So I went to the junkyard and grabbed an EGR solenoid for less than $15. I'll let you know how it goes once I get the thing all put back together. I pulled the water pump off last night and the threads on the bolt were a little messed up but I tried threading another bolt of the same thread and it felt good and firm. So then I notice I used the wrong bolt in that spot. It was just a little bit too short and wouldn't thread in enough, hence the leaking and stretching of the threads. So I'm going to just clean up the threads and put it back together. I got lucky on that one!

That's what happens when the machine shop takes all the nicely labelled baggies of bolts and hardware and takes them out the bags and dump them in the bottom of my oil pan even though they didn't use them...