Has anyone successfully disassembled a BEW EGR valve for internal cleaning?

[Vince Waldon]

Despite my best efforts at a thorough external cleaning my BEW's EGR valve still sticks partly open randomly, and those suckers are crazy spendy new.

Currently tuned for Dynamic EGR, which is helpful warm-up wise here in the Great White North, so trying to preserve EGR function if I can.

 

[oilhammer]

The problem is, the shaft itself (or the bushings it rides in) are worn, and exhaust gasses/oil laden crankcase vapors wick up the shaft and into the drive mechanism, where the electronics also reside.

So yeah, you can take the little Torx screws out of the top and clean everything inside, clean the shaft, etc. but you'll only be treating the symptom, not the root cause.

You can find Pierburg branded ones (which is who made them for VAG anyway usually) in the aftermarket new for around $250 here. That's not too terrible to me.

 

[burpod]

if one puts a little more effort into the tune than simply turning egr off and nothing else, warmup period performance is excellent - perky and crisp, smoke-free, and any increase in warmup time is negligible, from my experience. what malone and most others do for egr delete is to simply turn it off, but nothing else in the tune is changed to account for this (various timing maps) - that will most surely cause worse warmup period performance/increase warmup time, as many people can atest to...

 

[oilhammer]

Everything can be fixed with a tune, LOL....

 

[gforce1108]

What I find is that the flex pipes break first (botched cooler recall) and then dynamic EGR is useless. 2 of the 3 BEWs I work on were missing multiple bolts securing the cooler. I saved all my EGR hardware for the 3rd fully intact BEW that has 255k miles in case it needs something.

 

[oilhammer]

The missing support bracket is usually the cause, and yes, from the botched recall. But it is critical the EGR cooler gets mounted in a "neutral" position before the bolts are tightened down. This is the same for the ALH, BHW, etc. but the goofy Modine cooler on the BEW is far less forgiving for this. And the bracket has some really not-easy-to-get-at fasteners that can make this task difficult (but not impossible) to do correctly while the engine is in the car.

But the bracket went NLA a couple years ago, and I don't think it ever returned. The EGR cooler assembly, which was a mere $25 during and right after the recall, went back up later on, and now jumped up again to something ridiculous like $400. I just put a front fender arch trim on a T'reg that was $700, and it didn't even have the painted part painted to match, was still in primer. !!!!!

 

[gforce1108]

The missing support bracket is usually the cause, and yes, from the botched recall. But it is critical the EGR cooler gets mounted in a "neutral" position before the bolts are tightened down. This is the same for the ALH, BHW, etc. but the goofy Modine cooler on the BEW is far less forgiving for this. And the bracket has some really not-easy-to-get-at fasteners that can make this task difficult (but not impossible) to do correctly while the engine is in the car.

But the bracket went NLA a couple years ago, and I don't think it ever returned. The EGR cooler assembly, which was a mere $25 during and right after the recall, went back up later on, and now jumped up again to something ridiculous like $400. I just put a front fender arch trim on a T'reg that was $700, and it didn't even have the painted part painted to match, was still in primer. !!!!!

I've read the pdf that's posted here somewhere with the retrofit instructions. Obviously they weren't followed!. Mine broke shortly after the recall around 2007 or so. I removed it a few years later. It's completely intact and sitting in my shop "just in case". I have a second that the bracket cracked on after vibrating for years! I'm doing a VNT-17 on an intact BEW shortly with the new flex line to match. I assume the same deal applies that the cooler should be loose (Beetle of course so a bigger pain to reach)

 

[oilhammer]

If the cowl is removed (easy) there's pretty much just as much room on the NB as there is on the G/J. Makes a big difference.