Does My Intake Need CLeaned - Photos

I have been reading about some various mods and just overall performance enhancements that can be done to my TDI.

I wanted to start with things I can do at home first that wouldn't be to expensive but could be beneficial to performance, one of which was clean my intake.

Took off the hose connection to the flapper shutter valve and this is what I found, below in the pictures. It Didn't look to bad on the close side of the shutter valve but looked like there may be some buildup on the far side of the valve. Figured no better place to ask than here. So do you guys think clean it or leave it?

That’s not the intake that’s your egr. Remove that to see what the intake looks like. If it’s plugged you’ll know it, when I cleaned mine I had about a pencil sized hole left. Most however are not that bad.

Don’t try and clean it while still on the car remove the intake if you do need to clean it. Cleaning it on the car is asking for trouble.

I used the write up from here to clean mine. (Link below) Mine wasn't that clogged. In fact the ~$30 that I spent more than it was worth in terms of mpgs or performance, BUT I bought it with 212k and I'm the 3rd owner of this vehicle so the ~$30 and time was worth my peace of mind. And it gave me an excuse to play with toys.

http://forums.tdiclub.com/showthread.php?t=157948

That's an awesome link, thanks! I think I will end up doing it anyways just for the peace of mind as well, besides it looks like it is fairly clogged past the flapper valve anyways.