Excessive oil in intercooler/turbo

krystalrat · 06-03-2008, 05:47 PM

Hi everyone, I'm new to the site, and have gotten very helpful information from all of the posts. I do however have a question related to the turbo/intercooler.
First off, my car is completely stock, except for a K&N intake and a hi-flow muffler. I have an '03 with 65,000 miles and I am the original owner.
A few weeks ago my turbo quit working, and upon investigating the problem I found I had bad vacuum lines, and also realized that the PCV valve has never been changed. So when going through the process of removing my intercooler, I found a very high amount of oil in the intercooler, the throat to the turbo, and the throttle body. I did replace the PCV valve, which thankfully was still working although probably not as good as it should, and I completely cleaned the intercooler out, and removed and cleaned the throttle body, and as much of the inlet to the turbo as I could without removing it. I reset the ecu and the car seems to be fine now except I'm not reaching the same boost numbers as I used to, and I'm a bit concerned about the amount of oil that is probably in the turbo itself.
So, to end this long story, should I be concerned about the excessive oil in those parts? Is this fairly normal for the WRX?
I appreciate any insight that can be given.

VD5505 · 06-03-2008, 07:14 PM

there will always be some oil in the intercooler. how much oil was in your throttle body?? maybe your PCV was bad, have you tried driving it for a while then take your intercooler back off to see if oil is stilll there??

sleepr · 06-04-2008, 11:09 PM

seems a bit too soon at 65k, but those are the symptoms that led me to have to replace the turbo on mine at approx 83k. However, I first noticed occaisional wisps of smoke from the hoodscoop when sitting at a light or drivethrough, first every two weeks and then slowly more frequent than that (but never outright failure).

there are plenty of threads on this site that discuss these symptoms: try "turbo" "fail" and "smoking" as some search keywords to start with

Longshot · 06-05-2008, 08:11 AM

ixizconcepts makes a sweet AOS for under 150 I think. It's way better than a catch can. You may have a failing turbo so this wouldn't solve that issue, but I'd look into it for the future.

krystalrat · 06-05-2008, 06:13 PM

Thanks for the info everyone. It's only been a few weeks since I cleaned everything up, so I do plan on pulling the intercooler back out soon to look at it again, and get an idea on how much oil is getting through. I have a very short drive to work, so I haven't put too many miles on it since then. That is probably another problem I have. Most of my driving is stop and go around town, I don't get much chance to open it up and let loose.
I will look into the catch can, it seems like that is being used by a lot of people.
Thanks again!

03 CrazyTaxi · 06-05-2008, 06:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Longshot

ixizconcepts makes a sweet AOS for under 150 I think. It's way better than a catch can. You may have a failing turbo so this wouldn't solve that issue, but I'd look into it for the future.

I noticed alot when I upgraded to the VF34. I'd like to be able to prevent this.

NukeFusion · 06-06-2008, 03:07 AM

Correct me if I'm wrong, but with out a catch can and with the PVC still hooked to the intake you should ahve oil in the intake tract.. Im just guessing, since i come from DSM's but would it not be the same?