You’ve almost certainly previously heard of the renowned EGR valve, the anti-pollution valve. It is not usually appreciated by motorists because it is likely to create more problems than anything else… Actually, dependent on the use you are going to make of your car, it can become clogged and bring about you a lot of trouble. If this is the situation, you are almost certainly wondering how to clean the EGR valve of your Volkswagen Tiguan ? Don’t stress, we’ve prepared this article content to help you with this process. To accomplish this, we will first look at the purpose of the EGR valve, then what are the failures that the EGR valve of your Volkswagen Tiguan can bring on and to finish the section that will almost certainly concern you the most, how to clean the EGR valve Volkswagen Tiguan?

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How to Clean your Volkswagen Tiguan EGR Valve: Role and Operation

Goal of the EGR valve

The EGR valve of your car has been integrated to diesel engines principally to lower pollution emitted by cars and to match EURO standards on Volkswagen Tiguan . It will as a consequence control the quality of exhaust gas output and eliminate toxic particles, mainly Nitrogen Oxide.

Operation of the EGR valve

Before we learn how to clean the EGR valve on your Volkswagen Tiguan , we will check out how it operates. As described before, its goal is to clean the exhaust gases, so it will be located at the engine outlet, thanks to a valve, it will be able to return the unburned exhaust gases to the engine for a second burn which will eliminate all unburned toxic particles. It will perform mainly at low speed because at high speed the combustion is enough to burn all these gases.

How to clean your Volkswagen Tiguan EGR valve: Identifying faults

The EGR valve, despite the fact very important to limit the pollution emissions of your Volkswagen Tiguan , will unfortunately tend to clog up because of soot/gas deposits that will accumulate in its mechanism, which will inevitably risk blocking the operation of the valve, until completely blocking the engine, here are the signs of illness that a faulty EGR valve on your Volkswagen Tiguan can bring about:

  • Motor light on
  • Performance loss
  • Technical assesment rejected
  • Black gases
  • Car that grazes at low speed
  • Low RPM settings

How to clean your Volkswagen Tiguan EGR valve: In practice

And now we’ll start the section you are most enthusiastic about, how to clean the EGR valve of your car. Here are the two approaches that you can use.

Do it on your own

How to clean your Volkswagen Tiguan EGR valve system: Without taking it apart

Even though this approach is less efficient, it is however possible to consider a “rough” cleaning of your EGR valve, the truth is, you will only need to use fuel additives, equivalent to the products used to clean the injection. These particular solutions must be injected into the running engine, at the right operating temperature, diluted in about 20 litres of fuel and run the engine for 3 or 4 minutes in high rev to clean the EGR valve of your Volkswagen Tiguan.

How to clean your car EGR valve: With disassembly

Here is the most efficient approach, which will require enough access to the EGR valve to execute the treatment on your own. If so, the operation is fairly straightforward. You will need to disconnect the electromagnet from the EGR valve, remove the few screws that hold it in place, and remove it. Once these simple steps are done, now comes the time for cleaning. To accomplish this, you will need to use a product such as solvent, petrol, oven cleaning product, which you will leave to act for ten minutes, then scrape off the rest using a scraper, finish cleaning with wire brush. If you want to go further, you can even clean the two canal on which it is connected which may be scorched, for this, use a scraper and a vacuum cleaner to avoid dropping deposits in the conduits. You will only have to reassemble it and you will have finished cleaning the EGR valve of your Volkswagen Tiguan.

Have it done by a professional

If, your EGR valve is not accessible because of the series or the engine of your car and if removing it would cause too many problems (removing too many auto parts that hinder access for example), how to clean the EGR valve of your Volkswagen Tiguan? In this case, it would be better rather than launching yourself into an overly complex process, you turn to an auto mechanic. He will be able to perform the job more cleanly and will be able, if necessary, to change the valve if it is dead. The cost of cleaning dependent on the difficulty of access is between 70 and 300 €.

Remove the EGR valve of your Volkswagen Tiguan

At last, some people make a more radical decision to limit the risk of a failed valve. Instead of cleaning the EGR valve of their Volkswagen Tiguan, they simply choose to block it in the closed position. This treatment will have the result of greatly increasing the pollution emitted by the car, of no longer complying with pollution standards, of having an engine warning light all day on and in the end risk fouling the engine. We highly recommend against making this choice. If you have other questions or want to learn more about your car, don’t think twice to check out our dedicated page.

If you need more tutorials on the Volkswagen Tiguan, go to our Volkswagen Tiguan category.