EGR spacer question

1992blkGT

New Member
Mar 28, 2003
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Beaverton, OR
I'm going to order a 75mm throttle body soon, and I'm trying to decide if I need to get the throttle body with EGR spacer or not. I removed the smog pump and the tube that normally routes to the smog pump is just sitting in my engine bay. Will the car run fine if I get a TB without an EGR spacer? The non-EGR TB is a lot cheaper that is the only reason I am asking. If I need to do more to allow a TB w/o EGR, what all is necessary? Thanks for the help!
 
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1992blkGT said:
I'm going to order a 75mm throttle body soon, and I'm trying to decide if I need to get the throttle body with EGR spacer or not. I removed the smog pump and the tube that normally routes to the smog pump is just sitting in my engine bay. Will the car run fine if I get a TB without an EGR spacer? The non-EGR TB is a lot cheaper that is the only reason I am asking. If I need to do more to allow a TB w/o EGR, what all is necessary? Thanks for the help!

Are you running an EGR valve right now?

Tim
 
The EGR spacer does something different than the smog pump.

The smog pump adds oxygen to either the cats, or the cylinders heads, to help create a cleaner combustion. With modern cats, its' not needed anymore, and most people can pass emissions w/o it.

The EGR spacer is used to circulate coolant around itself, to help cool the throttlebody / upper intake.

This is because there are exhaust cross-over ports milled into the stock heads and most street-intakes. These ports (found in the middle of the heads between the cylinders, and generally on the bottom of the intake, route exhuast gas BACK into the throttle body (via the EGR valve) and back into the intake. This further reduces emissions.

If you have blocked the coolant lines to your spacer, then there is no point in having it, other than to help line up the inlet tube from the MAF to the TB. Ideally, if you've removed the coolant lines, then you're either running race heads, or have blocked that cross-over port.
 
Oh I get it now. For some stupid reason I thought that the EGR and smog pump worked together. Forget my post then. I will get the EGR spacer with the throttle body, no use plugging the EGR. Thanks for clearing things up!
 
For others reading the thread - another thing that often happens when the egr spacer is deleted (moving the throttle body much closer to the intake) is that the bracket that holds the throttle cable usually interferes with the valve cover requiring a modified bracket or a upper/lower spacer to create more clearance.
 
Michael Yount said:
For others reading the thread - another thing that often happens when the egr spacer is deleted (moving the throttle body much closer to the intake) is that the bracket that holds the throttle cable usually interferes with the valve cover requiring a modified bracket or a upper/lower spacer to create more clearance.


True.

I just elongated the bolt holes. :D
 
The EGR spacer does something different than the smog pump.

The smog pump adds oxygen to either the cats, or the cylinders heads, to help create a cleaner combustion. With modern cats, its' not needed anymore, and most people can pass emissions w/o it.

The EGR spacer is used to circulate coolant around itself, to help cool the throttlebody / upper intake.

This is because there are exhaust cross-over ports milled into the stock heads and most street-intakes. These ports (found in the middle of the heads between the cylinders, and generally on the bottom of the intake, route exhuast gas BACK into the throttle body (via the EGR valve) and back into the intake. This further reduces emissions.

If you have blocked the coolant lines to your spacer, then there is no point in having it, other than to help line up the inlet tube from the MAF to the TB. Ideally, if you've removed the coolant lines, then you're either running race heads, or have blocked that cross-over port.

At the risk of resurrecting an OLLDDDD post......

I had a tuner guy work on my '88 5.0 more than 12 years ago.

He routed a crossover water line up and over my EGR spacer then, and capped off the spacer's in/out nipples.

I now understand that *if* my car has it's EGR in place, that this was a bad thing to do.

The guy seemed pretty sharp, and his specialty was working on 5.0's, so I never questioned what he did.

My question now then is, could he have also disabled my EGR valve, and if so, would that stop the hot gasses from circulating up into the spacer thus negating the need for the coolant passing through the spacer? Meaning that capping the lines WASN'T bad, and may actually make the incoming air cooler (provided that hot gases AREN'T going up into the spacer)

If that's a possibility, how can I verify that the EGR (on an '88 5.0 remember) has been disabled?


Please pardon my naivety (dumbassedness). B)

I'm having some trouble with my MAP sensor and I just discovered this kick-ss Mustang forum! I've got PLENTY of questions!

Thanks in advance!

-SM
 
Capping or rerouting the EGR coolant lines is a pretty classic 5.0 mod. There have been lots of debate over its effectiveness. Personally if you are still running an EGR setup I would keep the coolant lines connected since the 180* coolant is a lot cooler than the exhaust gasses. If you want to delete the EGR and keep the gasses from getting to the TB then you can pull the upper intake off and plug the EGR passage that is in the center of the lower intake. If you do a search you can find lots of different ways of plugging the passage.

I would reconnect the coolant lines and keep the EGR if it was my car.