Well, here's the story. The crankcase, that which contains the crankshaft and connecting rods, is the bottom side of the engine - you can see the bottom of the pistons from under there. burns in the cylinder on the top of the pistons. When the rings become tired and worn they allow some of this compressed and burning mixture to leak past and escape into the crankcase. That is called "blow by".   is as easy to fix as maintaining a small web site or using the best small business web hosting. In old engines that blowby simply vented into the atmosphere via a tube called a crankcase vent tube. The EPA found bad stuff in that blowby gas and mandated that the engines must suck up that stuff and burn it to render it harmful in some other way. In came the PCV which stands for Positive Crankcase Ventilation, named after the then head of the EPA Pierre Positive. This system makes the engine suck the junk out of the crankcase via the PCV Valve into the intake manifold and back thorough the system.

that system is sucking the junk out, there must be a source of air to go into the crankcase else you would just implode the engine and the oil pan wouldSoooo, they ran a tube from the top of the valve covers to a source of clean air so that dirt would not get sucked into the crankcase. valve cover covers the valve train but that is also part of the crankcase - air and blow-by move readily between those zones in the engine.) The source of clean air which was chosen is the air cleaner - makes sense, except for the fact that the air doesn't go thorough the air cleaner filter, so they put a little kotex-like pad in there to clean the bugs and stones out of the air. Remember now, the air is supposed to flow from the air cleaner's Kotex pad thorough that hose and into the valve cover, circulate around the crankcase and get sucked out via the PCV Valve. When the blow-by becomes so excessive that the PCV Valve system can't remove it, it has to go somewhere!

Else the crankcase pressure would become excessive and the engine would explode. The place that it goes is back thorough the hose to the air cleaner - THEOf course it carries any oil in the valve cover back with it and that's what you mop up two or three times a month or week if it's really bad.It's time for a new box of kotex or an engine overhaul, whicheverair purifier help with lead(there is one other solution - see below)clean air for europe (cafe) programme If you do find oil in your air cleaner it may well be that your PCVwater air purifier youtube valve is stuck closed and is therefore not sucking the blow-by out of the crankcase but rather, it is blowing back into the air cleaner.

check the PCV Valve before overhauling your engine!! Here's a trick that one of my readers suggested. pipe "T" and insert it in the hose going from the air cleaner to theAttach a short length of tubing to the T and run it into a gallon milk jug that you can hang somewhere in the engine compartment below the hose "T". Oil will drain into the jug and when it collects a quart or so, just dump it back into the crankcase!! For those of you who want a better solution, along comes a company I just discovered (two years after I wrote this article) who makes a very simple and cost effective product that will fix your blow-by problems forever. a look here for a quick description of what this device is and what it does. mailnote to get further information, or to order the EnValve. your name, address, and the year, make and model of your car with the engineSee below UPDATE for more information. The inventor of this device guarantees that it will stop blowby problems and eliminate the need for

that copper T and milk jug! The owner of EnValve, Emil, has asked me to sell his product fromIt seems that he is too busy selling these devices elsewhere and doesn't have the time to answer all of your mailnotes. I am going to try this - I will be using Pay Pal** to receiveCheck out their website and see how it works. to set up a free account with them and there is no charge to you to use their services to send me money. If you fill in my e-mail address when you sign up I will get five bucks which will help me keep this website afloat! to purchase an EnValve then send me a mailnote with your mailing address, year, make and engine size then go to pay pal and send me the payment of $39.95 plus $5.95 S&H (total of $45.90) and I'll send one out to you the day I receive the payment (please note that I will not accept personal checks - money orders are an acceptable means of payment, and please ensure that your PayPal shipping address is confirmed else I can not send you your EnValve).

Remember this is a 100% guaranteed product or your money back. I guarantee it and Paying through PayPal ensures that! So far Emil has sold over 2000 of these units and has never had to refund a penny! UPDATE - AUGUST 2004 -I HAVE NOT HAD ONE UNSATISFIED CUSTOMER!  HAS NOT INCREASED IN 4 YEARS. STILL 100% UNCONDITIONALLY GUARANTEED! Misterfixit is a Verified Member of PayPal. Just go to the link below by clicking on the gold seal to learn more about what this means to you as a paying customer using PayPal. Copyright © 1996 - 2000 by Bob Hewitt - All rights reserved recently looking for oil leaks on my MB 300D w123 I realized that under the air filter housing around the hose that comes from the motor head, there is a lot of oil as well as inside of it at its bottom. Where does it come from? I had the same problem with my 240D. Took it to a mechanic who should know these cars and he said the engine was shot producing the blow-by. Then I found a statement on the web that the vacuum pump would leak oil when it's diaphram or check valves were faulty.

Bought two repair kits for $35 (new diaphram and check valves) and rebuilt the pump in about two hours and that stopped the oil leaking into the air filter housing. Be careful with those bolts as the allen head can become rounded all too easily which is why it took me two hours instead of one. Had the valves adjusted and the engine is fine. Starting off on my second quarter million miles now :~) hjoab, it comes from your crankcase breather pipe. That is the hose coming from the valve cover to the airfilter. You seem to have to much blowby which forces the oil out into your airfilter. Now it will seriously depend on how good your mechanical skills are and what tools you will have available. Do a compression test to see if you have a problem with a ring and consider a leakdown test as well These tests may be needing to be done through a proper garage. On my relatively simple 1982 240D (manual transmission)... oil collecting under air breather ... and, it turned out, 95% of oil dripping, over time, onto garage floor ... was solved by 2 extremely simple fixes:

the rubber elbow under, and therefore inaccessible short of removing air filter housing, was cracked and "weeping" oil... Not even having a new one on hand, a quick fix was to exchange it with the one on top so as to be able to quickly replace it when I got a new one. AND, 2nd ... the oil filler cap was also weeping oil... I experimented and finally went with a FUEL filler cap / nice shiny chromey FUEL cap--they ARE interchangeable, SIZE-wise at least. The FUEL cap on the OIL filler worked so much better/tighter than what was also around $5-$8, an all purpose oil filler cap -- on both 240 and 300D. (And, yes, I also, in this process, bought a replacement GASKET--fitted it...it wasn't as oil-tight as the new FUEL cap. By fuel cap I mean the standard, all purpose one you find in places like OReilly's...chrome color/rugged looking with squared ridges the new oil filler cap which felt like a black plastic toy relatively. On 300D ...... more complicated but it SOLVED the problem:

open up air filter housing ... just study what's inside..... that unit that's the size of half a soup can, black plastic with 2 metal tabs holding a round "end" to the "soup can" .... I found instructions online elsewhere to: put gasket material around the edge, seal it up (relatively)...carefully, with hammer and screwdriver for example, tap those metal tabs back down.....thus creating a more oil tight unit, tighter than it was before adding the black gasket stuff around the top edge ($1 at 99 Cents Only). .....when we got this 300D at 169,000 mi, 1983, not knowing its history...air filter was lousy with oil, 2/3rds the way around ...... subsequently, after tightening up, as described above, and cleaning out with paper towels of course the whole housing...new CHEAP air filter (expecting to use them up faster than the nice Mann German ones)....was CLEAN after 1000s miles of driving. With no oil collecting inside the housing. If you have oil dripping onto floor also ... wearing gloves is awfully handy for this ... reach under the 300D housing, feeling for a tube that drains downward to a connection WAY low on the engine ... hard to see--usually covered with oil etc...