Did the same thing on Saturday. Removed the pipe and fitted the blanking plate. The existing cap head screws looked a little short as the plate is 6mm thick, so I changed the screw and it sheared as I was tightening it up (promise you I did not torque it too much). Only answer was to remove the whole EGR valve assembly to give me access to the exhaust manifold. Managed to drill in situ and remove the screw with an easy-out. Put it all back together without a hitch. Made me think that I should have bought the whole kit and ditch the complete valve assembly but they wanted R400 +vat and I paid only R55 for the plate.

Any improvements to performance and/or mpg ??

disco_steve said:

Any improvements to performance and/or mpg ??

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Hi, as you know I did mine last week, so now I feel I can repoort back at least on performance, just fileld to the tank full today, so mpg calculations will come later.

I am now convinced that the car runs better. Running uphills that I'm familiar with, regular runs that I know all convince me that the car is running easier, I know that's not a very technical expression but it does actually describe how I feel about her now.

All the time I find myself backing so that's go to be good for mpg, right?

Yesterday however, I gave her a bit of a thrapeing and WOW, I was genuinely surprised and how well she went between 60 and 80. This was on ordinary A-roads so I have to back off as I don't want to get nicked, but performance surprising good. Never saloon car like you understand, but pretty damn fine all the same.

Also today, I took off the viscous fan (as I did 2 yrs ago on my wife's TDi200) and she (the Disco I mean ) held cool temps all the time. I keep it with me just in case, it's off for for good unless there's a problem.

Cheers
Dave

Interesting, think I'm becoming more convinced, EGR blanking plate off flea bay it is then !!

thebiglad said:

Also today, I took off the viscous fan (as I did 2 yrs ago on my wife's TDi200) and she (the Disco I mean ) held cool temps all the time. I keep it with me just in case, it's off for for good unless there's a problem.

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Discovered recently that my viscous fan coupling was u/s - fan spinning idly. But never had an overheating problem ('99 TD5 no aircon) even on motorways in Central European summer. We did replace the coupling, just in case, and it's slower to warm up from cold now.
Also just done egr. Throttle response much better and mpg a bit better (2-3 mpg on fast driving). Pretty sure my valve was stuck open, hence the big improvement.

Re visous fans and cooling Disco's in general, I believe it is well known that they are over-cooled to take into account times when towing, caught in traffic, off-roading etc, when there is little ram-air to cool the radiator.

But under normal conditions of flowing roads, not towing etc they seem fine without vscous fans at all.

Kenlowe reckon that their fans only come on for 5% of the time, well, we never seem to need extra cooling, ever, even towing out 9mtr caravan.