Car dying, egr filter?

[BoulevardRide]

And a final followup to the title of this thread.

I managed to get the egr filter cap (or whatever it's called) pried off with some wd40. The filter looked ok but old, so having a pack of alleged new filters on hand i removed it.

As you can see the filters ain't the same. I even removed the white top from the black body of the new filter, hoping it would work, but it don't


Of course in removing the old filter my fat thumb kind of crumbled a hole in it. For now it is back in place as the new one ain't even close. i did shoot some wd down that tube just for luck.

Anybody know where i can find a new filter for this? the yelow one on the left, it kind of resembles a weedwacker primer bulb or a small bell with a big hole in the center.

i would also trade my 3-pack (now 2-pack) of mystery black/white filters for one good egr filter lol

[gadget73]

I've never seen the orange type before. All the ones I've run into have been the grey type.

[BoulevardRide]

Positively the last followup. A couple days after cleaning the original iac the car started dying again. Fortunately the Hitachi arrived and fixed the problem. Although the idle was now kind of high, especially when shifting out of park, the rpms would flare before going into gear, which didn't seem like a good idea for the trans.

anyway i took the car on my first interstate trip, after an hour i noticed the idle was way high. Like, it would idle at 25mph on a flat road.

When i got home i oiled up the original iac and reinstalled it, helped a little but still the car would idle up a hill at 12+ mph.

Noticed the long pink vacuum line going to the thing on back of the smog pump had come off. And the hard vacuum line coming off the egr was broken in half.

So i fixed those 2 vacuum lines, still idled way high.

Then i noticed there was an idle adjust screw on the tb. Never saw one of those before on an fi car. Backed it out about a hundred turns, added some loctite, it purrs like a kitten. That was 6 weeks and a lot of miles ago.

Probably the p.o. had cranked in the idle screw to make up for some kind of deficiency. Gradually getting this car sorted out and enjoyable to own and drive. Oh and i cut up some of the wife's pantyhose and replaced that crumbling egr/evr filter with it, so far so good.

[87gtVIC]

That screw is more commonly referred to as the "do not touch" screw. Sounds like you are setting things back to normal, so it was good to mess with it in this case.

[gadget73]

yeah, its the throttle stop screw. Its meant to hold the blade open just enough to keep it from jamming on the throttle body bore. If its been messed with the usual way of resetting it is to unplug the IAC and adjust the screw to get the idle around 500 rpm with the engine warmed up. Its not that uncommon for someone to dick with it in order to try and fix an idle problem when there is another part at fault. Bad IAC is the usual reason for low idle, but if you jack the screw in enough, the IAC doesn't really have to work in order for the car to keep running.

[DerekTheGreat]

Here's a related story...

So Ashley bought a '92 F150 with a straight six & a five speed to replace her Mark VII. I thought I'd do some PM & clean the throttle body & IAC out as it wouldn't come off fast idle smoothly. Other than that though, it was perfect. Well, took the throttle body off, took the IAC motor off and did what I mentioned above like I did for my TC. I had that throttle body sparkling clean. There was plenty of schmoo around the throttle blades, throttle blades had air bleed holes in them too. Anyway, I slap that shit all back together and now it wants to start up & idle at 1200 rip 'ems or more and will only come down to 1000. I hooked my MT2500 to it and noticed that the ECM was calling for "20%", which seems to be as much as it will close the IAC. Swapping them with a known good one did nothing. Took the motor off and yep, closed the RPM's were still high. Was fun to play with the plunger manually but Ashley wanted progress so play time was over fast.. Next step was the base idle screw, even fully backed off I could only get the thing to idle at 900 rpm or so, and it was a chore to drive around. So I am at a loss.. I go online and start researching and people have had the same issue. One guy fixed his problem by swapping to a throttle body that didn't have the air bleed holes. He got flamed for doing so blah blah.. Some other dude said if you hold the TB up to the sun or some other bright light source you shouldn't be able to see light escaping past the throttle blades. Hmm. Well, I didn't know they made TB's with and without the air bleed holes so I took the original back off and held it up to the light. Yep, I can see sun through the perimeter of the blades... Meanwhile, I've got this good straight six sitting in my garage so I simply harvested it's TB and slapped it right on her truck, no cleaning or IAC change. Bam, idled at 800 rpm, started at a fast idle speed I recognized and all was well. This TB didn't have the air bleed holes by the way. What I learned: Throttle bodies and or the blades can and do wear out. Schmoo built up around the blade openings can mask or create problems. So in your case, I'm willing to bet your TB is good & schmooey around the blade, and with the PO it created a low idle condition and like others said, someone simply bumped the base idle up to compensate for it, a compensation the IAC motor then couldn't compensate for...

[LeviMM]

I have the same problem as the OP. I'll check out my EGR and IAC. IIRC my EGR valve looked a little worse for wear last time I saw it. I'll post a picture to get a second opinion from you guys. Thanks.

[DerekTheGreat]

I have the same problem as the OP. I'll check out my EGR and IAC. IIRC my EGR valve looked a little worse for wear last time I saw it. I'll post a picture to get a second opinion from you guys. Thanks.

Did you see the final post from the OP? He solved his issue by adjusting his base idle screw..

[LeviMM]

Okay. Yeah I read that. Another mentioned that part being instrumental to getting a good idle. How sensitive/hard is it to adjust the base idle screw?

[DerekTheGreat]

That's something I'd want to do last. If I were in your shoes I'd take the throttle body off, take the IAC motor off and then clean the snot out of the both. I posted somewhere earlier about the cleaning process I use to "restore" IAC motors. Throw new gaskets at the thing and then try again. If high idle still persists, then look at the base idle. The screw is most likely a 5/16 or 8mm or smaller nut. IIRC, turning it clockwise will bump idle up, CCW will bump it down. When I messed with my girlfriends truck, I was in a state of much irritation and verified the IAC was closed by removing the stepper motor from the IAC's body. Adjusted it with engine running of course. Although in her case, that wasn't the issue. See my long rant from earlier today

[LeviMM]

Thanks Derek and the community for the excellent help. I snapped some photos of my EGR. I don't think the spring is supposed to be showing. And also in trying to track down a short i found this red wire hanging out and I tracked it back to this . Can any body help me diagnosing what's going on? Thanks again and sorry for hijacking the thread.

[sly]

First off... that red "wire" is a vacuum line on the fuel pressure regulator that goes to a port on the intake manifold, so you didn't manage to trace that wire. That looks like someone tried to rig something and then removed said something. Wrap the wire until you manage to trace it to where it really goes.

[LeviMM]

You're right. It looks like it goes in the cabin somewhere. I do some more searching on it.

[gadget73]

Your EVR (EGR Vacuum Regulator) is f'd. They are not supposed to be explodo like that. At a minimum that is a vacuum leak. In the short term I would unplug that and plug off the red line so at least its not sucking air.

For whatever it's worth, I've fixed high idle problems that had no obvious cause by plugging those air bleed holes before. Not sure if it was wear, or just a case of mix and match parts but sometimes you just have to do what works.

[BoulevardRide]

Okay. Yeah I read that. Another mentioned that part being instrumental to getting a good idle. How sensitive/hard is it to adjust the base idle screw?

In my case the idle screw was so loose i could adjust it with my fingers. Once i got the idle down low i blue loctited it into place. now i carry a small screwdriver in the trunk just in case.

One other thing i did at the time... like others here have mentioned... i really cleaned and oiled up the tb and butterfly. i did it with the car running, back and forth between brake cleaner and wd-40, revving the engine, etc.

I can't say what exactly fixed it but the final thing i did was backing out that screw and the idle went down where it needed to go.

been runnin fine since but now its starting to surge a bit at low speed and one time it died on me after restarting on a hot day so am keeping an eye on things... a never ending saga