Just spent a day and a half doing the above jobs

Exhaust: Was getting fumes in the cab. Only way to get to the exhaust manifold is to take off the inlet manifold. Somebody said you can get to it from underneath? I decided to do it from the top as I wanted to remove the swirl flaps. Bought a new manifold and set me back 346 quid .

Swirl flaps: Mine were actually in good order. There was no sign of them failing at all. Couldn't believe the amount of soot/tar coating them and generally around the inlet in all areas. Seems to me exhaust gas regeneration is the culprit. It must have an adverse affect on performance? I removed the swirl flaps anyway and I used the self tapper method. Found a really tight fitting set of screws that did the job, cant see the point of buying those blanking plates.

Thermostat: The car was only getting up to 80 degrees max (at a struggle), so I decided to change the main engine stat. After reassembling everything then and taking it for a test drive, I was still only getting 80, so next step I will do the EGR cooler stat and see if that solves the issue.

By the way, I routed a cable the wrong way and it melted on the EGR . I broke down on a roundabout and pushed it up onto the path and just couldnt see what had happened. I checked all the fuses in the boot(or so I thought) and was bemuzed, so I called out a mobile mechanic friend of mine and he had a laptop with all the bells and whistles on . He plugged it up and there were about 15 fault codes (all very serious ones), thought I'd fried the ECU . Anyway, his software showed that there are three fuse plates; one in the boot, one in the glovebox and one in the engine compartment under the n/s cab filter where we found a 20 amp fuse had blown , I did star jumps

She runs sweet as a nut now. Was well worth doing and I've also saved mysely a few quid

 

Fitting of the EGR cooler stat has has upped the temperature to between 88 and 92 degrees. I've noticed the fuel consumption is considerably better than before I did the work, probably a result of higher temp and new manifold.