Remap

[Fish]

Just for some background first....

I've got a 2.0 HDI on a 06 plate, this year it's had as reported on here a recon gearbox, new clutch kit, all the gear levers (3) and the long gear rod, selector and alternator.

Now the EGR valve has gone on me, I had to call the AA out who have opened it or closed it, can't remember which, so I could drive it OK and it's been OK now for a few weekss, so I'm not overly understanding what its point is? But no doubt I need a new one so I've contacted Citroen for a price and availability who are coming back to me.

Now, I read somewhere that someone with a Berlingo had a remap, I'll be honest and state I hadn't got a clue what it was so after some research I now know.  Anyway, it improved his overall performance and improved his MPG by 15%, so being a courier this got my interest.

Now it would seem I can't get the remap done until I sort out the EGR valve, but the question beckoned, is the remap worth it? 

I drove to Bo'Ness (Scotland) yesterday form Coventry and then into Salford on the way back along with Birmingham consuming 670 miles!  I was nice and steady at 70-75mph all day  on motorways so no flat footing, but I've averaged 35mpg at best which I don't think is very good?  This equates to 435 miles that I squeezed out of the tank filling to the brim and going into the red as far as I could risk, possibly a little more in their but I filled up (£70) and that was the outcome in reference to my mileage.

Whats the point of the EGR and is it affecting my MPG?

Will a remap help the performance on an old berlingo and improve its MPG and is the MPG (35) low for any other reason?     

Thank you..

[Gravity]

The Egr is a real engineering bodge, put there not to help you, but to help the manufacturers comply with EU emissions regs.

It recirculates dirty and contaminated combustion products (exhaust residue) by reintroducing them into the inlet tract and thus into the combustion chamber. Its purpose is to reduce harmful NOx, and it does this by lowering the combustion temperature. This lowered temperature also reduces the efficiency of the engine, so to answer your question, removal of the Egr valve will give you greater efficiency.

The Egr can be 'removed' by fitting a blanking plate, or better still by making up a shunt (few resistors and a diode) and wiring it in, to fool the ecu into believing that the Egr is working, when in fact you have now unplugged it.

On many cars, you can in fact simply unplug the Egr and continue driving normally. It will throw a fault code, which means the engine management light will show up on your display, but the car will run without any other ill-effects. Whether this is the case with the 1.6hdi engine in the Berlingo, I don't yet know - I am on a steep learning curve with this model.

I hate the Egr system, so I have electronically deleted it on my other cars. Being new to the Berlingo B9, I haven't worked out how to do this yet. It's on the drawing board as one of my future jobs.

You can tell I'm not biased, can't you!

Gravity

[polar]

i would also blank the egr for now and see what happens to the mpg. The 2.0hdi isnt the best on fuel and i dont think you are far off at 35 mpg at those speeds. At 75 mph on a run i only get 42 out of my 1.6hdi.

A remap may help but you need to do a lot of miles to get your money back.

I Ministry of transport are currently working on a plan to introduce a check via the ecu to check if the egr valves are working and if cats and dpf have been tampered with. But saying that i would still blank off your egr for now.

something like this will do it https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/EGR-valve-bla...SwxCxT72yb

[Gravity]

I suppose I'm going a bit off-thread really, but with Egr valves, even if they don't 'fail', it's worth looking at the other side of the story.

There are many photos of gummed up inlet tracts, broken swirl flap valves, burnt out flap valve motors, unnecessary Dealer visits and down time, strip-downs and rebuilds, that are a direct cause of the mess that the Egr system makes of an engine.

It seems crazy to me that designers go to such lengths to ensure that we have the cleanest possible filtered oil in the sump, together with the purest filtered intake air - all intended to make our engines as trouble free and as long-lasting as possible - then they spoil it all by deliberately mixing filthy combustion products from the exhaust system with the clean filtered intake air, causing the costly damage and unnecessary downtime just mentioned.

Thank goodness the Egr valve only operates during a small part of the time that the engine's running. If it operated full time, our engines would be very short lived!

I am obviously not a lover of this lashed up piece of backwoods engineering!

Gravity

[polar]

some engines seem to handle the egr system than others ford had a torrid time on their 2.0di engines ive see a few inlet manifolds almost blocked due to the egr valve. The citroen engines seem to fair better but some Despatches suffered badly from egr problems. Also the C4's were really bad to the point of keep away!

As with dpf's some engines seem to be better at handling the emission restricting extras fitted.