oil in air intake

[mrpatterson2008]

in my air intake there seems to be quite a bit of oil in there,, i cleaned it all out but it was back a couple of days later... is this normal???

[Wayne]

Blocked breather.

[Adam]

I had a look at mine the other week, there was a bit of oil aswell. It was a honey colour. Is this the same?

[Rmachines]

Its normal to get a bit,  blocked breather will cause it too,  sometimes normal to get mayo like gunk with it..   Is what what you mean by honey coloured?

[Grim_Reaper]

no by honey coloured they mean the oil looks thin layer, kinda like when you get brand new engine oil when its still got its yellowish honey tint in it

as above, if its a tiny bit then it should be no problem at all, but when you get time what to do is remove all your breather hoses (one at a time, unless you know where they go) and clean them out with carb cleaner

[Len]

in my air intake there seems to be quite a bit of oil in there,, i cleaned it all out but it was back a couple of days later... is this normal???

Have you checked the engine oil level?

[wee-golfer]

defo blocked breather pipe. had the same prob at the weekend, i just chopped the ld pipe off replaced it with a new one with an oiol breather on top, sealed the whole in the air intake pipe, and put a braether comon ou the top of the engine. no problems at all now apart from tryin to mop up the spilt oil on the exhaust manifold grrrr!!

[Diamond Hell]

Why are people saying 'blocked breather'?

Your engine breathes in the vapourised oil from the block and head, though the breather system.  This gets fed into the intake mix and burnt with the rest of the mix.

Because air with vapourised oil in it is swirling through your intake system you get deposits throughout the intake.  This is normal and shouldn't cause a problem, although you might like to clean the throttlebody off if it's got a lot of crud on it, as it'll screw with the idle settings after a certain point.

If your car is breathing particularly heavily, which older motors do, as the piston rings wear and gas starts to leak out the bottom of the bores in normal use, then you will get more oil.  It's only if everything gets very furred up a short while after you clean it all that I would be concerned - it's the sign of an engine on it's way out.

Clean things up, then re-check in a few weeks and see how things look.

[coggers79]

solved my same issue by making a catch tank just cut the pipe after the elbow and fit a three way connector for an air line run a peice of pipe from the lower connection into a pop bottle which needs to go in front of wheel in order for gravity to do the work a couple of cable ties keeps mine safe. you will be amazed at how much oil/ crap goes in the bottle rather than in the intake as a result the car runs much better and the recent mot showed the emmissions to be as a new car as its not burning the sh!t the engine produces. my car is 96 gti 16v with over 140k on clock

[Grim_Reaper]

solved my same issue by making a catch tank just cut the pipe after the elbow and fit a three way connector for an air line run a peice of pipe from the lower connection into a pop bottle which needs to go in front of wheel in order for gravity to do the work a couple of cable ties keeps mine safe. you will be amazed at how much oil/ crap goes in the bottle rather than in the intake as a result the car runs much better and the recent mot showed the emmissions to be as a new car as its not burning the sh!t the engine produces. my car is 96 gti 16v with over 140k on clock

awesome bit of gen there mate