Faulty EGR Valve

I have a polo 1.9 TDI, and the exhaust emission light came on.. so I took it into my local service center and they reset it, saying it shouldn't come on again - giving no real explanation... of course the light did come on again that evening and I asked them to grab all the error codes this morning when I took it in again... turns out the EGR valve is working intermittently - or rather, failing intermittently - and they said there are signs of oil on the valve.. and that I need to replace it.

The car is approaching 100 000km, which I believe is about the time that I may need to replace the valve? I'm not too concerned about replacing it, but I am concerned because I've planned a road trip for this weekend, and will be driving approximately 1 000km over about 5 days [they can only get the valve next week sometime anyway, so I can't get it done now]

There is absolutely no loss of power, no additional smoking, and I've not noticed any negative effects on fuel consumption.. but the vw "experts" said that the oil on the valve may be coming from the turbo... someone else told me it may just be sucking up oil due to the valve not working correctly.

Any advice? Should I cancel the road trip, is it more likely to be the turbo or just oil accumulating due to the valve not working properly?

Once they'd reset the fault system the light only came on again after about two hours of driving around town.

The oil in the valve may be coming from the 'oil breather' since it is on the air intake side. I have cleaned my intercooler to get the accumulated oil cleaned out of the intakes. Back to the EGR, should not be a problem to drive without the valve. I replaced my valve with a racepipe and have not had any problems.

Thanks Bob! I'm in dire need of a holiday, so am going to take my chances.

I have been somewhat reluctant to take the advice of the guys at the vw center because one of them uttered the words "timing? oh no, these new cars have barely anything to do with timing anymore".

I think the valve is mostly working, and only sticking every now and then. Both times the light came on was once I'd been on the highway for about 20 minutes, and the system doesn't seem to detect any faults when I'm only doing city / traffic driving.