OIL dripping FROM the air filter thru crankcase vent hose..!!!

[rn240sx]

Well on the way to the dyno for my very 1st time EVER to see what this ka-t would lay down, i ran into a problem....

GO #$%^%$#$ figure..!! Of all the times for this motor to act up, it does now..!! I have NEVER had any problems b4 until NOW...

ANyway, here is what happened.

I was on the way to the dyno of course, on the interstate and i was gonna adjust my boost controller to make sure that my LOW boost was set to 12 psi and HIGH boost was set to 15 psi.

I put in on low boost, get into 3rd and get to about 5k rpm when i feel and really hard STOP.. It felt like what happens when u have a BAD maf sensor. It hesitates really bad when hitting the throttle. I didnt know at 1st and it didnt dawn on me that it was the maf. I thought it was fuel cut for some reason. So, thankful for the AFC, i was checking the afm readings and it would get to about 30 % and then drop off to zero. By TPS was reading correct the entire time. So that narrowed it down to my maf going or went bad. I pulled over and popped the hood and noticed that OIL was dripping OUT thru the air filter at a constant rate..OH 5HIT..!! ...So i turned back around and drove it home very slowly. So now its sitting in the garage and i pulled off the air filter and sure enough, oil was in there. Along with oil all over my hot pipe. My next thing to do is pull off the valve cover and spark plugs to see what damage was done.

Im no expert in this stuff, but i know enough to get around. All i know is that oil was shooting back from the valve cover breather and back into my intake side of the turbo.. So obvioulsy it has to be head related.

I havent seen any smoke comming out the tail pipe, it drove smooth the entire way home, no hesitation at all.

Im sure one of u more experienced ka-t guys would tell me what happened and why...

Modified by rn240sx at 8:49 PM 2/13/2005
Modified by rn240sx at 10:21 PM 2/13/2005

[okis14]

Are you sure it isn't coming from your turbo?

If it is from the vent maybe you blew a piston.

[Warped]

also check you pcv or just replace it and yeah i could be your seals , do you have a restrictor for your oil feed line?

[WDRacing]

Have your valve cover vent go into a catch tank. You don't want that crap being injested into your engine. It will degrade your octane, get oil all over everything in your intake tract and gum up the inside of your intake manifold as well as the IACV. You can run a tube into anything that will serve as a resovoir, I used a gatorade bottle for a month on my Skyline.

Clean your MAF with brake cleaner, then clean out your piping. Top off the oil and restart the motor. See if anything weird is still happening. Your MAF may be bad now do to oil exposure.

I have never seen that much oil come from the valve cover, you'd know if you blew a gasket, piston or had a stuck valve. The car would run horrible. You may have a bad oil seal in your turbo.

WD

[TurboKA37]

did u just change the oil prtor to this drive?

[virus77]

On my car my PCV never gave oil into my catchtank (or for your case intake) untill one day it starting filling it up, This happened when I broke two ring lands from user intervention The car ran fine but upon opening the motor up we found the culprit. However it started giving smoke out the exhaust soon thereafter so my case was pretty bad.

[rn240sx]

Its not a piston, or piston ring, or valve or anything internal simply cause the car drove home FINE...No sputtering, no hesitation, no smoke out the tail pipe. It only hesitates when the maf reaches 30-40% capacity, then the motor will hesitate really bad..!!

If it was a bad seal on the turbo, i think i might see some smoke comming out the tail pipe, but in my case, there is NO smoke comming out during idle, cruising, on or off boost...

I honestly think the oil came out thru the valve cover because once i saw the oil dripping out from under the filter, i grabbed a hold of the valve cover vent hose and it felt kinda soft as if OIL was passing thru it..!!! How do i know this, well cause i used heater hose for my oil return line and i would have to change it out so often cause it was not designed for hot oil to pass thru it. Eventually it would go soft and feel mushy from the oil bleeding thru it.. The vent hose kinda had the same feeling to it but not nearly as bad... If it was the vent hose where the oil came from, what would cause this..??

[rn240sx]

Next Update:

Pulled off the intake pipe, filter, maf, hot pipe, cold pipe and oil made its way to the throttle body... Not sure if it got thru the IACV hose or even to the valve itself... Im wondering if it made its way to the intake manifold...

Im gonna call it quits now cause this motor has been turbo charged since MArch of 03 and i NEVER had this problem b4.

Today I drive it over to get dynoed for the 1st TIME EVER.... and this 5HIT happens....

IS this a sign or just bad timming or just bad luck.....
Modified by rn240sx at 9:35 PM 2/12/2005

[TheOne]

it could really be the rings that are worn out and makin pressure in the oil pan.....makin oil go up to the head and out of the valve cover. it happened to my brother's mustang, that car ran fine till 1 day 2 much pressure from the roots blower and it blew a valve cover, oil was comin out of the breater before it blew, opened the engine and it was the piston rings that were done, but smoke never came out of the tailpipes.

[crzycav86]

According to the fsm in regards to the PCV:

This system returns blow-by gas to the intake collector. The positive crankcase ventilation (PCV) valve is provided to conduct crankcase blow-by gas to the intake manifold. During partial throttle operation of the engine, the intake manifold sucks the blow-by gas through the PCV valve. Normally, the capacity of the valve is sufficient to handle any blow0by and a small amount of ventilating air. The ventilating air is then drawn from the air duct, through the hose connecting air inlet tubes to the rocker cover, into the crankcase. Under full0throttle condition, the manifold vacuum is insuffiecient to draw the blow0by flow through the valve, and its flow goes through the hose connection in the reverse direction. On vehicles with an excessively high blow-by some of the flow will go through the hose connection to the intake collector under all conditions.

So basically, since your manifold is not seeing anymore vacuum, all of the blow-by is going through that rubber pipe coming from your valve cover. Also, since the car is turbocharged, it's seeing even more blowby than it would NA.

There was a really big debate about how to implement a good pcv system on ka-t.org: http://ka-t.org/ipw-web/bullet...=1557

Edit: after rereading what you wrote, and what I wrote, I realize that you already knew this... and I was wasting my time copying that from the fsm

[rn240sx]

SO u think the PCV valve went bad...??

[crzycav86]

Well. I don't think the PCV valve would be functioning anyway because it doesn't see vacuum when you're boosting. It needs the vacuum that would have been present on an NA KA in order to function. Therefore, all of the blowby goes through that valve cover hose.

I don't know much about PCV systems, so I can't tell you if oil coming out of the valve cover hose is normal or not. Since someone mentioned that the SR's have a catch-can built in, it leads me to believe that it's a normal thing...

Perhaps you've always had a slight amount of oil coming in, but it hasn't been detrimental until now.

[virus77]

The PCV line is hooked up before the turbo so it never sees boost, just vacuum.

[WDRacing]

Thats why we run the valve cover vent into a seperate catch tank...I didn't even use a PCV valve on eithe of the Skylines I owned.

[crzycav86]

Thats why we run the valve cover vent into a seperate catch tank...I didn't even use a PCV valve on eithe of the Skylines I owned.

Did they even have a pcv valve? Why would they have one if it wouldn't work under boost anyway?

The PCV line is hooked up before the turbo so it never sees boost, just vacuum.

There is the PCV valve that connects to your intake manifold, and there is another PCV line that you see connected from the valve cover. The fsm has a good diagram of it. Section CE.

[Projex240]

I run a breather tube straight to the side of the motor. My car doesnt have much blowby if any at all that ive noticed. I dont know about a PCV being hooked to the valve cover unless you mean that as what i called a breather tube. On an injen intake, the three lines t together, the iacv line goes to the intake tube just before the throttle body, and also t's into the valve cover tube. Since im assuming boost would cause pressure to build in the valve cover, you just leave the covor open to breath, or route in back just before the turbo. Either way, Thats ALOT of damn oil to be just dripping out. If its not the turbo, then it would have to be excessive blow-by caused by bad rings pressurizing below the piston.Try capping off the the port you ran your vave cover tube into the intake with. Leave the tube open. It wont have any problems if you cap off the intake tube good and then drive it. If the tube is full of oil or sprays it out hevaily, at least you can know for sure its not something else.Good luck!..Also, i would hope that that oil didnt mess up my maf permanantly.-josh
Modified by Projex240 at 5:53 PM 2/13/2005

[rn240sx]

Ok i went out and purchased a compression gauge and now i have one question.

I just REMOVED the air filter, maf and intake pipe from the thrubo inlet AS well as the hot pipe, intercooler and cold pipe...

Do i need to re-install these to run a compression test or can i do it without them on..??

[NateDogg]

You should do a compression check with the engine in operating temp. So I would say yes reinstall the stuff to run the engine for a bit.

Then you have to drain the fuel lines if there is any fuel pressure in them by pulling the fuel pump fuse. Then idle it with the gas cap off until it dies a few times and it wont start.

[UncleBen]

The only way I've ever done a compression test is get the car to operating temp, disconnect your fuel pump, then attach the comp tester and turn the car over 3-4 times only, and see what the compression is.

[UncleBen]

Dam nate beat me

[crzycav86]

Don't forget to have throttle at WOT.

[nissanfanatic]

Maybe since the stock PCV system does not function under boost, you were already pushing oil through the valvecover hose. So finally, some oil got on the MAFS and fouled it out. That would explain the sudden hesitation. Since you drove home slowly, you stayed in closed loop the whole time. The MAFS isn't the only determining variable here so the car would drive smooth.

But all in all, when boosting, there is a lot of air moving through the block so oil that gets anywhere near that vent hose is pushed out and into the intake. I say oil just got onto the sensor and caused an inaccurate reading for a second.

[koukiKA240]

you can still do a comp check without it being at temp. You are just checking to see if there was any catastrophic damage done. The comp will be off cold or hot so good luck. And i second WD on the fouled MAF from the oil.~Sam

[240SicknessX]

Don't forget to have throttle at WOT.

when i performed my compression test on my 96 with the fuel pump fuse pulled. I forgot to tell my friend that was cranking the car to put his foot on the gas wot. so i did the test again later that night and got the same results with the throttle at wot, i belive holding the throttle at wot is for carburated engines only, becuase of the low engine rpm the iacv has the ability to supply enough air to the engine without restriction while the starter is turning over the motor. has anyone else had a simalar experiance?

when i was reading the processes of doing a compression test they said to keep the throttle at wot, i guess you can do this anyway to insure total accuracy of your tests. and put your battery on charge while doing the test unless you have a good good battery.

my test:dry= 175,180,180,180wet= 185,185,185,185

**Note, i used 1\2 cap of 10w40 motor oil for my wet test per cylinder, was this too much or acceptable?

[rn240sx]

Well, here r the results, motor was warmed up, pulled the fuel pump fuse and it shut down. Did everything else.

Went WOT under cranking and got these numbers:

#1 165#2 180#3 185#4 100 OUCH

So now im supposed to drop in a "small" amount of oil into the low cylinder to see if the compression stays the same or if it improves. In my case i sure as hell HOPE it stays LOW... I dont feel like buying new forged pistons yet..

So, when they say a SMALL amount of oil, what exactly is a SMALL amount...???

[240SicknessX]

i used 1\2 cap of oil. i wouldnt imagine using any more, this would increase the compression too much and woulnt a 1\2 cap definitly cover all of the ring area.

someone will tell us how much oil to use for sure.

[EXIST tm]

if you have an oil squirter canister, give it 2 squirts, or if you don't, so yeah about a 1/2 to 1 cap full, but remember you're adding more mass so the compression will rise slightly either way.

also your piston might still be in good shape, and it could be just your rings that bit the dust

[EXIST tm]

if your compression stays the same, check your valve stem/guide seals

[koukiKA240]

Boroscope, if you can find one, use it. Maybe a parts house has them for rent but i dunno. I was lucky enough to know the ACURA departmental service manager and he had one at his disposal.~Sam

[rn240sx]

Well I dropped in a cap full of oil into that cylinder and it went from 100 to 130 on the gauge..