I opened up the hood to check my oil.

Immediately noticed a good amount of oil (very black and almost sludgy) where the actual snail meets the aftercooler, that rubber hose that connects the two parts, was soaked in oil. Very black stuff. Very thick kinda oil where it doesn't drip much.

I took the rubber hose off and checked the inside of the snail and the aftercooler, the piping area... there's oil there, but not too bad. You run a finger on it and you got some oil on your fingers, but not like a pool of oil where it ends up dripping.

My installer guy was there and took a look at it and says it's likely too much pressure in the crank case or something like that. He checked the valve that sits on top of the valve cover and thought that might be stuck. He says it's normal to have some oil residue, but this much is weird. I mean you could see oil soaked into the rubber hose connection thing and there's oil surrounding that area. There's also wetness in that plastic piece that runs from the AC to the plastic round pipe that almost touches the radiator (connects snail to the airbox).

This doesn't look right and wondering what I need to do to prevent all this oil leakage.

Anyone experience this? The kit is just a month or so old. Also, on a recent drive, a buddy of mine noticed black smoke coming out of my exhaust when WOT in 3rd gear, but that seems to have been a one time occurance. My AF ratio was sitting at around 12.5.

Thx!

 

Oil residue before, in and around, after the snail is normal. First, you get oil going into that inlet of the piping just before the snail (from the front breather on the valve cover) and you will also get some seapage from the oil jacket on the snail.
I rigged up a catch can for both the front breather and the PCV system and the residue in and around the blower has greatly diminished.

 

Ben

This pic was just taken. Just for you and this thread.



I recently completed a 5K-road trip. I have not washed or wiped up anything in the engine bay. The only oil you can see in the pic, is from the by-pass valve. That is the only oil I have found. I clean it up every now and again.

I have just about 10K on the SC. The last 2.5k we pushed the car hard.

From your description, something is wrong.

Could the air filter have been over oiled?

 

How is your oil consumption? are you adding more oil than normal??? If you are I HIGHLY advise you to do a leakdown and or comp. test and see if one or more of your cylinders are not holding the right Comp.

 

My car has always consumed oil stock and supercharged. I'm not sure if it's more than normal because I just haven't driven the car enough.

Appreciate it, Mark.

The oil accumulation is not normal. It just can't be. It's that rubber hose with the two clamps on it connected the snail to the ac. You visually see black oil all dirtied up due to oil picking up debris/crap from driving. It's as if the rubber hose was a sponge and you could see it soaking up oil.

What I did today in hopes of an easy fix is replace the PCV valve that sits on top of the valve cover. I shook that sucker and it made no noise. The new one did make a light rattling noise. The old PCV did pass the blow in, blow out test.

So let's say the leak or comp test turns out to be not so great. What's involved in "fixing" it?

 

Well, The reason I had asked about the oil consumption is that I had similar symptoms but I had a catch can going from my PCV valve and the front breather was connected to the inlet on the elbow between the Filter and the blower, I had noticed I was using quite a bit more oil than usual and it was accumulating in the catch can and after a track event the Catch can was full and I had oil throughout the system as you described - I thought I had blown a seal on the blower because it was in the intake tract ( check to see if you have oil in the silicone coupler between the A/C and the throttle body ).
What had happened was I had a ring failure ( cause still unknown ) Oil was pushing past the #2 cylinder and eventually I had a failure that destroyed my engine and that is why I suggest a comp. Leakdown test to hopefully catch it before it becomes expensive if this is what it is. I am sure it could be a number of things but if someone had mentioned this to me back then I could at least saved my head and just got a new shortblock!
I was running at the time a 7 psi pulley on a Comptech w/ a/c.
Ohter than the oil consumtion the car ran fine and gave no mechanical warnings till I started to hear a tapping on the interstate on cruise control before the failure.
I paid for the new Alaniz motor out of pocket because the adjuster saw the Comptech unit and I was at 37000 miles just outside of factory in my extended program and they just walked away - I was quite bummed, I hope your's isn't as bad!

 

Wow. Thx for the heads-up.

I had no oil in the rubber hose connecting the AC to the throttle body. Yet.

How involved is this leak down test and who can do it and how much is it?

I really hope it's that little PCV valve that was messed up.

 

Yeah, I hope it is the PCV valve too Most Automotive shops can do the test for you - They need to remove your sparkplugs to do the test and it usually doesn't cost much for this kind of diagnostic test. Keep us posted!

 

i really really appreciate this, ztec. i'll keep y'all posted.

 

It's been about a week now since the last check and I can't visually see any oil leaking through that rubber hose. The day I discovered the oil issue, I spent $20 on that little PCV part and swapped it out easily enough.

I've been VTECing in spurts here and there.

I'm sure it's normal to have oil inside the pipe that you can maybe swab out and find evidence of... but it cannot be normal to have oil seaping through the rubber hose and through the seal to the point where you can see black oil on the outside of the pipe.

So far, so good. I'll have to check on oil consumption tonite.