Just got back from the Isle of Man and for the most part the car as behaved very well, couple of little issues firstly a vac pipe to the boost gauge melted trough after working loose and falling on the turbo, easily rectified may mine problem is a slight smell of oil following a little ‘spirited’ driving, there’s no smoke from anyway eg exhaust tailpipe or under bonnet area, just this slight wiff of burnt oil, I know it's over fuelling abit, when Andy Carr checked the ECUtek map he told me it was definitely running rich on boost but it was nothing to worry about in the short term, rich been better than lean!!
So it may be excess fuel that is causing the smell, but I’m thinking that I may have some kind of crankcase breather problem, the fuelling will shortly be rectified with a custom map so that should sort it’s self out, which leaves a possible breather problem .
In the good old days we used to simply rip it all off and vent the crank to air via a piece of tube into the the chassis leg (or a beer can if feeling flush ), now I know things have moved on from the dark days of Ford pintos and that emission control systems are quite sophisticated these days, but the basics have got to be the same right?
Also I’ve noticed it’s a common mod to add a oil catch tank, which to me seems essentially the same as venting to air if you choose not to feed the out put back into the inlet manifold.

So any thoughts on the benefits of changing the crank case venting system so that the vapour is not returned to the induction system?
My thoughts are that if I re-pipe the crank case /cylinder head vents (including a one way valve) then block up the now redundant hole in the inlet manifold, feed the pipes to a suitable catch can / container then the engine will be ventilated and no oil vapour will find it’s way into the inlet.

any thoughts very wellcome

 

i think i have same prob i have little oil on the block underneath inlet but there nothink apart from oil breathers there could they drip much oil?

 

Fortunately I’ve no leaks or drips , the gaskets on the cylinder head vents both seem fine, in fact the whole thing appears in good order, although I’m going to remove the IC tomorrow and double check everything, the only thing I can think off is that the engine is producing to much oil vapour under load and this is causing the oil smell when it is bunrt after been fed back into the induction system, not letting it return to the inlet would seem the obvious way to stop the smell.

 

Oil catch tank is a good mod as it stops oil blow by.

 

Catch cans are really for severe abuse, such as full bore launches, and won't alter the clearance of your pistons in the bores...

Any engine that's racked up 50K+ miles is going to smell/use some oil.

But I fitted one anyway.

And bunged up the PCV valve too !

dunx