Runny Oil In Boost Pipes

[brown_d9]

Last weekend I gave the car a service, and whilst under the car noticed that one of the lower boost pipe connections was covered in oily sludge.

 

I gave it a good clean, and disconnected it to make sure the seal hadn't fallen apart and when I lowered the pipe it leaked a fair quantity of runny oil, all over my head just to add insult to injury!

If I remember rightly, I disconnected it where highlighted on the attached.

 

Is this normal? A sign of the turbo seals letting by?

 

Would this degrade performance at all, was thinking maybe disconnect all the pipes, remove them and give them a good clean?

 

Thanks

Dan

 

Edited 14 July, 2015 by brown_d9

[softscoop]

It's oil from the PCV.

 

It's quite normal.

[brown_d9]

I thought the PCV system had oil separators' in it to stop this sort of thing from happening?

[Dread1977]

Normal, happened on my old Fabia VRS and thats was fine for the 7 years i owned it and 96000 miles it had covered too!!

[brad1.8T]

it's normal.  Disconnect hose 9 and the same will happen.  That's not the diagram for your engine though, is it?

 

I thought the PCV system had oil separators' in it to stop this sort of thing from happening?

The PCV vents back into the inlet.  If you have a TSI engine then there is a primary oil seperator down in the guts of the engine below the coolant pump & a fine oil separator on top of the cam cover.  This splits into 2 paths - at low engine speed (no boost) the blow by gasses are vented straight into the inlet manifold; at high engine speed (boost) the blow by gasses are vented into the intake side of the turbo and then have to make there way to the cylinder via those pipes & the intercooler. 

 

This is why the intake valves carbon up with baked on sludge as there are no solvents (petrol) present to break it down (direct injection bypasses the inlet manifold).

 

This is also why on the latest Gen3 EA888 TSI 2.0 they have fitted secondary injectors to the inlet manifold to prevent inlet coking.

 

It's not a bad idea to run some solvent through the inlet system occasionally.

[brown_d9]

Thanks guys, glad its normal... Even if very undesirable.

 

Next time I am under there I will take as many pipes as its straight forward to do and give them a good clean out... cant do any harm can it!

 

I'm all up for saving the environment and all that, but the coking of inlet valves is such a bad by product of this sort of system, my other half had a mini cooper s and they suffer really badly with this.