Thanks for the replies Aviator and Tommy.

Glad to know there only seem to be positives so far.

Definitely curious about whether or not the blanking is required, and especially if the valve is partially open as in my case.

I was told it wasn’t particularly needed, but it was only a 10 minute job and cheap to do so I done it to be 100% certain that no crap was getting past.

I watched this video from Sam's Motor and Machine and I believe you can see where the egr would need to be blanked just under the donut?

?si=dGf2ZWkWMOMNEYZa

Looks like it's pretty simple to access so not surprised it was a 10 minute job, and could potentially be reversed if needed for whatever reason.

Did you get you inlet donut cleaned at the same time as well? Seems like it would make sense to

Edit: I can see that your previous post says you cleaned it yourself. Any recommendations on what I would need in order to do that myself? I have nothing in terms equipment and resources.

I used some heavy duty degreaser, you’ll need a fair amount. Some wooden tongue depressor type things for scraping it all off and a mini jet wash type things for. But a hose will suffice.
You’ll probably want an area to do it in also as the stuff that comes out gets everywhere and will stain wherever it goes. A large container will help. Others have submerged the item in diesel to try loosen it or dissolve.

Thanks. I don't have anywhere suitable to do it at home without upsetting my wife, but I should be able to do it at a friend's place.

Just noticed that your profile says you're in Berkshire. Out of interest, who did your remap? I'm in Reading and have been looking at a place called PowerX as they are 10 minutes from me

https://powerxgarages.co.uk/

Got the EGR delete and Stage 1 remap done recently and thought I’d share some observations that I found interesting.

Before the delete, I was getting DPF regens roughly every 60–100 miles. I have a regular 20-mile route I often used specifically to trigger and complete a regen. The average speeds on this route are around 30–50 mph, and if the DPF was sitting at around 20g of soot, it would quickly reach temperatures of 600°C or higher. Usually, the soot mass would drop to around 4–6g within 10 minutes. This process was very reliable and consistent. Interestingly, the last time I took this route, I got stuck behind a slow vehicle and was doing under 30 mph for a good stretch—but because I kept light throttle pressure on almost constantly, the regen still seemed to complete just fine.

After the remap and EGR delete, the DPF was at 21.2g of soot, so I decided to take it out on the same route. However, the soot mass quickly increased to 23g, triggering an amber warning. Then things got weird. The IID tool started displaying soot mass values around 0.9g, and the exhaust gas temperature readings were frozen—not updating at all. I wasn’t sure if it was just a reading error or if the regen was still happening in the background, so I kept driving for about 10 minutes. Eventually, I pulled over, reset the IID tool, and reconnected it.

After the reset, the soot reading correctly showed 23g again, but the temperature readings were still frozen. I kept driving for another 10 minutes or so, and eventually, live values returned. This time, the exhaust gas temps fluctuated between 400°C and 550°C. I continued driving like this for over an hour, but the soot mass barely moved—only going from 23g to 22.9g. So it was reading as far as I could tell

Then, rather suddenly, the temps dropped and stayed around the mid-200s, and at the same time, the soot mass began to fall noticeably—though not as quickly as it had prior to the EGR delete. It dropped to about 13g while the temps stayed around 250°C. At that point, I decided to get some fuel, as I was below a third of a tank and wondered if that might be a factor. I had started the drive just under half a tank, but I usually fill up before a known regen.

After refueling, I drove for about 20 minutes through school traffic, with lots of stop-and-go and low speeds. Surprisingly, the soot mass continued to drop by about 0.1g every so often—even while stationary. Exhaust temps stayed between 200°C and 230°C. By the time I got home, the soot mass was at around 12g.

The next day, I went out again for about 20 minutes on roads with 40–50 mph limits. For the first 15 minutes, the soot mass didn’t move much, and I was mostly using light throttle. However, after a short period of slowing and accelerating again, the soot mass rose by about 1g quite quickly. I took a slower route home, and the soot mass held steady, which I found interesting. It seems like the soot mass doesn’t change much under gentle driving, but increases noticeably with brief, harder acceleration.

I also had an adaptive dynamics error during this period, which turned out to be a broken wire going to the damper. I soldered it back together, and while testing it, I checked the soot mass again—it had dropped slightly while the car was parked, though I’m not sure if that’s significant. I also cleaned the MAP sensor at this point, which I’d been planning to do—it wasn’t too dirty.

Has anyone ever experienced this kind of behaviour before? I am concerned that the temp was quite high for a long period of time and it didn't seem to make a difference to the soot mass until all of a sudden. I don't know if the IID was having a bad day and the regen was indeed happening slowly in the background, but this isn't practical if this behaviour is the standard for regens now. I will definitely go on the motorway next time it needs to regen and see if the higher speeds make a difference to the temps and soot mass. I'm also wondering if the temp was close to regenning and eventually cross that threshold after a while.

I'd be interested to hear thoughts from you guys, particularly if you've had the EGR delete. Fwiw, I haven't physically blanked it yet and it reads about 4% or so, but I have a blanking plate on the way.

Any further testing done since fitting the blanking plate Steve ?

Installed the blanking plate yesterday and have been out for a few drives since.

Straight away, I noticed a difference with the plate installed. My EGR valve was only about 4% open according to the GAP tool, so I wasn’t expecting much of a change, but the improvement has been surprisingly noticeable.

It’s hard to put into words, but the car just feels completely different now. The power delivery is smooth and consistent—when you press the throttle, it keeps pulling without hesitation. There’s no lag, no waiting; the power is simply there, all the time.

DPF behaviour has also been interesting.
I’ve started keeping an eye on the data, and right now, the soot mass seems to fluctuate within a fairly narrow range between 13–14g. When I drive with a heavy foot, the soot level rises as expected, but gentle driving actually causes it to drop, even at lower speeds. Temperatures generally stay in the 180–230°C range, so nothing out of the ordinary there.

I haven’t taken it on the motorway yet, but based on what I’m seeing, I wouldn’t be surprised if it passively regenerates and drops the soot level even further.

Before the remap and EGR delete, I was consistently getting the P040D-00 EGR temp sensor high code, which I believe was a key contributor to the DPF filling issue. That code is now completely gone.

Where I would previously expect to gain 2–3g of soot on a 20-minute drive, I’m now seeing the same soot mass at the end of similar trip, with it rising and falling during the drive but ultimately balancing out.

Thanks for that Steve , it was the dpf behavior I was curious about and you've answered conclusively .
Matthew

For those that are interested, I went out for a 90 minute drive today with a mixture of roads. Unfortunately I don't have any data for pre EGR delete to compare, but I thought this was interesting nonetheless.



I drove a mixture of country roads and "city", with a motorway junction where the white line is. Unfortunately I couldn't get a value for the speed as that doesn't seem to read on my IID tool, but I would say I was going over 40mph when the drops occured on the A roads, and 60 on the motorway. It doesn't look like there was a significant difference between A roads and motorway, but I suspect if I had stayed on the motorway for longer then the soot mass would have just continued to fall given the constant speed.

After the 90 minutes I stopped for a few minutes and interestingly there was a very quick rise in soot mass, so I started logging again.




I suspect there may be a boost leak. This is an even more extreme example of this sharp sudden rise recorded yesterday on a short journey, where you can see that in just over 2 minutes the soot mass increased by 0.8 grams.



The pipe onto the throttle body has some sticky crud on it so it must be leaking, although it doesn't appear to be anywhere near as bad as some of the images I've seen. I've ordered some of the o rings that people suggest to try fixing this.

Click image to enlarge