An e-mail sent to me

[way2old]

klobrien897 sent me an e-mail concerning his repair. He wants me to post the repair to rey to help someone else in the future. So here it is.

......hi there. I'm at work & can't take the time to register but thought I'd
pass on what should be valuable to a taurus forum.

we have a 2001 Taurus (96K at the time, 3.0v6) & last yr were having a pesky
check engine lite that WOULD NOT go away. I had changed the EGR valve myself and
the code was 'insuf EGR Gases'......we had it at the dealer for another issue
and their "fix" was some outrageously expensive part and/or service and I
promptly said NO WAY and brought it home. after doing some forum searching was
still not finding the answer....

Finally, I stumbled on to the problem......there's a vacuum elbow (looks sorta
like a spark plug boot) & the other end of it plugs into the EGR valve. this
elbow was swelled (probably from heat and/or age or whatever) and was loose
enough to cause a leak and this check engine error. I put a hose clamp on it,
disconnected the battery to reset the check engine code and it's been about 6000
miles and many months and no more check engine error! I hope this helps someone,
because I bet my original EGR valve was probably fine and the hose clamp
would've fixed it if I woulda known!