New no-name or used EGR valve?

JustAnotherSaver

I know the ideal answer for any car part question would be to buy genuine part straight from the stealer.

But for obvious cost reasons, that's why I'm asking what I'm asking.

So between buying some unbranded, probably Chinese copy off eBay and risking it with a genuine second hand EGR valve, which of the two would you take your chances with?

Reason behind me asking is when I bought my car the EGR valve would trigger a light on the dash on mine.

I Mr Muscled it which seems to have stopped the light coming on, but the EGR has been blanked off. I removed the blank, even after cleaning and the car refuses to start (or rather it cuts out instantly). I take this as the EGR is faulty. Looking at the receipts that came with the car, the EGR valve is actually not that old.

The car is a Euro 4 (2006 onwards i think) Mondeo TDCI which from some Googling, you shouldn't really blank as it triggers the light. You can't map them out either apparently ... all this unlike the Euro 3 version (i think anything before the 06 plate) of the same car where you can actually delete the EGR valve no problem with no mapping at all and it will run fine.

AdrianC

JustAnotherSaver said:

So between buying some unbranded, probably Chinese copy off eBay and risking it with a genuine second hand EGR valve, which of the two would you take your chances with?

Neither.

There will be plenty of decent-brand, OEM quality parts available from reliable sources at a fraction of the dealer price.

forgotmyname

Several versions of EGR for that vehicle.    Delphi...

Goudy

Whichever you go for you can do yourself a favour and prolong the valves life.

What ruins them is all the gunk that builds up in them. That gunk is a mixture of soot from the exhaust and oil.

The oil is from the crankcase vent that is fed from into the air intake (rear right end of the valve cover) and this version of the tdci is a fairly heavy breather, so it does kick out a lot of oily vapour when running.

It's a bit of a pain, but if you remove the intercooler, it's pipe work and the plastic inlet manifold and clean it all out with a degreaser and dry it all out, you'll stop the oil that's build up in there and from blowing around into the EGR.

It's a messy job and you can expect to find plenty of oily crud in there, carefully inspect the pipework and jubilee clips, some of the lower ones can rust up and fail.

You could go as far and fitting a catch tank between the crankcase vent and the intake pipe to catch the oil in the vapour, but you'll need something with large enough ports to handle what the engine throws out, so a tank designed for a diesel engine rather than a nicely coloured Ebay special, though space to fit one is a bit tight.

Though just a strip down and clean will keep the valve happy for a lot longer.

JustAnotherSaver

The EGR Valve didn't appear as dirty as what I expected when I removed it although the internals looked different to online photos.

I had planned to remove the plastic manifold and clean out. I bought new gaskets for the job a while ago but I wasn't going to set to it in the winter weather. We're coming a out right for it now though.

Not sure if the EGR issue is connected in any way at all to the glow plug light issue I've previously mentioned on here.
I fitted a new (2nd hand genuine) actuator though last week to see if that helps. Fingers crossed it's what was wrong but knowing my luck it'll have been both the actuator and turbo rather than just 1 of them. 

Goudy

I'm pretty sure the glowplug light is also a fuel system warning light, so if it comes on while driving it showing a fault there somewhere.

My old X Type started doing it under heavy load, turned out the rail pressure was dropping due to an injector leaking off too much fuel under high load. I took them all to be refurb'd and the diesel engineers told me these Delphi injectors all go out of whack after 80k or so.

The electronic turbo actuator is a common problem, mine was euro 3 so had the vacuum actuator, but there was plenty complaints on the forums regarding the black box of tricks that the electronic one looked like. Seen a few posts of owners re soldering the connections to repair them.

I think Ford fitted 3 different EGR's to the 2.0 TDCi depending on which euro version/year they were and I also think the auto's and 2.2's had a different one again.

You can fool the ECU to thinking the EGR is working with a blank with a hole in it.

The ECU expects to see a certain inlet manifold pressure when it thinks the valve should be open, blanking it completely and it won't see that difference from the MAP so lights up DTC sooner or later. A small hole in the blank will allow enough gas to allow a difference in pressure.

Somewhere between a 6 and 8mm hole will stop enough exhaust when it should be closed and also allow enough flow for the MAP to detect when it should be open. It's a fix of sorts.

There's a reason this Duratorq got nicknamed the Suradorq!

There was some old knock off diagnostic software knocking around the 'net a few years ago that helped dig deep into the working, though I think it only worked with older versions of windows, like 98.

forgotmyname

Goudy said:

You can fool the ECU to thinking the EGR is working with a blank with a hole in it.

Yeah a 10mm hole in a 10mm pipe.      Drop that hole down to 8mm and the light may come on again

sooner rather than later.  The object of a blanking plate is prevent the sticky sooty exhaust gas entering

the EGR.

A blanking plate with a hole thats almost as big as the pipe fails on all counts.

Goudy

No, the object of a partial blank is to stop as much exhaust gas as possible reentering the engine at the wrong time as it lacks air to burn.

The pipe from the EGR cooler is around 30 - 35mm and you can get away with a 6 to 8mm hole, 4 or 5 times smaller.

The effect of this is to stop the engine choking on exhaust when it needs air due to a valve failing to close properly.

The engine light will only come on if the PCM can't detect an inlet pressure change from the MAP which is caused by the opening valve at closed or partial throttle.

It doesn't take much of a pressure change for the PCM to register as the valve is designed to operate at different openings under different conditions. The PCM program isn't sophisticated enough to detect differing amounts under different loads, it didn't need to be as the Euro regs at the time weren't as stringent as later ones, it's just looking for the bare minimum and as it's an emissions device, it'll only log it as a fault if it detects no/too little 3 times in the same drive cycle.

It works, as in it over comes the problem of stuttering, hesitation and choking of the engine, thousands of owners of these engines have done it as the EGR system on these is very weak along with quite a few other parts, though what it does for NOx emissions is a different question.

A blanking plate is fairly cheap and it can also be used as a diagnostic tool if you have driveability problems and suspect the valve. If you blank it off and driveabilty improves you've isolated the issue.

JustAnotherSaver

Well this is an interesting one as you can't possibly both be right.

Nevertheless, it's so far so good with the new actuator so although I'm not holding my breath and I'm expecting it to start limping again at some point, it hasn't since the new actuator was fitted. So that's a plus... So far. 

JustAnotherSaver

Where do you purchase from?

I generally use eBay but looking outside of that. Euro Car Parts list the EGR for quite an amount so i don't want to be doing that.

So i just Googled "buy car parts online". I got this website as 1 example https://www.buycarparts.co.uk/ford/mondeo-iii-b5y/18269/10651/egr-valve-intake-manifold?sort_categories[0]=1145&sort_supplier[1]=89. No idea how decent/reliable it is or not.

https://www.buycarparts.co.uk/ridex/8248367 : cheapest EGR valve being a Ridex one. Never heard of it. Gets decent reviews off of only 9 reviews but like i said, never heard of them.

https://www.buycarparts.co.uk/delphi/13812167 Delphi comes in at an extra £35. It's a case of whether you're buying the name or not and whether the cheaper one will / should be just as good or not.

Or whether these websites are any good ... or not (having never used them before).

AdrianC

Delphi is a tier-1 manufacturer. They supply the car manufacturers. That will be OE quality.

Ridex...? Reboxer. They buy parts direct from the manufacturers in bulk, repackage and distribute them. Many of those parts will be from factories in low-labour-cost parts of the world, where QC standards will not be first-quality, and price is more important than reputation...
https://uk.ridex.eu/

"It's only £35" - it's over 40% price difference. That says a lot about corners being cut on the cheapie. £35 is, what, about 40 min labour?