My little Crossflow has started chucking alot of oil out of the crank breather. About a 1/3 of a litre every 70 steady road miles (rough calculation)
I had to empty the full catch tank 4 times during the Blyton yesterday.
I have the crank breathing through a catch tank and the rocker cover venting to atmosphere. There is nothing getting blown out of the rocker breather
only the crank.
I have 2 thoughts on possible problems causing this:
1) There could be an engine issue somewhere, but no oil is coming out the exhaust and the plugs all look clean, compression test results to follow.
But if a ring was at fault I would have expected oil to be coming out of the exhaust. The car is running very well so I imagine the timing is not
out.
2) Oil temperature. With the warmer weather could my oil be getting too hot? My under bonnet temps had been so hot yesterday that it has melted the
cap on my washer bottle. The engine water temp was stable and around the normal values. I don't have an oil temp sender fitted so can't
monitor.
Would high oil temperature cause more of it to get flung out of the breather?
This is the first hot weather i have had since getting a new minifold fitted. I have not wrapped the manifold as if I did the wrapping would have to
stop at a position the manifold is very close to the fibreglass bodywork, and as we know the hotter area at the end of the wrapping and fibreglass
won't mix too well. In cooler temps I have not had any under bonnet temp issues with the minifold.
So, any other options or ideas as to why it is doing it?
Is it worth fitting an oil temp sender and guage to see what happening there, if so how/where?
Shall I just monitor and see what happens in cooler temps as it could be weather related?
Or should I just speak to Mr Dunnell or Mr Raceline for a Zetec quote and sod the old Xflow?
[Edited on 28/5/12 by Alfa145]
Hi
This is a common issue with Crossflows and fortunatly there's a kwik fix to solve the issue - although it's not a cure to why they do it!
Drill/tap another connector into the rocker cover- vent the crankcase breather to the rocker cover and then vent the rocker cover to the catch
tank.
Job done
The oil blown out of the crancase ends up where it's needed, back at the top of the engine and it takes a lot more of an issue to get much in the
catch tank.
Worth the two connectors to the rocker cover being well apart though.
quote:
Originally posted by JimSpencer
Hi
This is a common issue with Crossflows and fortunatly there's a kwik fix to solve the issue - although it's not a cure to why they do it!
Drill/tap another connector into the rocker cover- vent the crankcase breather to the rocker cover and then vent the rocker cover to the catch tank.
Job done
The oil blown out of the crancase ends up where it's needed, back at the top of the engine and it takes a lot more of an issue to get much in the catch tank.
Worth the two connectors to the rocker cover being well apart though.
Good idea, but could that potentially move contaminents in the oil up to the rocker area bypassing the filter and cause other issues?
Hi
Nah not in any situation where something really drastic hasn't gone wrong involving bits leaving the block in a dramatic fashion sort of way!
The oil is still circulating round the engine, just a tiny tiny amount of it has not gone through the filter on that particular cycle - but given the
number of cycles it'll be doing so in every minute of running it would amount to half of naff all - not an issue what-so-ever.
Don't fill to the maximum level on the dip stick , use a decent 20 /50 oil and if you are using a fuel pump blanking plate use one with an oil deflector , might be worth changing the oil filler/breather cap . Of course it could be that it's suffering from crankcase pressure caused by worn pistons/bores, a cylinder leakage test would tell
I have a similar issue with my Pinto, altough i have my crank case breathing to atmosphere through a small cone filter and my rocker through a catch tank, When i tried to connect both through the catch tank the crank case didnt like it. Would connecting my crank breather to a port added to the rocker cover work with the pinto??
I've piped the crank breather to the rocker and then vented the rocker to the catch tank. So far so good, onlt issue now is it seems to be blowing oil out of the dip stick tube......hmmmm more investigations needed to confirm that though
i had exactly the same issues with my pinto when i vented my rocker and engine block into the same catch tank, never solved it, seems the pressure doesnt get relieved when they are both vented together