If you own a diesel, please block your EGR.

This particular engine had 206k miles of EGR functioning. EGR DOES NOTHING BUT CLOG UP DIESELS!! Block it, put a ball bearing in the vacuum line, do something to stop the EGR from functioning on your diesel Mercedes. 

Recently did the glow plugs on a rod bender 3.5L, after removing the cross over tube this is what I found. 

Okay, that's not tooo bad, but what about the EGR dump pipe? 

Yup! How's that for totally restricted flow? You can see my EGR block off plate installed, so this won't be happening anytime soon for this engine. Happy pipes = happy engine. 

Here's all the carbon reamed out of the glow plug hole #2 after one pass with my reamer. 

So, lesson here? Block your EGR.