Hi all,
ok - did the extraction and clean up of the EGR housing, throttle housing and EGR cooler today.
All went well until I I had difficulty finding the 'hidden' bolts holding on the EGR cooler. Once you know where they are, its a piece of cake, but in the absence of this information, there was much teeth gnashing. Then, mysteriously I must have sheared a 4-way fuel return union - posibly by leaning on it. No idea!! This tiny plastic moulding must cost pennies to produce but Mr Volvo wants £105 to replace it. Not what I had in mind given my current fiscal situation - sigh!
Anyway, cooler was pretty clean inside. EGR valve and exhaust manifold outlet were full of crud, which was unpleasant to clean, but not difficult. Certainly I could move the EGR valve in by hand pressure, although the spring opposing this movement was as tight as a gnats chuff!
Reassembling was an absolute bitch - again partially due to my working some of this out in real time. The worst part was getting the jubilee clip/collar that holds together the flanged parts of the EGR cooler exit and the corrugated metal tubing (going to the turbo, I guess). Somewhat mysteriously again, one half of the compression collar was missing upon extraction of the cooler. It may have pinged out during disassembly or simply wasn't there. Anyway, re-fitting this was an absolute whore of a job due to limited access. Not a job I'd ever like to repeat due to a few key bolts just being so difficult to get to.
Whilst I couldn't start the car - due to the sheared fuel union running out fuel - I could do a few diagnostics with my BSR PPC. Despite taking the battery off during the jobs, and then switching the ignition on and off a few times and then clearing and reading the DTC codes, it does appear that the 44B0 code has now gone. If so, then the clean up seems to have worked!!
I will rest easier when the car has a test drive as I'm a bit paranoid that the fault will return when the engine is running. That said, before I did the clean up etc, the 44B0 code could be cleared and it immediately returned when the ignition was at position 2 (ie. the engine wasn't running), so maybe I've sorted this out. I do hope so, as it ain't a fun job due to the very restricted access.
My advice to anyone trying this is during disassembly to loosen the bolts from the front of the engine first, then work backwards, finishing with the EGR cooler retaining collar (this can be teased off the flange on the EGR ccooler with screwdriver). Conversely, when assembling, get the EGR cooler connected to the turbo pipe first, then partially tighten the 'hidden' screws around the middle of the EGR cooler and then do the bolts at the front. I found out the hard way that if you do the front ones first, the rest were a bugger to line up and tighten. However, maybe I reinvented the wheel a few times and more savvy people can do this quicker and easier?
Cheers
Neil
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