Well, finally did it last night. Hard to tell much difference but then I've only popped to Tescos so far. Got a good run coming up on Thursday so will repot more back then.
I'm not the most mechanically minded person but I'm not totally stupid and I found it reasonbly easy. I hope these aren't stating the bleedin' obvious, but here are my tips.
Hope this helps in some way, like I say sorry if it's all old news
... It's just stuff that I would have liked to have been told on top of the instructions I had.
James
I'm not the most mechanically minded person but I'm not totally stupid and I found it reasonbly easy. I hope these aren't stating the bleedin' obvious, but here are my tips.
- You can use WD40 to soak onto the bolts but they seem to come out fairly easily
- None of the instructions I saw anywhere mentioned removing the radiator/fan cover. They only mentioned the engine cover. Obviously you have to remove the engine cover but if you take the radiator one off to it means you can get a hex bit on a 6"extension bar on a wrench and feed your way through to the bolts. I couldn't find a way of getting at the bolts using just a normal allen key
- The wrench will sit between the blades of the fan when you're using it, with the extension feeding through the gaps in the EGR pipework to the bolts. You should really disconnect the battery to be completely safe when working like this. But make sure you've got your radio code!
- With the bolts out, and the end of the EGR pipe 'disconnected' from the exhaust I found that loosening the bracket holding the EGR system to the engine block allowed me to slide the blanking plate down more easily.
- With the blanking plate in place, if you nip the aforementioned bracket up again a bit it should hold it roughly in place by friction
- If you then replace the 'top' bolt through the EGR pipe and via the new plate into the engine block, but don't tighten it fully, you can put a screwdriver through the bottom hole to help you make sure that the bottom hole in the blanking plate is also lined up and ready for the bolt to be replaced. If you have the top bolt too tight, the bottom part of the plate won't pivot into line. Too loose and it will swing around.
- Make sure you do a little backwards turn when replacing the bolts to make them seat correctly so you don't thread the bolts (or worse, the engine block!). Magnetic bits are very useful.
- Don't forget to fully tighten the bracket holding the EGR system on before you put everything back together.
- Listen for any hissing of exhaust leaking through the new EGR/Blanking Plate sandwich to make sure you've got it all tight.
Hope this helps in some way, like I say sorry if it's all old news
James