Acura TL 200K DIY maintenance saga - Part 3 - Tick tick tick tick tick tick

After work on Tuesday I stopped by Brian's to hopefully finish up on the car.  Really, all that was left was to put together a few things.  But, like the day before, we decided to add something else while we were there.  I had read that the EGR ports on this engine need to be cleaned periodically, and I had never done it before.

But first, we put all the parts around the timing belt back together.  Engine covers, drive belts, power steering pump, side motor mount, and cruise control.  I was originally hoping we could do a complete power steering fluid flush, but opted instead to just refill the reservoir with fresh fluid to save time.

Everything back in place on this side. Look at that cool new magnetic parts tray!

The service manual called for a special tool to adjust the tension on the power steering belt.  If this is overtightened, the pump will go bad due to the excessive sideways force placed on the pulley.  There was an "alternate" method that called for measuring belt deflection when 21 lbs of force was applied to the belt.  So, I guesstimated with my fingers pushing on the belt and measured the deflection... Did I nail it? I don't know.

Next it was time to replace all of the spark plugs.  Each plug was threaded in by hand using an extension, then torqued to spec as provided in the service manual.  Brian always get nervous when removing or replacing spark plugs because if anything gets stripped out we'll be in big trouble, but my motto is charge forward and deal with it later.

Spark plug socket and extension for threading in plugs by hand.

Threading in plugs on the rear cylinders.  A little tight but not too bad.

Torquing to spec.

Since the rear is a bit tighter, I needed to place the extension and socket in the spark plug hole first, then attach the torque wrench, as I didn't quite have enough clearance to fit it in as one piece.

Then all spark plug coils were replaced, clipped into the wiring harness and screwed down.

Coming back together again.

Next was time to fill the cooling system.  I filled the radiator up to the top and filled the reservoir to max.

Coolant all topped off.

Things were looking good, and we had lots of time left so we decided to tackle the EGR port cleaning. EGR (Exhaust Gas Recirculation) ports, as their name implies, direct exhaust gasses back into the intake to improve emissions. Cleaning requires removing the top of the intake manifold, which contains passageways to each cylinder.  Left uncleaned, the passageways will clog up with carbon buildup and eventually the computer will throw a code indicating that there is no airflow through the EGR system.

When we got the top cover off I was surprised at just how much junk had built up.  The passageways appeared completely clogged.  I'm surprised the computer hadn't thrown a code yet.

Intake manifold with top cover removed.

Underside of top cover.  It's hard to see now, but all of the dark area
is clogged passageways.

You could practically scoop up all the carbon gunk with a spoon.

I broke all of the carbon chunks in the intake manifold loose with a screwdriver and sucked them all up with a vacuum.  Then I started working on the passageways in the cover.

These ended up taking quite some time to clean out.  Some of the gunk was hard and flaked out with some scraping action, but a lot of it was more gooey and required quite a bit of mechanical persuasion to get out.  So I decided to start using brake cleaner.  This caused a couple problems.

First of all, we were inside a closed garage.  It was pretty cold outside, as I recall mid 30's.  So I didn't really want to open the garage door if we didn't have to since it was nice and warm in the garage.  But, the fumes started building up and the more I smelled them the more I realized I should be doing this outside.  So I finally opened the door and moved the show out to Brian's driveway.

The next problem I had was that this ended up requiring quite a bit of brake cleaner.  It was definitely working, the gooey black deposits were melting away but it was all turning into a huge river of black tar.  I had put down some cardboard to protect the concrete but it got away from me and started pouring off the cardboard onto the driveway like a lava flow.  I ran back into the garage and grabbed a roll of paper towels and told Brian that I had spilled a wee bit of stuff on the driveway, and ran back out there to mop it up and try to clean it up.  More brake cleaner along with paper towels seemed to do the trick, but that reminds me I'm going to have to ask him if there is still a stain.

Eventually, it looked more like this:

With that finally out of the way, I came back inside and replaced the intake cover, following the service manual's instructions which specified an exact order for tightening the bolts on top.

While I was cleaning this up, Brian had started to replace the splash guard under the bumper and the battery.  While they were out I cleaned up the engine covers then put them back on (and while I did, I realized I had clipped on the wiring harness for the front three spark plugs incorrectly so the cover wouldn't seat properly.  And I only removed that clip because initially I didn't realize that you are supposed to unclip the coils from the harness and leave the harness in place).

All put back together, looking good!

Brian got the wheels put back on and torqued, and we lowered the car off the jack stands.  It was now time to start the engine.  I stared at the engine bay for a bit, and just couldn't believe that we had done everything with no mistakes.  Surely, we had missed something major and at best, the engine wouldn't start.  At worst, something was going to blow up.  I suggested coming back another day to start the engine but decided to man up and turn the key. And...

It immediately started! Everything looked and sounded normal.  The service manual called for running the engine until the fans ran for two cycles with the radiator cap loose to bleed air out of the cooling system.  We then shut the car off, topped off the radiator, replaced the cap tightly, and we were done.

I texted my wife that I was most likely going to be home before midnight tonight.  Aww yeah!

All that was left now was a test drive.  We both got in the car and I backed out of the garage and drove out to the main road.  Everything seemed great, although I did notice more vibration at idle due to the cheap motor mounts.  Oh well.  I drove down the street and back, and as I was turning back off the main road Brian rolled his window down to listen for ominous noises because he always expects the worst.  I think I was just about to tell him that too when we both heard "click click click click click" coming from the engine bay somewhere.  Groan...

We pulled into his driveway and popped the hood.  We listened, and something was definitely clicking.  It sounded like valves, but wasn't coming from the engine.  What in the world could it be? In my head I was going through everything we touched, trying to figure out what could be messed up.  We decided to bite the bullet and pull the car into the garage and track down the sound, just in case it was something major.

Inside the garage, Brian insisted on shutting the door because it was just so cold outside.  He informed me that you can run a car for a while inside the garage without dying, because cars these days are so clean or something.  I was skeptical, but apparently he's right because we're still alive.  After a while I started wondering how long would this take to kill us? And how many people try and give up because they got bored?  Anyway, we poked around in the engine bay for a while, not really finding much but some very minor spots where some hoses needed to be straightened out a bit or clips positioned properly.

I started searching the wise Internets for help.  I found other people complaining about clicking noises from their TL also, and it looked like 1) people had traced it to an emissions-system related solenoid, and 2) apparently it was totally normal.  I don't remember ever hearing it before, so either it just started or I had just zoned it out all these years until it was pointed out to me.  Brian was looking in the engine bay at the time so I asked him "Do you see a solenoid behind the brake fluid reservoir that says Denso on it?" Yes. "Is it clicking?" Yes! He disconnected it from the wiring harness and the clicking went away.  Hooked it back up, and the clicking came back.  Ugh, that was it.

Problem solved, although we just killed another hour working on it.  I pulled away finally in my own car, and drove it home with no problems.  I arrived home after midnight.  We had worked about 6 hours.