EGR Valve

hi all,

I've been hunting around for info on the egr valve. We have a 95 saturn sc1 which has been running fine up until a couple of months ago. It would start sputtering on hills or stalling out, the service engine light would come on but when we checked the oil it was low and we assumed that was the problem. Last week it stalled on a hill, and when we got it started again it was idling at 3-4000 rpm. We had it looked at and after some various work we were told that the egr valve needed to be recalibrated or replaced. When we asked at the dealership they told us that it could not be recalibrated and had to be replaced (they didn't look at it, we had already been burned by the dealer before and didn't want to get screwed again)

has anyone else had this problem, and did it have to be replaced? I took a look at the part and in the manual, and I can't find where recalibration is even an option, and now am not sure who to trust on this.

Any help or info would be greatly appreciated,

thanks for your time.

dont know if a bad egr valve would cause that kind of probs, and the low oil is prolly being burned, just not enough to show smoke, thats what mine does and i can only see smoke if going over 4000rpm.. egr valves usually need to be replaced if bad, go to a autozone or somthing and get them to do a free reading to make sure the egr valve is bad, if so they cost 100$ for a new one, and can be installed by you, me and my dad put mine in with the help of the hanes saturn book that you can also get from autozone along with the new egr valve. its not hard to put in really, and i know nothing about cars so if i could do it so can you :) oh yes and btw, use the premium expensive gass until you get the egr valve replaced, cause the main goal of the valve is to make the car run better on crappy gass, it might run a little more slugish with the premium but its a lot better for it until the valve gets replace. this is also what i did ;) good luck.

thanks for the info! We've noticed that it tends to overheat badly if stuck in traffic, and that if you head out on the highway it starts to sputter, but we haven't replaced the egr valve yet. I appreciate the advice, we've hardly done any work on the car but were wondering about it. We've had a computer scan it and tell us the egr valve was bad, so we'll be replacing it ourselves.

Thanks again!

Make sure you remember to get the gasket when you get the EGR

The EGR valve is secured with two 10MM bolts and can easily be removed.

You can verify it is bad by removing the valve and depressing the "pintle" on the bottom of the valve. If it sticks open and won't close by itself, the valve is bad and needs to be replaced.

A sticking EGR valve will cause the symptoms you describe. A stuck open EGR valve is basically a huge internal vacuum leak.

Hey guys

I had a similar problem with my 95 saturn sc1. The EGR valve was very easy to take off and clean. All I did was punch the piston back open with a screw diver and clean it out with a wire brush and spray it down with some carbon deposit cleaner. The only thing you may need to get is a new gasket if the old one needs to be replaced. Dont forget to reset the error codes by taking the cables off the battery while cleaning the valve. The Hanes book was a great help. Saved me about $400 dollars and took me about an hour to do.