I have been enjoying visiting blogs and decided to start my own, even though I don't know what I am doing or if anyone will even be interested in reading what I have to say. I am a 50 year old management consultant who has been married to the the love of my life for 30 years and have two grown daughters and a son-in-law who we are very proud of. We are blessed to live in Scottsdale Arizona and are enjoying getting out and experiencing it in our RV! Thanks for stopping by our blog and please consider joining us, who knows where we will go...Kevin & Tracy.

Saturday, January 5, 2013

All Plugged Up!

Although I have had a cold the last few weeks, I am not talking about me this time, but the EGR Valve in our new to us Suzuki Sidekick, fondly referred to as the Tin Can.  As you may remember from our earlier post, the check engine light came on during our very first adventure in our toad, which was a little disheartening.

But as my friend who has the same vehicle warned me, you will always be working on something on it.  So I used the Suzuki Forum to read the codes for free using a paperclip and then researched the code and the fix.  The forum had some great videos that walked me through each of the steps to remove and clean the EGR Valve, which was extremely helpful.  For me, pictures and videos always work best.

The nice thing is that there is plenty of space under the hood of the Suzuki, making it very easy to get to and remove the EGR Valve.  As you can see in the pictures, that black plug is hard carbon buildup from the exhaust, which was not easy to remove.
Lots Of Work Space

EGR Valve All Plugged Up

Manifold Side Plugged Too!

Nice And Clean Again!

Thank goodness for my Dremel and grinding stones, which made the job much easier.  I ordered the replacement gasket from Autozone on New Year's Day and it is not scheduled to arrive from Memphis until Tuesday.  Their shipping cost was over $5 for a $2 gasket, they must be sending it via the Pony Express.  I won't be ordering parts from them again anytime soon.

So I won't know for sure until the gasket arrives and I put everything back together if my repair was successful, but I have to believe that just like my nasal passages where plugged over the holidays and I couldn't breath, the Tin Can should breath much easier now. 

I hope you are breathing easy and enjoying the weekend.  Thanks for the visit and take good care.

10 comments:

  1. Looks pretty darn clean. I wonder if you could use that Dremel on your sinuses!!

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  2. Don't listen to Donna. If you used that Dremel on your sinuses, you'd just have another mess to clean up.

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  3. Wow, that doesn't even look like the same part. Fingers crossed that all works well when it's back together again. Hopefully no leftover parts.

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  4. Darned smog elimination stuff anyway... Don't ya just get the idea they were making some bureaucrat happy, rather than designing something that worked...? Anyway it looks all clean now...

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  5. Nice clean up job. The internet is a great way to source information, isn't it?

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  6. Looking good, new gasket, reassemble and away ya go.
    Nice to be able to repair things yourself, makes a feel good.

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  7. Good thing you know what you're doing! Hopefully it will be the last part you have to replace for awhile :)

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  8. The new valve looks clean as a whistle. Maybe you should have ordered 2 of those gaskets?

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  9. You did an excellent job, Kevin !!

    Hopefully that was the problem that set the light off, but if not, your EGR valve needed attention anyway.

    Ya, there is always something to fix, especially anything mechanical !!

    Take care ... TnT

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