Anyone have experience taking this off and cleaning it? Is it a job for a novice or better taking it to a garage

I would consider something like Terraclean which doesn't involve removal of the EGR and also cleans other parts of the engine.

egr is pretty easy to get off, only a couple of bolts. as is the inlet manifold. i'd take them both off nd wash with carb cleaner or petrol. having seen how thick the crap gets i would'nt trust any wonder treatment other than elbow grease. 

teraclean raises the combustion temps (supposedly) and cleans valves and your outlet (exhaust) (apparently), not sure what their write up on it is cleaning the inlet manifold, like. 

an option to do all of that, after you have scrubbed the built up crap on the inlet side would be to remove the air inlet pipe after the turbo, hold a wall paper stripper near it and allow it to suck the steam in whilst the car is at a good 2.5k revs for half 20 mins or so,

final step, blank the EGR valve

you think some wonder treatment would get rid of all this coked on crud?

 

 

Wow...that is blocked...never seen one that bad before!

EGR blanking plate on order then?

sorry i forgot to mention. if it does loosen up all that crud, where do you think it will go? hint; that is the air inlet!

1 minute ago, Trevor said:

Wow...that is blocked...never seen one that bad before!

EGR blanking plate on order then?

too right. The EGR valve is there to reduce Nox by returning some of the exhaust fumes in to the air inlet at certain revs. we've all see the exhaust tip of a diesel, do you really want that being run through your air inlet and back in to your engine? the more exhaust gasses returned means less o2, less o2 means lower MPGs. 

Nox, isn;t the problem these days, its particulates. EGRs create more particulates (soot)!  honestly... 

Blank them, blank them all!!

I totally agree....EGR was only there for the manufacturers to produce and sell vehicles to comply with the EURO regulations much like AdBlue and DPF....once you buy it, rip it all out....it's not needed.

I'd recommend some very strong bleach (joking! damn that's bad!

jeez, that is bad lol

Will eventually get it removed but until I can afford to get it removed and a remap a good clean will do