Trc/vsc/engine Light On T180

[Harvy]

Evening all.

After much delay I have finally had to chance to work on the EGR. I took off the pipe on the top of the valve to find this.

There is a home made blanking plate over the hole! I'm concerned as to what ill effects this might have had on the engine. Can anybody offer any advice?

I'm puzzled as to who would have done this and why. The car has full service history although not from a Toyota dealer.

Anyway, after removing the valve from its seating look what I found!

More than a little coked up!

So using these,

I (with help from my house mate) managed to make it look like this!

We removed this much soot and carbon (thumb for reference).

So returning to the warmth of the flat I proceeded to make this,

Look like this,

By removing this much soot and carbon,

Tomorrow in the light I will refit the whole assembly and hopefully see an improvement in acceleration and more importantly mpg. Currently I am returning an average of 32.1 mpg. The only journey I take is once a week commuting to work all on motorway and A roads at 70-80 on cruise control.

Any thoughts?

[BigGazzie]

So I've been reading the replies to ppl issues with their t180's etc. and I wanted to ask someone pls if that I clean my egr valve n blow out the dpnf/cat in order for smoother cleaner burning of the fuel would I be able to reset the vsc/traction control  to turn the lights off the dash???....