After reading the many posts on here about the EGR problems I decided to have a look at mine today as well as trying to find the source of a black oily type of gunge over everthing under the Inlet Manifold.
The van is a 2003 2.0 Di, with 107,000 miles on it. It had no service history when I got it so i have been going through jobs one at a time to bring the van back to a good standard.
Here is what i found.....
After removing the Inlet Manifold I found this




And the Manifold itself looks like this.....


Now I'm not one to shy away from a bit of cleaning but this stuff is pretty poo! Its like a black thick sludge that is caked on everything.
But i did manage to find out how it got there.....
A hole in the bottom of the Inlet Manifold appears to be the problem



So I have a couple of questions please.
After seeing the amount of S**t in the manifold I think its a no brainer not to blank it off - So does it get blanked where you can see it in the bottom right hand corner of image number 4?
After the EGR is blanked should I clean up the mess and try and repair the hole myself - Or invest in a new manifold??
Thanks for looking your help is appreciated.








