My egr tube that connects to the bottom of the intake manifold gets clogged with black stuff every once in a while. I have to disassemble it and poke and scrape it out with a screwdriver. It is a 240k miles car. Is a clogged egr considered an egr delete? Haha. But if I do plan to delete the egr altogether, what are the downsides?

 

The EGR is exhaust gas recirculation, there is a small tube that comes off the exhaust and goes back to the intake manifold meant to reuse any leftover unburnt gas. If the pipe is clogged then yes it's basically the same as an EGR delete. If you don't have to pass emissions inspections in your state then you will only be missing out on maybe 1mpg fuel economy

 

This is one way to get bad gas MPG and a very hot engine, you can also stress the head gasket with heat. Than you are surely gonna start a leak in the valve covers area. I had this happened to me and I have noticed all this symptoms but I serviced it immediately. The car with a clogged EGR you will notice a nice responsive acceleration in all ranges.

 

After I purchased the 98 model and started the mid-life refresh process, I removed the UIM and EGR tube. The EGR port on the UIM was so heavily clogged that I had to take a coal chisel to break it open. Then I could start cleaning it out with some carb cleaner.

I got it all cleaned up though.