(the “didn’t fill” from above are all from AFTER the fix)
I did this a long time ago but I only posted it now because I wanted to make sure the issue is gone. And it is!
I finally found the culprit that’s been filling up my damn air filter, making the car run like shite and using oil like diddy.
It’s this at #4, the oil separator.
This car hasn’t had an oil change in a LONG time before I got it, gunked up the oil separator, clogged it, and the oil started going up instead of back down into the engine. Swapped, and you can see in the photo above how it was immediately fixed after. It’s actually pretty easy to remove, it just takes time to take off the airbox first, or at least that’s my mechanic told me. How he didn’t figure it out when I asked why I had oil in my airbox is beyond me, but whatever.
The whole job is almost as cheap as the oil I had to keep adding.
If you have this issue, you will see oil coming our from this tube that goes in the airbox at #36.
You didn’t ask for an auto troubleshooting tip? Well too bad!!!
Mine’s a Golf 4 1.4 petrol AXP by the way. Though, I think many cars have similar things.
If you know a community that could use this info lmk, I’m still trying to figure out lemmy.
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You didn’t ask for an auto troubleshooting tip?
No, but I’m happy to receive it! My dad never was much of a mechanic or handyman, so there’s a ton of things he didn’t and couldn’t teach me. The intricacies of cars are part of that, and I never have the nerve to sit down and proper learn it. I know a bunch of the necessities I had to learn for my license or picked up along the way. I just can’t make myself commit to a longer learning session.
Thing like this are a small, digestible slice of understanding, delivered during my morning commute when I’m both receptive and have the time. It fits in my attention span -> curiosity window.
This is the perfect way to learn. I’m very glad you posted it!
Same here, my dad has something to say about just about everything but he doesn’t tend to be right :-/ When I said I wanted to fix this oil issue he immediately said that it’s definitely caused by bad piston rings…he was getting ready to take the car to have the engine taken apart when I told him to stop and let me check.
I appreciate him wanting to help but really, if he’s unfamiliar…he should probably not try to help…though I do love him.
And yea, I can’t really make up the time to do this seriously, but if I have several weekends of spare time I eventually figure it out like I did with this. I went to 0 knowledge to using elsawin online and looking up part codes in like 5 months of weekend spare time (while also researching and doing other things).
I appreciate him wanting to help but really, if he’s unfamiliar…he should probably not try to help
Mine doesn’t try. Silver lining, I guess?
As I understand it, it was a point of friction between him and his father already: Grandpa very much was the tinkering and handyman type, even as he got older (much to his wife’s dismay when he’d climb a ladder at 80+ to do something in the ceiling).
He’d try to teach my father how to do stuff (partially because of gendered expectations that “a man should know how to…”) but it just wouldn’t stick. It’s a shame, really. I think these things are worth knowing.
And yea, I can’t really make up the time to do this seriously, but if I have several weekends of spare time I eventually figure it out like I did with this.
I struggle to do chores during the week, so weekend tends to be spent catching up, spending time with my wife, helping her with her own business It stuff etc. That leaves me with precious little energy for all the things I want to do and learn, unfortunately.
But I’ve been learning some stuff here and there, and now this post is on my “saved” list as well. Thank you for sharing it!
Not dull enough, I need more of this information! So where do I find explosion drawings and diagrams for my beautiful Opel Corsa A? He was eating a lot of oil. Doing strangely well since somebody overfilled the oil. The mechanics I’ve asked don’t want to fix, if they had time, they would replace piston rings (not enough mechanics around here).
I want to keep the Corsa on the road, it’s such a good car. I wish it was only an oil separator - or better, if only I could keep ignoring the problem till doomsday as I have done so far. Inspection end of this month will tell how bad it all is I guess.
You have to make a user and I think they will email you your password or something like that.
You can use it for free but you will get popups. I really should chip in a bit. It’s really nice to use even if it doesn’t show EVERYTHING.
I hope you can maintain it. This old golf 4 lasted me years and it’s also been mistreated. I’m trying to take care of it now. Never left me stranded EVER.
This is what the UI is like. I think it’s just pulling in a screen from a VM with the app on it or something.
No Opel brand on this page as far as I can see … other than that great resource!
No that’s a separate screen. If Opel is VAG you should find it
VAG = Volkswagen AG? As far as I’m aware Opel (Vauxhall) isn’t
FYI they e-mail you your actual password, unhashed. Also they e-mail you in Russian. I would not count on security in this site. Use an email generator (I did). Otherwise, this is super useful! EDIT: Can anyone figure out how to search a particular make and model?
Yea I know lol
I used my gmail which I pretty much don’t care about
And I mean, not like a bad actor can do much with that password anyway.
I’ve actually coke’s high-level repair manual diagrams and information out of LON chatbots
Searching for coke’s manuals gives me all information about how to repair my coca cola vending machine, and what are LON chatbots, please?
Text to speech fail. Ask LLM chatbots, copilot has been able to source me diagrams for a lot of non-free repair diagras i should NOT have access to.
Oh no, I will not engage with LLM chatbots ever, for anything. Before I do that I’ll gladly walk, as the proud and stubborn luddite I am (which is why I’m driving a car from 1988 in the first place).
I really wish there was a trove of shop manuals for things
Wait, you don’t just pour oil on the engine?
Only when I’m massaging the cylinder head
Just pour directly into ground water
Tasty summer treat.
Since your car was previously abused (but even if it hasn’t I recommend this greatly) start using “Valvoline Restore and Protect” engine oil in it.
It slowly cleans your engine and removed carbon buildup and sludge and frees up piston and oil rings. That brown staying on your oil dipstick will even go away. The shit is magic in a bottle. I started using it three years ago in my Gen 2 Prius that was burning a quart of oil every 1500 miles. Now it burns a quart every 3500 to 4000 miles. My Prius has 290,000 miles on it.
You can check this stuff out on any forums or YouTube videos or all the analysis stuff done by Motor Oil Geek or anywhere else. Not really a negative thing to be found about it. I just buy it from Wal Mart for $30 for 5 quarts. It likely would have eventually even freed up the sludge from your oil separator without you needing to find and replace it.
*Edit: I added some video links in a comment below.
Supposedly, according to the oil geek, you can do the same with cheap oil by reducing your oil change interval.
Not sure if he gets into it in this video, but here he goes into detail about the different brands of oil.
I don’t see anywhere in that video where he says that. Do you know about what time in the video he says it? Your linked video doesn’t have him testing or talking about Valvoline at all, and he’s testing on new engines.
Here are some of his videos he made on restore and protect that are pretty much the opposite of what you are saying. Also, many of his videos on restore and protect may have been after your referenced video, so he may have not even known about it when your linked video was made.
Interesting, thanks! I may not have gotten a clear message from what I watched.
Yea, as far as I know, all motor oils contain cleaning agents. They’re packed full of additives. Not sure if I want to introduce a new variable for now. I still have a few engine codes to fix but I appreciate his suggestion.
When I see that happening on a diesel, I start looking for fuel pushing past rings and getting into the oil.
How does that even happen? Just bad rings?
If the cylinders get scrubbed and pitted, diesel is under high pressure when it’s injected, and will get forced down into the sump. You can usually tell if there’s heavy blow-by from the crankcase breathers. Usually it’s something like an intake leak that lets dirt into the intake. I’ve also seen cylinder cooler jets fail and a cylinder will melt enough to create a hole. You’ll notice that as a cold cylinder because now it isn’t detonating.
Diesels are born looking for new and expensive ways to die.
Interesting, makes sense
Maybe dad is right for fearing diesels lol
I definitely would have messed up a diesel. I do quite a bit of city driving
The ones that survive for a few years are pretty hard to kill. If you stick to a brand like Cummins or Cat, they’re bulletproof.
Id never buy a diesel design with a single digit birthday.
Not all cars have oil separators, but a blocked PCV valve can cause the same symptoms of oil being sucked up from the crankcase into the air box/intake/throttle body, and thus rapid oil consumption. This happens especially on cars that are neglected in terms of oil change intervals and hence sludge up.
The PVC valve is one of the items that need periodic replacing or at least cleaning (and if cleaning subsequent thorough drying before reinstalling). Also, check the associated lines aren’t clogged too, a weed wacker line is a good tool to poke through the lines to check. The PCV valve is almost never mentioned in service booklets as routine service item, it borders malice by the manufacturers and grinds my gears.
The amount of people I talk to about a PCV valve being the cause of their oil consumption and who never heard about, or know what it is, is too damn high.
Before you pay a mechanic thousands for open engine surgery replacing stem seals or oil control rings, check your PCV valve, gents.
Yea nobody I talked about even knew what that thing was, besides one dude.
But yes I did that too. On my car there’s only one hose going from it into the airbox and I straight up replaced it. It was really cheap, like 10 euro or something.
God I love having a cheap car. I bet on a newer one that thing costs like 5 times as much.
Kinked pcv hoses can cause this too, especially on older engines with more blow-by. Overpressure in the crank case will blow oil out or cause it to burn.
The times that you didn’t need to fill probably just means that the valve sometimes worked well enough to perform it’s job. Oil-related systems are like systems exposed to exhaust and combustion, they take a beating and fail much more often than systems that aren’t exposed to them.
Congrats on solving your problem!
well, at the bottom there where it says I didn’t fill are actually after I replaced the oil separator. I actually haven’t added a single drop of oil since then, I think.
My dad said immediately that the piston rings were shot. I’m sooooooo glad I proved him wrong for 2 reasons, lol
That’s one thing that will do it. There’s a couple people who have hydro locked with bad oil separators.
wow. But how?! So much oil got into their intake that it hydro locked it???
I feel like there would be signs…the billboard kind you could put above a highway…
The valve would fail catastrophically and basically siphon oil into the engine. It’s a questionably complicated German design of course. It was particularly vulnerable to freezing, which happens if the engine wasn’t run long enough to boil off all condensation.
It got close for me once. The only time it left me stranded. Stopped at a light. Pulled away. Bam, thick black smoke and the engine stalled. I’d replaced it about 45000 km before and most trips were 70km but I guess it was too much.
I ran my mk3 golf without coolant for a summer. I abused that poor thing so much.
The valve would fail catastrophically and basically siphon oil into the engine
Damn. Wait. Are you talking about a 1.4 Golf too? How would the oil get sucked up into the airbox?
I mean, the oil separator on my exact car doesn’t even seem to have any sort of valve. I cut up the separator. Inside, it’s just a maze covered in oil. No valve whatsoever.
Are you talking about a turbocharged car, maybe? This one is NA.
No no. It’s the m52 in bmw.
I ran my mk3 golf without coolant for a summer. I abused that poor thing so much.
oh … oh no …
It’s fine, they live in Antarctica
so he ran it without warmant
my autocorrect just tried correcting that to warman’t
fucking legend
uninstalled, POS.
Three transmissions worth of reverse gear… to be 18 again and not care.
