MalcolmV8

I've been noticing what I think is a smelly oil smell blowing through the vents. It seems to be there all the time very lightly but after you run the car hard it's much stronger. It doesn't really smell like an exhaust leak but hot oil smell. Like if you take the oil fill cap off your valve cover and smell in there. Just like that.
I noticed when I bend down and smell the breather on the catch can it has that very strong smell. I also have a breather on the hose coming from the block, you can see it on the right side in the pic.

Is this normal for the oil smell to be coming through the vents all the time? any fixes? or do I have something wrong? It sucks I have to drive with the windows down or at least cracked to get rid of it. It's not super strong but enough you can smell it.

Thanks
Malcolm

boosted_D

iTrader: (1)

Not sure on the smell thing man....But I do have a question from your pic....what kind of charge piping is that? It has that nice little welded on fitting for the IAT sensor, was that an add on or did the pipe come like that?

Furyof4

Yes. When I had a catch can in the same location as yours, I would get fumes inside the car when the fresh air vent was open. Moving the can to the opposite corner of the engine bay solved the problem.

modusmortis

I had mine similar to yours for a while. It also ends up caking the inside of your windshield and you have to clean it often. Not sure how bad the fumes are for you to breathe. You can turn recirculate on and that helps somewhat, but a stoplights the wife was complaining. I got sick of it eventually and ended up replacing the filter with some hose that connects to the intake tube before my turbo. This way there is always vacuum on the crankcase (good), but it also can let oil coat the inside of your charge piping depending on how good you catch can is (bad).

MalcolmV8

It's just a cheap ebay piece of pipe that I modded. I welded that bung in there for the odb1 style sensor. My car was odb2 and I started out with this situation



Here you can see the bung I welded in.



Very interesting. Is the fresh air vent in the engine bay? Man I'll have to go work on moving that right now lol. That smell drives me nuts.

kbouchard1092

I have mine in the same location as yours never notice a smell..... Is youre dumptube recirculated? seems like that would be more likely the issue. Even when i smell the vapors coming from the can it never has a strong smell. Keep youre heating on recirulating as much as possible this should help as well

**just saw that you said it most liekly is not exhasut smell, in that case maybe it is the catch can. I have never noticed that, but its def possible. Maybe there is excess blow by?

MalcolmV8

Yeah I've thought about that but didn't want to coat the turbo and piping with oil and possibly get the intercooler all caked up and inefficient.

When I first got the car running I tried to a PCV system. I got this industrial valve that only takes 0.3 PSI to open and stops up to 1000 PSI so no boost would make it past and into my block. The problem was with extra holes drilled in the valve cover to much air was entering and going through the block and into my intake manifold causing a high idle. At the time I was to much of a noob at tuning to know I could change timing to control idle once you exceed limits of the idle air control motor so I removed it all. I'm wondering if I should revisit that idea again. Hummm or if just moving the catch can fixes it that would be a nice solution too.

MalcolmV8

Yes my dumptube is recirculating and I'm 99% confident I have no exhaust leaks at this point. That was my first suspect and I even went as far as pulling the whole turbo setup off the car and replacing and checking every gasket and even using some red high heat silicon on anything I even suspected might leak. I also removed my electric cut outs in case they were leaking. All of this has left me with just that oil smell. When you smell it you can definitely tell it's an oily smell and not exhaust.

True I could probably run the vents on recirculate all the time but that's a temporary hack. I need to fix it so I can get fresh air.

Turbo-LS

iTrader: (4)

nature of the beast. If your venting to atmosphere your going to get some sort of oil odor in the car with the vents open. I just leave mine on recirculate.

kbouchard1092

Agreed...You could possible run a big hose from the top of the catch cap to the bottom of the car so that it vents under the car. May not look so clean but should fix youre problem. It would prob have to be like radiator hose sized tho.

MarkOlson

This is a good idea, but if you run a PCV hose to a pipe welded into your exhaust after the muffler, you will get up to 8 or 9 inches of vacuum in your crakcase at WOT.

Moroso sells a V8 kit with two of the little pieces of pipe you weld into the exhaust pipe. they say it can't be used with a muffler, but you just want to put it after the muffler so you don't foul the muffler. You can buy the kit for the pieces of pipe or make you own. this will work almost as well as a crankcase vacuum pump.

Here's the Moroso Kit: http://www.moroso.com/catalog/catego...?CatCode=13023

Download the instructions to see how to weld the pipe into the exhasut pipe.

Bix VT

edit: dang, beat to the punch by one minute ^

I've heard a few solutions for this, two of which have already been listed. All of them require removal of the breather filter on top of the catch can.

The first is to reroute the fume outlet to another location of your choice, whether it be under the car, in the wheel well, etc. Downsides to this are the increased tubing length, probably with a few bends, could make the crankcase gases vent more slowly. It will also get a bit of oily film built up where it vents.

The second is to run the tube from the can to between the filter and turbo, drawing vacuum. Good for crankcase scavenging, but as stated it will push that same film through your turbo, charge piping and into the combustion chamber.

The last uses the same principle, but in the exhaust instead of the intake. No mess under the car or in the combustion chamber, but it's definitely not emissions friendly and you don't want to push oily gas through a catalytic converter.

Hard to visualize, so here's a pic and a link that help illustrate:



http://vibrantperformance.com/catalo...oducts_id=1243

blackeg

yep, same here.

MalcolmV8

Some excellent ideas there guys. I'll see what I come up with.

kbouchard1092

I think youre best bet will be rerouting the vent. This will be prob the most cost effective, permanant, and easiest fix (well of course minus hitting the recirc. button lol)

Turbo-LS

iTrader: (4)

Recirc FTW

MalcolmV8

That's the route I'm leaning towards now. Just vent it down under the car pointing backwards.

Also while searching all over trying to see where the air flows, air intake etc. I found my hole in the firewall where I ran the wires. It has my wideband, boost sensor, electric cutouts etc. and a few other wires running through. Well it's not sealed up real well. I'm still waiting on my J&S Vampire to arrive and I'll run it's wires through said hole too and then I'm going to silicon it shut. I can almost bet that's a major cause of my smell problem too. I had forgotten all about that stupid hole.

MarkOlson

I like this kit even better. Thanks for the tip.

Unfortunately, there is no way we can legally run these on the street here in CA, or I would in a nanosecond. It's worth at least couple of HP to have a few inches of vacuum in the crankcase.

nealnanoHX

Op where did you get that AIT sensor bung??
Sometimes I get the crank case oil can smell if my AC is on with the vents set to take in outside air and I am stopped at a light. I have mine in the same place.(I am getting a Autoworks one soon so ignore the cheap modified Ebay can)

MalcolmV8

I got that bung from one of the many turbo websites out there. I'll have to search and see if I can find which one it was.

SOHC_MShue

It is normal to get some funky smell in that location.

2000GSRTypeR

GO-AUTOWORKS and XENOCRON have the IAT aluminum weld bungs.

MalcolmV8

Here you go. I think I used the first website.

http://www.xenocron.com/iat-flange-x...nge-p-462.html

http://store.evans-tuning.com/evans-...on-flange.html

Meaning just relocate the catch can to get rid of it? I was planning on trying to run hoses down to under the car and put the breather's there.

nealnanoHX

Sweet thanks.

2000GSRTypeR

No problem sir.