basically someone had removed the pipe before and repaired it, when you fit a egr blanking kit there is no actual need for this pipe so I just made up a blank plate and bolted that to the manifold where the egr pipe goes onto and removed the pipe completely, just done it as it wasn't needed and was cheaper than buying a new pipe. yes I hope its fan related too as ticking and temrature related noises coming from that area could mean just about anything, I wouldn't like to say what it is without seing it as tbh no one can diagnose something through emails and probably even with a video I wouldn't like to say oh its this or that, id get it looked into as worst case could be timing chain related but like I said could be something as silly as a cable tie catching the fan for instance so personally get it booked in somewhere competent and they should see you right, tbh im a bit of an anorak when it comes to maintenance but this car is testing me as its every other week something annoys me with it.