DIY EGR cleaning made easy

The oven cleaner I get works.... From the dollar and a quarter store...
Spray it and let it soak in, rinse, repeat.
I pressure washed the house, sidewalk, and driveway today, and my spare cooler.
It's actually clogged, I went longer on cleaning it last time.
I ran out of the oven cleaner, so I'm going to try the drain cleaner this time....

 

I’ll report back, my cooler started off extremely clogged (couldn’t see any light through it). Started off soaking in heavy duty industrial degreaser for a day and pressure washed then soaked again, have done this for about 3 days now. From what my cooler was at, I could only just see 1x pin hole light doing this, and maybe a fingertip worth of surface debris taken from the entry/exit.
Switched to high concentrate sodium hydroxide as per suggestion and only after soaking for 12 hours I am starting to see much more pin lights come through (I reckon about 25-30% of the carbon melted) so it works pretty damn well for ultra clogged coolers and can actually see the carbon disintegrating. Thankfully the cooler is made of stainless steel not aluminium. I’ll let mine soak for another day or so but glad to find something that works really well.

 

Good to hear.

 

Make sure you use really hot water for the rinses post soaking in the sodium hydroxide. And then flush with lots of water.

SM-G781V ?

 

For the lye solution though, add the lye to cold water (it’ll heat up), with all utensils “inert”, say sturdy, glass canning jar and plastic stir rod. Best to do all mixing and pouring IN a laundry sink.

apparently 50/50 water/lye (by weight) is concentrated, say 100 gm’s of each. I’d be inclined to try 75/25 first. Practical example:

mason jar on zeroed digital gram scale, water til 150 (gm), then tap in lye til 200.

google search string:

concentrated lye solution recipe

 

It can take a LONG time to soak through thick carbon. Not sure it's safe to do so with lye on stainless steel. (Definitely safe on cast iron but that's a different material entirely )

AFAIK OxyClean is much safer. Yet still, you may have to be far more patient to get the results the easy way.

 

Lye is safe for stainless steel. It reacts with carbon and oil deposits, turning them into a soapy substance that is easily washed off with water.

 

Just a thought I have, would sodium hydroxide’s efficacy degrade when soaking the cooler for 2 days or longer?
Trying to get the very last bits out so thought I’d let it have a good soak for longer.

 

How are you doing the lye solution, a large tub and immerse the cooler? The most efficient way is to cork one end of the cooler (smaller end is ~21 mm ID, suitable for #4 white rubber stopper), and mix up just enough solution to fill the cooler; 1 cup (aka 240 cc, 0.25 qt) is sufficient. Let it sit an hour till the bubbles subside, rinse and repeat with fresh solution.

 

Hi Mendel,
Using the corked method, trying to get the last bits out but there always seems to be some hidden carbon each time I rinse it so I thought I’d let it sit for longer rather than keep pouring solution down my drain each few hours.

 

When channels accumulate oil-carbon deposits for a long time, then along the entire length of many channels it can be so dense that steel wire does not pass. Lye corrodes part of these deposits, but cannot penetrate the entire length at once.
You can drain the lye into some container, rinse the cooler with water and fill it with the same lye again. And of course, it is better to use steel wire to help clean the channel.
Patience, your work and time will allow you to clean everything.

 

Good idea, I’ll try that next time. Car has been sitting way too long, all of the cooler that I can see through is completely clear, but there’s the hidden channels where dirty water comes out no matter how much I rinse, have pressure washed every angle that I could, so I’ve done my very best on this. Going to neutralise any trapped sodium hydroxide (if any) with vinegar and install as is. Wanted to aim for perfect but I’ll take good enough.

 

I used this wire to seal bottles. It's funny that it's just one wire and not several pieces.



Muselet - Wikipedia

When unrolled, it has a length that can pass through the holes of the cooler. By inserting the wire into different holes, I can see how well it passes or not. And when the wire is removed from the hole, a black oily trace is clearly visible on it. This means that cleaning in this hole did not achieve the desired result.

 

Thanks max will try this

 

Having a spare cooler would be worth it if you put on a lot of miles each year.
50,000 miles will come around really quick!

 

I used brake cleaner to clean out the EGR and then rinsed well with water. Worked great.

 

Used on anything other than the (stainless steel) EGR cooler it can start corrosion. Rinse very well. I used just Oxi-Clean on the intake manifold, thought I'd rinsed well, and when I revisited it a year or two later, all the metal embeds had crusty growth. Cleaned them again, then hit them with WD40. They're ok now.

 

I just did my research. Max is mostly correct. A few safety tips and we're in good shape! (Glad I learned this: I've been using lye to rapidly clean up our SS gas cooktop surface. SO much easier than any other method )

Things to avoid:

• Don't heat it up. Above 199F, SS in strong lye can crack. And ferritic SS (magnet sticks to it) cracks at lower temps.
• Keep any Chlorine/Chloride source awayyy. If contaminated with Salt, pool water, etc etc... even 50C/122F warm water can cause Cl-SCC (Chlorine Stress Corrosion Cracking.)

 

My municipal water is treated with some of that.

 

Hmm, maybe use distilled water?

lye solution will heat up, to what I’m not sure, 140F range? Wait till temp drops some? Depends on concentration.