Cleaned my EGR Plate, Throttle Body, as well as my EGR Valve today

[vmirjamali]

I went ahead and took apart my 2000 MT insight today, as I was suffering from the herky jerky as of late, and the car does have 170k miles on it so it was due for tune up.

The throttle body was fairly clean seems like it was cleaned before, but still a decent amount of carbon came off it.

The egr plate (intake maniforld spacer) on the other hand was quite amazing. It was decked out with carbon, not as much as some of the people on here but still it was at least 4 mm thick or so and I had to use a screw driver and lots of scraping to clean. Took around 1 hour or so for the cleaning alone.

The gasket also was dirty and had caked on carbon. My sealant was sadly degenerated beyond use, and when i called into honda they said it would take till tuesday (4 days) to get it in. With that said I just cleaned up the gasket and went and got some very heavy duty black gasket sealant and just redrew the sealant onto it and now am waiting for it to cure to see how it turns out.

Will keep you guys updated on it.

[Blue-Civic-Hybrid]

Hello fellow San Diegan! I'm about to do the EGR plate cleaning and EGR valve tune up soon myself.

Once I hit 80k, that's when I'll do the whole job.

Did your herky-jerky go away after you did this?

[Eli]

I would really like to take all my stuff apart just to see it's condition. I'm pretty positive it would be squeaky clean after 156,000 miles, because my car actually sees 6,000RPM on a regular basis, and has for the last 3 years, 70,000 miles.

Get it above 3,000RPM now and again, people. It's good for your engine.

[vmirjamali]

Well, I over torqued the screw last night when re tightening it (junk torque wrench), causing the screw to break. Going to buy another one now, and will have to reopen the manifold and do it again. Set aside a good 2-3 hours for this task, other then that it shouldn't be too hard.

I'll let you know in a day or two as i'm going to have to open it up and redo it (I'm using sealant and not a new gasket. )

[gilbertguy]

Any update? Does it drive any better now? Hopefully you got the broken screw out.

[vmirjamali]

Well yes I got those out a few days ago, and sealed it back up using the oem gasket this time as well as gasket sealant. The car does run more smooth then before, and I've gained 2-3 mpg it seems so far on average. Note I also cleaned all my connectors, but my idle issue still remains. It seems to start a 2000 rpm vs the 1k it should be, and I believe that's caused by either a cracked hose, or dirty idle control which I'll be taking out in a day or two to clean.

[Eli]

Originally Posted by vmirjamali

Well yes I got those out a few days ago, and sealed it back up using the oem gasket this time as well as gasket sealant. The car does run more smooth then before, and I've gained 2-3 mpg it seems so far on average. Note I also cleaned all my connectors, but my idle issue still remains. It seems to start a 2000 rpm vs the 1k it should be, and I believe that's caused by either a cracked hose, or dirty idle control which I'll be taking out in a day or two to clean.

Wait - All cars have a warmup mode. When you first start the Insight, it will idle at ~2000RPM and slowly drop as the engine warms up.

[Blue-Civic-Hybrid]

I forgot to ask this the first time. Did you completely take apart the EGR valve itself and cleaned the internal contacts?

[vmirjamali]

I have not taken out the egr valve itself and opened it as of yet. I will be doing that next week hopefully after I get back from a trip. I'm waiting for a salvaged egr valve to come to test on that first in case i mess up.

Eli: Good to know, I thought mine was just unnormal since it had 170k miles on it. If it's normal i'll leave it

[Eli]

I mean I guess it could be having a problem.. I'd need to know more details?

It doesn't idle at 2,000RPM all the time does it? Once it's warm, it idles at ~1000? It also idles at ~1000 when you re-start and it's still warm?