hey gang,
i'd love some feedback on the following - in brief i think a mechanic
may be trying to rip me off on a Smog Check and i want to be sure i'm
on firm ground before i call his bluff.

i've got an '81 Westy and a new engine was just put into her earlier
this year by the folks at Blodget's in Southern CA. Needless to say I
trust their work.  The vehicle passed emissions last year (different
owner) and when I recently took her to a garage here in the Bay Area
she passed everything with flying colors except this little section
called 'Visual EGR'. The guy said it looked like it had been tampered
with and marked it as 'MODIFIED' on the report.

Now I'm no VW wizard (yet), but i can hold my own with a wrench and so
i played around with the EGR this past weekend and everything seems
fine. Its a little black, as though maybe it had been heated a bit
during a welding process or something, but as far as I can tell it
looks and works fine.

I've searched for details about justification for failure on this part
of the test but haven't found anything.

Anybody have any thoughts, ideas, comments, recommendations?

Thanks in advance,
kph