Oil breather

Author
Discussion

ERIKM400

Original Poster:

142 posts

139 months

Thursday 16th April 2015
quotequote all
Took the car for it's annual MOT yesterday (which is always a PITA over here in Belgium).
All going well untill it starts belching blue smoke all over the place. MOT testers not amused -> fail.

I had a good look around the engine bay and it appears that the problem is the oil breather. I went on a couple of trackdays lately and the oil breather seems to have sent quite a significant amount of oil into the air intake for the front turbo. When I took the air intake hose off it was dripping with oil.

Two questions:
1) I understand from several other threads on the Noble forum that the standard oil breather on our cars is not perfect but who the f... designed a part that can blow large amounts of oil into the engine when you use the car for something more than just a spirited drive? I mean: the M400 is considered to be the track oriented version of the M12 after all.
2) the exit of the oil breather seems to blow hot and polluted air (+/- 100°C) from inside the engine directly into the air intake. Surely this cannot be a good thing?

I have ordered the upgraded oil breather from Pro Alloy. Will this solve the problem when I replace the original oil breather with the Pro Alloy version connected to the air intake?
Or should I consider running an open carter ventilation (with a separate oil catch tank) and only connecting the oil breather to the air intake when going for the MOT (open carter ventilaton = MOT fail over here)?

stevegto3

428 posts

144 months

Thursday 16th April 2015
quotequote all
Check that the beather vent tube isnt being blocked by the adapter being pushed on too far. Its best to change to pro alloy anyway as one it vents to atmosphere and two the standard rusts and gets full off crud.

Check out the attached re: excessive smoking


TuxMan

9,011 posts

245 months

Friday 17th April 2015
quotequote all
The std steel oil breather can is a terrible piece of kit and should be changed asap !!! They rust inside and drop crap straight into the sump !!!!

Strip all the breather pipes off and wash out , also clean intercooler and boost pipes as they will be full of oil too .

The pro alloy unit is brilliant .

ERIKM400

Original Poster:

142 posts

139 months

Wednesday 22nd April 2015
quotequote all
New oil breather.
Pipes cleaned.
No more smoke.
Passed MOT.

Thanks for the help.