I took my car for 120k mile service (plugs,cool and, oil, throttle body, MAF). I asked them to clean the egr circuit. He was going to do it but showed me photos that the pipe and the interfaces to the Egr and the manifold. There was negligible carbon deposits. He suggested that we hold off. I held off and was shocked he didn’t take my money. His view: the heavy disassembly for cleaning is a risky job when the gas mileage is good, no startup rattle, no oil leak/consumption, and negligible carbon in the pipe. Looking for wisdom from the forum. Is my late 2015 exempt from EGR clogs? (I heard 2015 had a piston ring redesign). Am I lucky? Should I find a different mechanic?
Either you. have an honest technician or he didn't want to do it. It's rare when they don't want the money though. Did he pull the intake manifold and look at the egr holes? If he did, he should have cleaned them out. It would have only taken 10-15 minutes. The egr pipe is nothing, it will never get clogged. The cooler has small passages that do get clogged. Since the engine with the newest pistons/ring don't suffer with the sticking/clogging and blow by, the egr system doesn't suffer so much by clogging. It is NOT a "heavy" disassembly, nor a "risky" job.... For a good tech. And it's something you could do with a few tools. Perhaps he didn't know how to do it??? Does he have Toyota Hybrid experience? You have likely safe for many miles, maybe at 200,000 miles have it cleaned. The idea is to clean it BEFORE it clogs. Like changing engine oil/filter BEFORE it breaks down and fails.....
It would be reasonable to pull up the car's most recent EGR flow self-test result and look at that. Higher is better. We've been seeing results around 21 or 22 kPa for new or freshly squeaky cleaned systems. That is worth also doing, because it is such a short job, and because the way the car does the flow self-test really only gets at overall flow, and can't distinguish what's going on with those four separate ports.
... and around 18-19 kPa for my 2011 at considerably higher mileage, so clogging that early isn't inevitable, despite what certain pessimists like to say. I agree with others above that the intake manifold EGR ports should be cleared. That's much easier than the cooler.
3rd gen with 115k miles, I wouldn’t hesitate to: clean it. Don’t neglect the intake manifold; it has the final leg of the EGR passages. who is “he”? Presumably not a dealership? Has he got experience cleaning 3rd gen EGR? Id consider DIY if possible. See top two links in my signature for more info on the procedure (on a phone turn it landscape to see signatures).
Thanks for the responses. It sounds like my egr circuit is still in need of attention in the medium term.
is the EGR flow insufficiency data only available through Techstream? I looked in the car scanner pro app and the only egr related sensor are these:
It's worth keeping in mind, with the intake manifold's individual EGR passages to each cylinder, they tend to clog unevenly, usually in sequence with cylinder one being the "leader", which leads to a situation where overall flow is still so-so, but cylinder one having more oxygen to combust. Perhaps not coincidentally, cylinder one tends to be the first misfire code, and the head gasket failure at the adjoining wall between cylinders one and two. This asymmetry might be due to the intake manifold's main EGR gallery (larger diameter tube) exhaust gas is fed from the cylinder four end. There was a revision to the intake manifold, "possibly" switching that flow from one-into-four, to one-into-two-into-four. AFAIK, nobody's found documentation to support that speculated revision though. Something for John Kelly?
It is a "mode 6" monitor test result. That is a standard OBD-II feature that many scan tools can retrieve. If you page along through this thread, you'll see plenty of examples of people looking at it with apps other than Techstream.
It is a challenging thing to do for a lot of people, but there are excellent guides on YouTube. My advice is be extremely careful with all of your 6 mm bolts. A broken bolt is a hearbreaker! Ask me how I know. I have 2015, first EGR cleaning at 205k miles. Once you get over the initial shock of what you're doing, it's very doable for a DIY person. I don't pay people for much of anything. Mostly I hear "you're going to fail". I put in a new mini split by myself. That really pissed off the HVAC tech people online. Then I had a little leak in it. The gloom/doom online was up to my waist! I called the mini split company and got a little tech support for proper pressure readings. Fixed it myself. That was 2 1/2 years ago, never a problem in real life. Bottom line, I did the whole job for $800 AND I have all the tools to do AC work. Would have been at least $1300 if I'd had a company do it. I personally went 205k miles on my car without cleaning the EGR. No symptoms of head gasket issues. I would personally do it at 150k miles, but Mendel and ASRDogman are experts with these cars. I'd give the most weight to their opinions.
NOT an expert! I personally have physical experience. I do have a lot of experience with cars. And the Prius is just another car. The key is to listen, and you'll find who knows and who the "know it all" are. Some just copy and paste, which is fine. A lot of this is common sense. What is a "mini split"?
