What does a EGR Valve do?

The valve controlling your EGR (exhaust gas recirculation) is an important part of your car's engine. It controls the amount of nitrogen oxide emitted into the atmosphere by petrol and diesel engines by recycling part of the exhaust gas back into the engine cylinders.

Volkswagen

Volkswagen (often shortened to VW) is a German automobile manufacturer founded in 1937 by the German Labour Front, a Nazi labour union.

Volkswagen is the flagship marque of the Volkswagen Group, who in turn is majority owned by Porsche. They own and operate a vast number of cars under other brand names—at the time of writing, they have 342 subsidiary companies.

How popular is Volkswagen in the United Kingdom?

Possibly its most well-known model of the current generation, the VW Golf, was the 2nd best selling car of 2018, behind the Ford Fiesta, which consistently takes the top spot year after year.

The Golf’s 64k registrations in 2018 added to the vast tally of 3.4million Volkswagen cars on the road today.

High quality, highly rated, appropriately priced cars

VW cars achieve consistently strong reviews and are highly respected by critics and drivers alike. They are renowned for investing more money into research and development than almost any other marque and distributing their wealth of motoring knowledge across the many partner brands under the VW Group umbrella.

The Volkswagen Beetle: The ‘people’s car’

A classic of its time, originally named the Volkswagen Type 1, it soon became nicknamed the Beetle due to its unique shape, and subsequently the bug. The unique looking car was designed by Ferdinand Porsche for Adolf Hitler, who wanted a cheap and simple mass-produced car to travel around his country’s new road network.

The new model Beetle, originally launched to celebrate the original classic in 1997, and with an updated successor in 2011, was designed around the VW Jetta platform sharing much of its build with the Jetta and Golf. VW announced in 2018 that the Beetle would finally be removed from production in July 2019.

How common is an EGR valve replacement?

With exhaust gases flowing through the component, it will eventually succumb to the deposits of carbon and hydrocarbons and it will ultimately seize. Replacing an EGR valve is an all too common repair.

How does an EGR valve work and what are the components?

The EGR valve is connected to the exhaust system by a metal tube. When the engine is running, the valve will be opened by the engine management system to allow the exhaust gases to travel up the tube from the exhaust system and back through into the inlet manifold, and afterwards back into the engine. The control of this valve is either driven directly by a solenoid on the EGR unit itself or via a hose to a solenoid on the vacuum circuit that is also opened by the engine management system. Some EGR units have a cooler as part of them, that is plumbed into the engine’s cooling system, literally to cool the exhaust gasses before they go back through. By the exhaust gasses going back into the engine, it reduces NOx (Nitrogen Oxide) content. This is because the exhaust gas reduces the actual oxygen proportion and increases the vapour content, which in return reduces the combustion temperature peak. As more NOx is produced as the temperature rises, this method actively reduces the amount created.

What are the symptoms of a malfunctioning EGR Valve motor?

A rough idle when starting your vehicle or during brief stops (i.e. low engine speeds with a warmed-up engine) can be caused when the EGR is constantly open and a continuous flow of exhaust gases goes into the intake manifold. Poor performance can be caused when the valve is open or closed. The incorrect function of the EGR valve can cause the erratic performance of your vehicle.