I have a 2003 4.2 l V6 with a manual transmission. Truck runs really good. no check engine light bc I stay on top of anything that goes wrong as problems arise, but I'd like to improve it if I can
I've heard a lot about the EGR delete and I'm wondering if anybody out there that has done it can give me some advice...

A) is it worth doing? What kind of performance improvements did you see?

and if so,
B) is there a way to do it without triggering the check engine light? I've gone through a lot of trouble and maintenance to keep that darn thing off and I'd like to keep it that way.

 

A) Worth it? No, not at all. EGR helps fuel economy at partial engine loads and lowers oxides of nitrogen emissions. The only drawback is that, on rare occasion, some of the 6 egr ports on the 4.2 can clog, sending too much egr to cylinders with unclogged ports. This is super rare in the F150. Should this happen, and like I said it rarely does, it's a cheap and easy fix.
Performance: EGR does not work/flow at high engine loads so there is zero performance increase.

B) Yes. A tuner can turn off the EGR monitor, provided you can find one willing to take on the liability.

 

agreed, no benefit to it and likely a small loss in mpg. Most of the ones I see done are mostly for cosmetics reasons, you can delete a bunch of vacuum lines and sensors etc... but it definitely requires a tune which is much more difficult to find these days. If race car, sure but otherwise Id leave it alone

 

Just curious - what have you heard?

 

Engine wise the 4.2 is an old push rod motor converted with EGR and FI.
The v8 is a new design such that EGR works different but accomplishes the same end result.
There is no advantage to it's elimination on any motor.
No power increase from an elimination.
If fault free, EGR is transparent to driving and actually improves fuel mileage a small amount that could be a consideration to some.
Operation is a bit complex so what you hear often is not based on good knowledge how the system works and why is is used..
I won't explain unless you really think you need to know other than to say it is hardware and software driven such that it's integration is not so easy to eliminate in hardware unless or done in the program, then the hardware just goes along for the ride after that and can be left in place.
Nothing gained by doing this.
Good luck.

 

I guess, to be more precise, I should say "read". Just looking up stuff online to see what kind of performance improvements I can do. It's not a bad little truck I'm just seeing if I can get a little more power out of it without going full supercharger or nitrous.

 

Thanks. Still not seeing what you read. What made you think it would be an improvement? Post a link or two.

Just curious about where people get their ideas. Could be there's a company selling "EGR delete kits" or something. Like "cold air" intake systems.

 

No, no. You’re going to have to go inside the engine to get anything worthwhile. That goes for any engine.

 

well it's called Google...
I just googled performance improvements on my make and model. EGR delete seem to pop up quite a bit. That wasn't really any one place where I got all of this information at. But here's one example of the kind of stuff that I've seen. https://www.darksidedevelopments.co....emoval-delete/
There's also a ton of videos on YouTube so about deleting the EGR because it's bad for your engine and causes it to run worse.
Now I'm not saying that. I'm just saying there's plenty of people out there who seem to think that.
And to be honest it makes perfect sense. You want Cold clean air going into your engine and exhaust going out. It's very counterintuitive to pump hot dirty contaminated exhaust back into the combustion chamber. But hey I'm not an expert that's why I came here and asked

 

While the exhaust going back into the cylinder is hot, for the purpose of the chemical reaction that occurs during combustion, it's inert. So it might be a little counterintuitive to learn that the purpose of EGR is to reduce combustion chamber temperature but it's a fact. It can lower combustion chamber temps by as much as 300*F.

The link you provided was a diesel-centric site. While EGR does perform the same function on a diesel- lowering combustion temps to reduce NOx, EGR can cause some pretty serious issues on a diesel that don't occur with gas-burners. I like EGR on a diesel but I've had some serious port cloggage before due to an injection problem that resulted in super-sooty EGR flow. Anyway, I can *almost* see removing a primitive EGR system on a primitive diesel motor but no way no how on a gas burner with electronic engine controls.