My dad and I dropped my car off at a mechanic yesterday for a faulty EGR Valve. When I got home from school today, my dad told me that it would be $1000 bucks to replace. Needless to say that my dad wants to do it ourselves now. So my question is, how much labor would it take to replace the EGR Valve, and how much would to parts cost?

 

$1000 to replace an EGR is insane. The labour is rather minimal and the valve itself isn't too pricey (<$200 IIRC). Some of the crappy molded hoses can get pretty pricey - especially since they harden and crumble over time - but you can always avoid that by installing your own flexible hose (of the appropriate chemical resistance). I recommend buying a Bentley Service Manual, but you can find the vacuum and emissions systems diagrams easy enough on the 'net.

You can also get an SAI (Secondary Air Injection) block-off plate and delete the EGR.

 

I noticed that with a broken EGR, my MPGs went waaaay down, and not all of the performance was there. With the EGR delete, will I still get crappy MPGs and performance?

 

This is what I know.

The EGR stands for Exhaust Gas Recirculation. Exhaust gas is routed back into the combustion chamber because the exhausted air is much hotter than the intake air. By sending warmer gas into the combustion chamber, the air/fuel mix does not have to do as much work to heat up, and your engine runs more efficiently.

Also the EGR plays a role in your emissions. I have never heard of what Cheeba said by eliminating it, but I personally wouldn't for my daily driver.

 

I have heard of eliminating it, my parents had it done to my mom's F-250.

 

EGR deletes are quite common on many cars, VAG vehicles especially. True, it can theoretically cost you a bit of fuel economy - although, I'd be very surprised if it were more than a single percent - but they also cause many problems on engines. They are very commonly deleted on TDIs, where the EGRs can cause serious problems, and drastic reductions in fuel economy due to carbon building up in the intake/cylinder head.

If you're worried about the possible fuel economy loss, I'd prefer to delete the EGR and just advance your timing a couple of degrees. Put it this way, after paying for this repair, are you going to be ahead money by having the EGR on the engine? No way.

Another thing to consider is the reliability issues associated with systems like the EGR. It is inherently going to make your car less reliable - especially on VAG cars where they use ridiculous molded hard pipes that crack after a couple of years. There's also vacuum leaks, solenoid failures, fittings breaking, etc.

You will lose a bit of emissions reduction, but I don't know what sort of figure we'd be looking at for that, probably on the order of a couple of percent.

 

Interesting.. So, to those who have experience elliminating it, does your cat still pass the emissions test?

 

Your cat is your cat, modifying the EGR isn't going to affect its validity for emissions tests. Whether or not deleting the EGR will prevent you from passing emissions tests is going to depend entirely on your locale. I've never lived anywhere with emissions testing, but I don't think it would make you fail any kind of sniff test - the emissions reductions from EGRs on gasoline-powered vehicles just doesn't do all that much. It reduces NOx on diesels considerably, although at the expense of higher particulate matter.

 

Ok, so i'm looking into getting a repair manual, because when we got the EGR problem situated, my dad and I noticed that some of the Vacuum hoses don't look right. What book do you all recommend, or are they all pretty standard? Also, where can I download the VAG-COM software, and get the cable?