egr operation.....

a couple of questions for you all.
i was cleaning my egr again, and this time, i noticed that after i cleaned it, i was able to move the cylinder up and down freely. i would lightly push the valve down, and it would pop back. i would fill the area up with cleaner, move it up and down, then dump the fluid. i hope im making sense.
i still havent cleaned the Tube, other than just spraying some cleaner down the tube befor i put the egr back in place. im still not real sure on the stuffing the large hole, starting, and sprayin.( NOTE: someone needs to do a write up on this procedure....with pictures)
so after my cleaning, i figured i would clean the throttle plate. i removed the airbox and intake tube all in one unit. i unplugged the MAS, and the three plugs around the throttle body itself, sprayed some cleaner in theere, (man, it was brown, and dirty) wiped it all out, then i started it, with all the plugs disconnected..........it idled high, but i carried on, and sprayed some more cleaner down the throttle body, killed it once, restarted, and sprayed alittle more, and considered my job done. reconnected everything, and had the check engngine light, obviously, cleared them, and now im back getting good gas milage.
but now ive got a bit of a rough idle, after its warmed up, and its not all the time. but there was a point a couple of times today sitting at a stop, that i shiftied into neutral, to rev it up a bit. i was afraid it was going to die. seems to run REALLY well going down the road, pleanty of pick up.
Question #2 do you think i burned anything up when i started it up, with the plugs disconeccted? throttle position, mas, etc
i would really like to get this idle thing taken care of. i try totake the best of care of my truck.
sorry to ramble, just want to give best description i can of what ive done. changed oil last week, and pcv.
Thanks in advance for your help, what a great community of friends, and info we have here.
God bless you all
David

wanted to ask also, is the up and down motion of the egr normal, or does this mean that the egr is shot???
thanks again all
david

I just did my egr but my problem was the bolts loosening, so I didnt pay much attention to detailed cleaning of it. As for your idle issue, I am not sure it the computer monitors and adjusts the idle over time or not, but since you cleaned it all out maybe the senors are working better changing the info sent to the computer. Anyway my suggestion if you havent already done it is disconnecting the battery for a few minutes (cant remember the required time) to clear any ecm setings. Hope that helps.

i usually leave my computer unplugged for 30 minutes to clear it

ok, another egr question. when i cleaned the egr last time, it was all clean.....bear with my description....the "piston" that is attached to the phillips headed rod moves freely up and down. if you look in there, there is a approx 3/4 cylinder that the rod moves up and down in. NOW, DOES THAT 3/4 CYLINDER MOVE UP AND DOWN TOO? or is that cylinder part of the casting. i was thinking the first time i cleaned the egr, it moved up and down too, and was nice and shiney, or did someone spike my ciggarette?? does my question make sense? i hope so cause its been a couple of weeks, and wondering about it has bugged me every day since. so question again, does the big cylinder move up and down, or just the phillips capped rod.

Thanks buds!!
david

I just did a thread on most of what your looking for a few weeks back, heres the link, http://www.vehicross.info/forums/showthread.php?t=10549. I found some other pages I think they were from a Rodeo help page, but either way, the EGR in the pics is almost identical to ours. In the one post they talk about cutting it open to fix it, and the other they talk cleaning it out. They recommended using a highlighter maker to pug up the big hole since the highlighter is fatter at one end you can jam it in there without it falling down the tube and should stay. The weathers been real sh*tty here so I haven't had a chance to clean it again using this method, but just check out the thread and the links and they should help with what you are looking for. If the links don't work lemme know and I'll try to find them again.