legacycentral bbs

Hey all,
Recently while working on re routing my BOV, i noticed that there is a decent amount of oil in the intake plumbing and the intercooler. I was wondering if this could be related to the PCV valve pulling oil under increased (higher than stock) boost levels? The 3S-GTE (Toyota) does this whenever you turn up the boost, but my 3S blew oil because of excessive blowby past the #4 cylinder's rings (which had a compression of 65 psi when it should have been ~170 psi). Anyone ever heard of the Subaru's PCV valves letting oil get into the intake tract. A common solution for this is to install a PCV catch can in the line to trap all the oil before it gets into the intake. Please someone help me here, i want to diagnose the problem before it becomes serious, if it is even a problem at all.

most boxer motors including subarus are known to do that especially under high boost/load.... having said that i'd make sure not to overfill when doing oil changes and install a catch can as you said to keep up intercooler efficiency

on a side, I haven't encountered this problem yet, does any one else have this issue?

its completely normal, get a catch can installed, should fix your problem.

Whew, i was starting to get flashbacks of melting pistons and such. I will make myself a catch can for it this weekend. Thanks guys.

How do you make an oil catch can/where can you buy one?

When I pulled the pre-turbo resonator, there was a good bit of oil inside it.

Well, there are a few ways. From the Celica/MR-2 crowd, you can use some type of can that goes inline with the PCV line that catches the oil. This is done by putting the inlet and outlet of the can on the top of this container. You can either route the PCV back to where it would normally go, or simply attach a breather to the top instead of the outlet hose then block off the outlet bung where it reconnects to the intake plumbing. The second way is more effective, but some say that it can cause driveability problems. From the DSM crowd, they have been known to use $2 disposable fuel filters inline with the PCV tubing to filter out the oil before it gets back into the intake. When the filter catches enough, simply replace it. I am going to use the fuel filter for the Celica since it doesn't seem to blow as much when the boost is turned up, but for the Subaru i am going to make one out of something the size of a Coke can. Greddy makes a universal aluminum one for about $90 IIRC, but to me thats really not worth it.

So just a line from the PCV valve, to an empty container with a sealed lid and then either attach a breather, or plumb it back to the intake?

Interesting. Let me know what you do on the Subaru, I'm very interested.

I will defeinately post about it although with finals a week and a half away i have bigger fish to fry right now. Expect it mid May unless i miraculously get my Celica's engine back from the shop by the time i get out of school.