i have a 1991 ford e150 van 5.0 aod. replaced egr valve and sensor. egr pipe from valve to intake manifold was broke. i took a piece of very tight fitting stainless steel tubing and put it in place of flexable part of pipe that was trashed. if this pipe is not air tight could it cause a high idle problem kinda like a vacume leak?? if so i want to seal the egr system off in this way.
put a block off plate between egr valve and manifold use 2 gaskets one between manifold and plate and one between plate and egr valve.. bolt egr back on leave sensor hooked up and leave vacume line hooked up. now that makes the valve part blocked off accept for the bottom of it and i would not think it would matter if the upper ports are blocked off rite??or does the bottom of the valve not having resistance or pressure on it affect how easiely the diafram moves in the egr valve in relation to vacume pressure??therefore causing a egr or egr position sensor code to show up on the mil????? or with it all hooked up will the computer still function like the system is still operating normally ?? if not what problems will it cause and how to fix it?? for the other end of the tube where it goes into the lower intake manifold. install a pipe plug that has been coated with pipe dope in the hole after removing the the egr pipe.. is the actual aluminum lower intake egr hole tapped national pipe thread or is going to be a b@#ch finding a plug that will thread in to the hole??? or should i just cut the tube off short braze the hole up and be done with it???

if any one has done something like this please give me info on the problems it caused and the fixes... or did it work without causing problems???? i`am tired of playing with all the junk on this engine!!! with the truck weighing 6000 lbs and this little baby 302 working its ***** off to move it and getting only about 10 miles to the gallon. i dont think the emmissions system is doing a very good job of cleaning the exaust .. in theory all the whole system was designed to do is to try to pull a very small amount of unefficiantely burned gas from the egr passages in the heads (witch if you have ever pulled the upper intake off and looked in it) you know the head passages are totaly pluged after 90000 miles and dont ever get cleaned unless you are rebuilding the engine (i have 3 sets of heads to prove it)and run all that garbage back through the engine one more time. so instead of it coming out the exaust it just stays in the engine (ford engines are nasty)and what ever does`nt you have a fresh air pump (using gas to move it) injecting air in to the converter to ''hide'' the actual ammount of toxic fumes comming out the exaust (more parts oxygen to garbage ratio) to fool the emmissions test machine.. if they really wanted to fix the problem stock engines should have higher compression ratios and the gas we buy should only be 93 oct. witch in turn would be more efficiant have more power and in a stock car or truck get better gas milage and be cleaner i could be wrong any how sorry for rambling but answers to some of my questions would be great from someone how has done this thanks for your time and help in advance
i just want this van to run good more mods coming later

 

A small leak in the EGR pipe won't create a vacuum leak - it'll just let exhaust into your engine compartment which might melt nearby plastic parts. Your best move is to replace the whole pipe with a new one. It's always better to keep everything stock until you're proficient enough to build your own engine. It makes it MUCH easier to diagnose and maintain since it'll be just the way the manuals describe.