 10 years just by taking the persona down and getting it inspected and keeping the tag because I can't get a tag for the 07 green car It's too complicated only the person that junked it can unjunk it doesn't that sound stupid I mean it's ridiculous I have the car and it's in perfect condition more or less not a scratch on it if you will and I can't get any paperwork on it because some insurance company or some person dropped it off at a tow lot and says I'm tired of this piece of junk walked off and left it or they paid him $300 for it and he left it there tag on it and everything doesn't that sound right retarded does to me.

 

Couple or three thoughts....

• Oven cleaner: the YELLOW can of easy-off is the only one containing something strong enough to do the trick (it's spray-on bubbling lye )
• You can buy lye in crystal form cheap. Crystal Lye Drain Opener. "Instant Power" brand under $6 a pound at WalMart, HD. Roebic 2 lb $17 at Lowes etc.
• I have a big tub (#2 or #5 plastic only!) with a lye bath. At 5 gal water per 1 lb lye it is an amazing stripper for cast iron. That's a 42:1 ratio, where for power-cleaning many say 50:50 ratio. In my bath, ALL of the crud comes off with a day or two soak (first tried it on a skillet that had not been cleaned for decades. No scrubbing at all. With cast iron you can leave it forever, no problem. (ALSO of note: the same lye solution is perfect for getting impossible-to-remove carbon burns off the S/S surface of a cooktop!!! No scrubbing at all.)
• BE CAREFUL to test. I wouldn't leave S/S for days. Aluminum? Way less than an hour at most. My plastic tub? No problem at all. DO use PPE. This is strong stuff.
• (FYI, simple vinegar will remove rust. Never leave more than about half an hour.)
• (To dispose of a lye solution, neutralize with vinegar, then dump. Lye IS drain cleaner after all.)

 

Up here household lye lye was pulled from the grocery/hardware store shelves it seems. Maybe used in methamphetamine (speed) production?? Anyway, it's readily available on Amazon.ca; it is a mainstay in soap making.

I wouldn't use it on aluminum for any length of time, especially if there were alternatives.

 

Easy off today isn't what easy off used to be I do know that I did the cleaning today with the mean green and the OxiClean and in 2 and 1/2 hours the thing was completely clean all the way through the EGR cooler I mean completely it's unbelievable how clogged it was apparently because now that I see one in new form if you will yeah definitely didn't slow me breathing through it when I blew in it not hard just gently and air came out the other end and all that but now it looks like it may have been 60% or so clogged if you want to call it that The water and the bucket is completely brown and I'm doing a second one right now so maybe they're something to this mess I guess the 60% clog was enough to slow down the flow and cause the power problem and the rattling the clanking something we'll see I have trouble believing this but I've seen weirder stuff so this ought to be good.

 

My 2 cents regarding oven cleaner spray... I had a very clogged up EGR cooler, carbon and oily gunk.

The oven cleaner cleaned only about an inch on both ends. I didn't have access to a pressure washer, so I used soaks with drain cleaner (sodium hydroxide) and a stainless steel wire chucked into a drill.

Due to the angles of the openings, the wire can only get about 2/3 of the channels.

Had to follow up with more drain cleaner soaks (plugged lower end with a rubber stopper) followed by near boiling water flushes. Repeated till water came out clear.

SM-G781V ?

 

The mean green and the OxiClean have cleaned the EGR cooler to bright silver internally in two and a half hours all the way through I don't need to run any brushes gun cleaning rods nothing I can see clean from one end to the other and all of those slots or ways bright silver shine light through it all of it It's night and day difference from what it was and blowing air through it when it was looking partially clogged netted some brown dust but the air blew right through seemingly okay I guess maybe not but it looked it now there's almost going to be no obstruction for whatever flies through this thing this will be quite wild if it clears up the rattling knocking and whatever is going on with the system but it is certainly clean the gold pipe that connects the cooler to the intake manifold is whistle clean just like the cooler The intake manifold if you blow water through the port with the gold pipe connects every port squirts water 18 in out of it exactly the same one to four four to one doesn't matter so I don't think there's any blockage in the intake manifold so we will see when we get it back together

 

So I'm using the OxiClean and the mean green method The cooler that came off of my original engine US spec 2ZFXE or what have you cleaned up in an hour and a half I have rotting tools from an old radiator shop job these are the rods you push through radiators and coolers to clear the cores with the tanks off anyway. My US spec cooler looks brand new clean can see light all the way through it through all of the ways. The cooler that came off the JDM engine that I just installed in the 13 persona has been soaking for over 12 hours The ends of the unit are clean like the first one discussed above but in the center of the JDM cooler is like a big clot In the middle around the outer edges of the cooler it looks like I'm letting it soak a little longer than I'm going to run the rods through it I just think it's interesting that the JDM spec cooler which they both look the same and have the same writing on them the JDM unit is so clogged it's unbelievable and that's what was on the engine that got installed in the car to replace original. granted we haven't driven it much. I just can't believe how clogged it was now I could see this possibly causing the knocking issue the way the flow would be cut off almost with this but it's funny because in the software it didn't show we were down significantly on HG's of flow so I don't know. I would have certainly thought with this much clot and clogging we would have got the code for the EGR flow.

 

and if the cooler is near-totally clogged, the intake manifold EGR passage at cylinder one has likely been closed-for-business for a long time.