Flatisfaction And Other Tangents.

Now the bigger fan was in the charge pipe from the turbo didn’t fit anymore. 🤦‍♂️
This obviously meant a third visit from the friendly travelling TIG welder. 😁

While I was waiting I thought I’d better deal with the noisy tappet/s after the cam break in.
This meant dropping the exhaust pipes, removing the turbo and pipe work and alternator before finally being able to access the valves via removal of the inlet manifold.



I wasn’t concerned as with non-hydraulic tappets and a fresh valvetrain things always seem to settle in after a break in and need a second run through of the clearances.
As I made my way along, each one was pretty much on the money until I got to the exhaust on cyl. 3 and it was out…. Alot.

My heart sank as I immediately feared the worse, a wiped cam lobe.

I checked the oil for glitter but it was dead clean but I then noticed the adjuster on the tappet looked a little low compared to the others which were all visually at a similar height.
I adjusted it to spec which put the adjuster height in line with others and turned the engine over to visually check the valve lift which also seemed to be same as the others.

I think the cam is fine (famous last words!).
I wonder if I completely skipped over adjusting that one by mistake or the new tappet was a little sticky in its bore and I adjusted it to a false reading?
Either way it’s run quietly since.

Taking the inlet manifold off again gave me a chance to review the PCV baffle.
Surprisingly there was a considerable amount of oil on the baffle. Enough that it was actually running off the baffle when it was placed on its side.
Wether this was a good sign or not I’m not sure? 🤔



What wasn’t good to see was the inlet runners had already gained a film of oil residue as before after only doing one short trip.

I decided to dig deeper with where the oil was entering the system which was easy to do as everything was stripped off.
Starting at the top, turbo inlet and outlet both dry. Charge pipes in and out of the intercooler both dry. Carb hat and throttle body both dry. Inlet plenum dry but all the runners showing residue.

The only oil source in that space between inlet plenum and inlet runners is the PCV port which is halfway down the plenum.
I think I can confidently say it’s still pulling oil through the PCV valve.

A rethink needed then.

I remembered the cheap Chinese oil separator/breather I’d bought a while back and not used.
By the time it had arrived after purchasing it I’d already changed direction with the whole breather system on the engine anyway but I’d also not really paid attention to its actual size!
While completely undersized for the engine it seemed fairly well sized for the amount of air passing through it via the PCV valve.

After substituting the supplied barbs for smaller ones and blanking one of the inlets I needed somewhere to mount it.



I didn’t want to get sucked into permanently mounting it or any major fab work as it was just an experiment.
After holding it up in various places I hit on an idea!
One Jubilee clamp later…



For how down and dirty this is it works surprisingly well.
The separator brackets sits on the crimped breather flange. It’s high enough to be able to unscrew the base of the separator and I can still undo the breather cap to put oil in!

With it in place it was just a matter of rerouting the vacuum lines so it now goes from the PCV to the separator, through the separator and back into the inlet manifold with hopefully alot less oil.