Zen and the Art of DIY Car Maintenance #02 …

The dreaded ‘Engine Fault‘ light that tells you nothing apart from “Brace yourself for an automotive industry scam that could relieve you of a a huge wad of £CASH£, because the nondescript ‘Engine Fault’ light commands you to seek ‘Professional‘ advice ASAP!

Your friendly local garage will then charge you anything from £25 – £45 to ‘Plug in the special Computer‘ and diagnose the fault. You then find yourself at the mercy of ‘Mr mechanic’s interpretation of whatever highly technical data only he and his specialist diagnosis tools have been privy to!

The great Automotive Industry Scam – The Engine Fault Dashboard Warning Light!

Our family car is a 2007 Toyota Corolla Verso, Diesel 2.2 litre ‘D4D’, with over 100,000 miles on the clock. We’ve owned it since 2015, 48,000 miles and at around £5,500.00 purchased from a local dealer, the most expensive and youngest car we’ve ever bought!

I wrote in a previous post about the mindful, ‘Zen’ like qualities of DIY Car Maintenance – and certainly, this past year alone I have saved many £000’s by carrying out my own servicing, brake replacement and other fault finding and repairs. About 6 months or so ago, I saw and purchased the OBDII gadget below from ALDI’s on-line portal, I thought at the time, this is probably a waste of £15.99 but hey, it might just come in handy?

£15.99, ALDI and may have just paid for itself many times over

….So, the gadget above sat in my tool shed for a few months waiting for one of my families 3 old cars to present the dreaded ‘Engine Fault’ instrument cluster warning light! Then a few days ago in the Toyota Corolla mentioned above, while nearing the end of a 120 mile round trip – ON comes said warning light along with belches of black exhaust smoke and reduced engine performance … Oh SHIT!

Next day, in daylight, I plugged in the yet unused OBDII gadget, followed the instructions, and Error Code ‘P0400’ presented itself along with ‘P0400 P’ (See Below)

The cheap & cheerful gadget came with a booklet of error codes and their meanings. As you can see from below ‘P0400’ is an EGR Flow Malfunction.

Now, I knew a little about our friend the ‘EGR’ – ‘Exhaust Gas Recirculation’ valve, because, a few years back (and without a fault code reading gadget), I reluctantly dropped the car and illuminated ‘Engine Fault’ light at my local garage of ‘Motor Engineers’, set off back home and awaited their call with diagnosis and estimated cost to rectify/repair. Nerve wracking, when there’s no budget for unexpected car repairs! When that call came it was my introduction to the term ‘EGR’ and the options of repair open to me;

(i) Replace the EGR Valve £260.00 + labour (unspecified) or (ii) Remove and attempt to clean out the EGR Valve, about £150.00 labour & sundries.

So I went for option (ii), collected the car next day, thanked Mr mechanic for saving me over £100.00 blah, blah … no more warning light and the car seemed to be running fine. Result, of sorts, Hmmm.

This time however I had my own diagnosis and error code. Half an hour’s ‘Googling’ and an excellent amateur YouTube video later, I was ready to once again practice ‘Zen and the Art of DIY Car Maintenance’, documented below in the form of iPhone photographs taken during the exercise …

This is the ‘EGR Valve Assembly’ with solenoid on the right.
The only tools required are a 12mm socket & extension plus screwdriver & rag/kitchen towel (see later) 1st step is remove the ‘L’ shaped pipe that connects the valve to the engine block.
The 2 bolts here are the trickiest to get to, obviously care is needed not to drop the bolts as they are removed. Also take care not to loose the gasket (What Gasket?!?) as the 2nd of the 2 bolts is removed.
Here is the pipe removed
About now is a good time to unplug the multi terminal electrical plug/connector from the solenoid part of the EGR Valve.
NO GASKET! – And evidence of gas escape everywhere but adjacent to the bolts. So much for ‘professional’ mechanics eh? As mentioned earlier, I have previously paid a garage who claim to be ‘Motor Engineers’ to do this work … Sigh.
View down into the black clogged port that is the top of the EGR Valve. Remove the two remaining bolts above and …
… Lift the whole unit up off the 2 studs that remain. A little fiddly but not at all difficult.
Here is the view into the choked underside of the EGR valve – there should be 3 ports visible (see below)
… The 3 ports now visible and clear after copious amounts of Carb Cleaner, poking with screwdriver and soaking/removal using kitchen towel (I have that blue workshop equivalent)
Maybe not absolutely necessary but I wanted to remove the solenoid so that I could check the actual moving parts of the valve. The solenoid is held on with 3 Cap Head Allen screws 5 or 6mm (Sorry I didn’t check size) – I improvised a clamp using a G-Clamp and protective wood sheet scraps to hold the valve body securely while unscrewing the allen screws. (Note: Good idea to mark the mating parts for re-assembly) – You can just see the 2 scribed lines I made in the aluminium with a screwdriver.
Once loosened the 3 screws can be removed without the restriction of the clamping arrangement.
Here is the EGR valve body with the solenoid removed. The movement of the valve (Bottom protruding plunger/spring) and the solenoid (Top protruding rod) can be checked by hand. In this case both were moving freely and full stroke after cleaning out the muck.
Re-assembly is reverse of disassembly, here is the EGR Valve assembly replaced in the engine bay with the now clean port and clean operating rod visible.
All back in place and bolted securely, electrical multi connector refitted.
Moment of truth! – Engine restart, and NO Engine Fault light! Phew!

I was going to say here that ‘Cost Of Repair’ = £0.00, however I guess I have to factor in 1/2 can of Carb Cleaner + £9.99 for a replacement gasket the ‘Professionals’ left out! But still …

£Priceless sense of achievement, reward and Mindful Wellbeing.

Update 09/11/2021: That gasket above was great BUT the wrong one, my mistake – See how I applied a little ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance‘ to a solution Here 🙂

Thank you for reading.

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Baffled Ape

Baffled by much of human behaviour, Life long engineer, Father, Mate, Love #Nature, #Engineering, Saved by #NHS, Stuck with #ChronicPain, Nature can provide #Green Clean #Energy #Politics is broken, we need #Sortition

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