Oil around EGR housing

I noticed yesterday that there is a fair bit of oily residue around my EGR housing, looks like it's come out under pressure (similar appearance to the stuff you sometimes see around boost pipe joints etc).

Is this normal ?

This should be irrelevant, but my EGR is disabled. Whether it's working or disabled, I presume there should be now way for oily gunk to come out, as this suggests an air leak to atmosphere.

I don't recall ever seeing any on the Ibiza's EGR valve, even after 80k miles.

Not around the intercooler, but around the EGR valve (ie on top of the engine).

I'm wondering if this is the cause of my poor MPG, and hissing noises...

Well, funnily enough I had my first experience of limp mode tonight.

Got the following fault:
17964 - Charge Pressure Control: Negative Deviation
...which means it's losing boost somewhere.

Only happens under full throttle, hard acceleration somewhere above 3k rpm.

Coincidentally, it's been smoking quite badly recently under full acceleration, around the same rev range (~3400+ rpm).

Hmm

Here we go:

Can the EGR assembly be dismantled, or is it all one unit built into the housing ?

Red Ibiza -> No, definitely coming out of those holes in the EGR valve.

Any idea what those holes are for ?
The EGR housing should never vent anything to/from atmosphere, so all I can think is that they are to allow air expansion as the valve control arm moves inside.

Now, work this one out:
(Remember that my EGR is completely disconnected from any vacuum and never actually operates)
I decided to see if the hissing noise from my car was coming from the holes where the oil is leaking from.
So I temporarily plugged them with blue-tack (don't laugh), and drove around to see if the hissing noise had gone.
While these holes were plugged, whenever I gave it full bore up a hill and reached mid-3000's rpm, it went into limp mode with a "Charge pressure control - negative deviation" error (in other words, not enough boost, usually a sign of a boost leak). It did this three times. It was also smokier than normal.
After removing the blue-tack it never happened again.

How on earth can you explain that - or was it just coincidental ?

cheshire cat said:

Hi Lee, the holes are purely to allow breathing WHEN the diaphram moves, as a simple fix you could just bung them up, small bolts? 2 off, any attempt at epoxy is unlikely to stick 'cause of the oil, Oh! just read the rest of your thread, given some time I would just gut it out, Pm me if you need help, a rotary rasp a course flap wheel and a ruck of epoxy and you have a stealth race pipe complete with ASV

Click to expand...

I'd been half thinking of doing something like that.

I can't possibly see how my plugging the holes with blue-tack caused it go into limp mode, surely just a coincidence do you reckon ?

Also - how temperature resistant is epoxy stuff ?