Diesel "misfire" Effect

October 2, 2011

Super post, new to this forum but this is a real help.
My 2005 2.2D avensis has been misfiring with intermittent engine management lights, sometimes showing vsc and abs ? and I've had the car serviced at a Toyota main dealer and they have advised I need the EGR changing and manifold cleaning out.
They initially quoted over £600 for this, but they have dropped this to £530 !
I fail to understand how they have cooked up this price given your excellent info.
I'm a bit of a novice and have not been under a bonnet for a few years, well before fuel injection, but have located the EGR valve.
Apologies for dragging this out,as I am a novice here are the steps I will take, could you advise if I am wrong, forgive my lack of correct terminology.
1.Un clip the electrical cable from the motor type unit labelled Denso.
2.Remove the two female nuts from the unit attached to the manifold - do you then need to loosen off the male nuts.
3.Once the nuts are removed the whole unit should slide off to left, will the attached pipe remove easily enough ?
4.Notice you had removed the motor unit, this has three nuts that require an allen key, are there any pitfalls to removing this and replacing.
5.Clean and replace.
Thanks once again for your post twingo and to the others on the forum who have contributed, even if I decide not to have a crack at this, your post has made their quote for this work look an absolute mockery.
Did you (or anyone else) manage this in the end, and was the above correct? I'm a novice too and am wondering whether I dare try it.

So I just did it this weekend, successfully. The comments from various people in this thread worked wonderfully with my 2.0 litre diesel 2006 Avensis T3-X. Just to document what I did in case it helps anyone:

0. Put on rubber gloves. Carbon is messy, engines are grimy, and carb cleaner is a nasty chemical.

1. Unclip the electrical cable. There's a bit in the middle you have to press before you pull it out.

2. Unscrew the two nuts holding the pipe which goes out from the top of the EGR valve (this carries the exhaust gas to be recirculated back into the engine). For these nuts and all others below, if you don't have a torque wrench, you'll just have to remember how hard it was to remove. All were size 12 unless otherwise stated. You'll need a proper socket set, with different lengths of extension, to get at all the nuts. A spanner isn't going to cut it.

3. Unscrew the two nuts joining that pipe into the engine block (the bottom one is a bit fiddly to get out without risk of dropping it). Also make sure you don't leave the gaskets behind - there's one at each end. Now you can remove that pipe.

4. Now remove the other two nuts holding the EGR valve in place.

5. Before you can remove the valve though, I found I had to move aside the metal bit which supports the electrical cable conduits just above and behind. For that I removed one nut on the right of the support (holding it to engine block), one nut on the top (holding plastic bit to the metal bit, size 10), and just to slacken the nut on the left holding it to the engine block.

6. Now you can lift the EGR valve vertically upwards, although you may have to slightly push that cable support bit to get it past (now that it's loose, you can).

7. I used an old toothbrush to manually remove as much carbon as I could from the exhaust manifold, which was pretty coked up. Although I tried to avoid too much stuff going down, it's probably harmless really and will just get blown out the exhaust. I kept on having to blow out debris though. If you've got an old hoover, that would probably have been better than that. I then applied liberal squirtings of Wynn's Fuel Injection Intake & Carb Cleaner (£5.49 from Halford's).

8. Now to the EGR valve... I still needed to remove the valve motor from the valve itself. This required an allen key but was very stiff. To get it shifted I had to put the allen key in firmly, and (carefully!) whack it horizontally, reseat key if needed and repeat, until it shifted. I then had to use grippers/pliers on the key to undo the rest of the way, for all three allen key bolts. Don't take each one off completely though - there's a rubber seal inside which may get squashed, so just take turns loosening each one until eventually they're all off. Make sure you don't damage the shiny faces - those have got to stay smooth and flat to seal together when you refit it.

9. Now you have the EGR valve. I used the toothbrush as before, and could now depress the valve at the side to open it, and clean all around it. Even the toothbrush couldn't get rid of some caked on stuff, most importantly on the valve itself, so that needed the Carb cleaner again, and a cocktail stick. The carb cleaner is a pretty nasty chemical (poisonous, carcinogenic, don't breath fumes, etc), and it tends to spray back everywhere unless you're careful. I still got some black drops on me when I was. And don't do it anywhere you don't mind getting yucky. Keep doing that, and brushing, until it's all clear. It also seemed to destroy my rubber gloves, so I had to get fresh ones. To clean all the sides of the valve, I found you could push it it and rotate it, to expose a fresh side of the valve. Bear in mind there are *two* valve openings to make sure you clean. By the time I was done there was very little black behind.

10. Leave it to dry for a bit.

11. Put everything back together in reverse. Be careful to make sure the rubber seal is in the right place before attaching the valve motor. And since those allen keyed bolts were hard to get off, you'll have to make sure they're equally tight when you get it back on again. Make sure you refit all gaskets.

Apart from some smoke and a renewed smell of carb cleaner after starting the engine, that fixed it!

Hope this helps someone

Jifl

January 26, 2012

Hi I have an Avensis and I have all the symptoms described in the past threads.

I called out the RAC when it just wouldn't start he did an EGR semi clean on as he said he couldn't dismantle the lot on the roadside.After that the car was running so smooth and sweet with good fuel returns £.

My next problem now is it will always start from cold but after 10mins warm up turn off the engine and it just wont start again,,,,,,,any suggestion ??

January 30, 2013

Hi,
Have read the other recent posts about running/performance issues but my problem seems slightly different. Have a 2.2 diesel (not the T180) and I've recently noticed a kind of hesitation. It has only recently developed and it is getting noticably worse, the car having done just over 30k miles, 2006 model TR. Seems to occur when neither fully off the accelerator, but not actually accelerating either. A very slight pressure on the accelerator in this situation reveals what feels like a kind of "misfire" or some kind of fuelling issue. The engine feels to slightly bog down. Either a very slight lift of the pedal or a very slight pressure and everything is fine, but at this one point, something isn't quite as it should be. I suspect ultimately it will be a dealer visit and a diagnostics check or ECU reflash, perhaps. Just wondered if there was any known issue - it could be a sensor fault, wiring connection problem, etc, etc but seeing as I never noticed it when we got the car and it has developed, suggests that it is more than just a "feature" of the ECU mapping.
Thanks in advance,
Stu
2006 '06 Verso 2.2 TR
I have a 2006 T180 Verso 40k miles and it had the same problems and surfing the internet lead me to looking at the EGR valve which was a simple job to remove and clean ( Yes it needed cleaning as when you remove the valve there are two orifices and one was completely blocked and the other was a 1/4 of the size ). the hardest job was finding which was the correct valve. It lies at the front of the engine, in front of the injectors and has a flex metal pipe running to the cylinder head if is remove using a 12 mm socket and took about half an hour to complete, I will remove again when I have some carb cleaner handy but using a scraper (screw driver) did the trick for now see photos of before and after. so cleaning easy and saved me paying a Toyota Garage £135 for the valve plus labour for renewing the valve

Hope this Helps
Super post, new to this forum but this is a real help.
My 2005 2.2D avensis has been misfiring with intermittent engine management lights, sometimes showing vsc and abs ? and I've had the car serviced at a Toyota main dealer and they have advised I need the EGR changing and manifold cleaning out.
They initially quoted over £600 for this, but they have dropped this to £530 !
I fail to understand how they have cooked up this price given your excellent info.
I'm a bit of a novice and have not been under a bonnet for a few years, well before fuel injection, but have located the EGR valve.
Apologies for dragging this out,as I am a novice here are the steps I will take, could you advise if I am wrong, forgive my lack of correct terminology.
1.Un clip the electrical cable from the motor type unit labelled Denso.
2.Remove the two female nuts from the unit attached to the manifold - do you then need to loosen off the male nuts.
3.Once the nuts are removed the whole unit should slide off to left, will the attached pipe remove easily enough ?
4.Notice you had removed the motor unit, this has three nuts that require an allen key, are there any pitfalls to removing this and replacing.
5.Clean and replace.
Thanks once again for your post twingo and to the others on the forum who have contributed, even if I decide not to have a crack at this, your post has made their quote for this work look an absolute mockery.
Am interested in this & plan to clean my EGR (now I know where it is!) in the next week or so before we go on a long trip. Mine was replaced last year about 6K miles ago under warranty so I shall be interested to see what it looks like in there. One question though, are there any gaskets in there that might need replacing when you remove it?

i was wondering the same, and the egr valva is around same place in my 2008 avensis 2.0 d4d??

thx in advance

January 31, 2013

The problems you describe are similar to the ones I have experienced recently, certainly the EGR valve sounds like it needs cleaning which I had done together with a dosing of BG244, the difference was incredible , much more responsive and is now much quieter just as it was when I bought it 2 years ago. The only thing I would add that if the EGR is caked ,then so to will the inlet manifold ,and this will need to be taken off and done manually. Check your air filter as well . I am currently in this long process. Mine is a Verso D4D 2,2, diesel.

May 10, 2014

Hi all, new member to the site but can't thank enough all the advice on here, I have had all the above problems for just over a week and thought I was in for an expensive fix but half an hour later having cleaned the EGR valve my 2008 avensis is back to running sweet. Brilliant site .