I pulled mine last night and cleaned it up the best I could. Actually, I soaked the valve end in acetone over night and finally got it clean. It looked like you'd mashed 2 Kingsford charcoal bricks in it before I started. There's no way it was cloasing. I'm at 47,000 and it has been replaced twice.

Down in the intake it is just full of carbon. I'd guess there was a quarter inch of powdered carbon down there. I took a shop vac to it and did the best I could with that, then put a nylon brush on a dremmel and cleaned as far as I could reach, sucking out the junk with the vacume as I went, the best I could. It is still pretty cruddy. I thought about hosing it down with carb cleaner and seeing what it would do with it, but then thought better of it. I was afraid it would cake the stuff up and make a worse mess.

For those that have cleaned one of these things, did you clean out the intake too? How? That whole thing has to be a mess down in there with all that carbon trapped up. Ford really needs to put 6 of these valves on their next motor to see what other kinds of problems they can create.

Once I re installed it, I started it up with it plugged in and let it warm up, then shut it off and unplugged the valve. Hopefully, it is shut and will stay shut. I know it ran quite a bit better this morning on the way into town.

I wonder if that was probably the source of my recent fuel milage loss? I used to get about 17.5 on the truck, now it hardly gets 14. Aside from the turbo boots leaking, I believe this is also a contributing factor.

The latest valve has been in this truck for about 15,000 miles. I wonder how often it ought to be pulled and cleaned? Every oil change?

Can you buy the O rings separate? They were pretty cruddy, and I was afraid to hose them down with anything.


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There may be more info for you in our Tech Folder. Here is the direct link to the EGR Cleaning Thread:

https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/s...d.php?t=449995

 

i will clean mine this weekend