Today’s engines are different, more advanced, and more efficient than those even five years ago but over a pretty wide spectrum they share some interesting qualities. One of them is the fact that on the whole, they consume oil at a rate that would make owners of classic “tight” engines freak out. Companies like Porsche tell customers that up to a quart every 800 miles is not out of the realm of reason and that’s kind of nuts, right? With lighter oils and low resistance ring packages, combined with the engine’s PCV system dumping whatever it can into the intake tract, you can see where this is going….right back down the manifold and into your combustion chambers.
Moroso has been out on the market with oil-air separators for several years and they have products for everything from Subarus to Cadillacs, Jeeps, and everything in between. Basically these are catch cans that allow the oil to fall out of suspension and get collected before it gets blasted back in your engine. If you think that this doesn’t add up, watch the video below because over the course of less than 400 claimed miles, this Jeep has a measurable amount of goo in the bottom of the clear vessel Moroso added to their normal billet top.
You’ll literally see the puffs of stuff when the engine is started, during normal driving, etc and eventually those puffs add up to drips and those drips add up to enough oil that in 1500 miles or so (halfway between your oil change or maybe less than halfway) you’ll be adding your own oil back into your engine.
Check this out, it is an interesting watch.
Installed a separator on my SRT-4. Every oil change yields at least 2oz of oil/water mix that would be forced back through the intake. No wonder throttle bodies get gummed up.
Kinda reminds me of the whisky/air separator I have in my shed!
Now THIS I want to know more about!
Does it work well with Glenlivet?
No Brother – it separates whisky from the air!
But it makes a braw drop o’ glenlivet if I’m near the distillery!
I see, taking a share back from the angels!
Not overly surprising. The facts pointing to this is thin oils, light weight rings and with the EPA requiring reduced Zinc and Phosphorus in oils because of emissions, of course new engines are consuming lots of oil.
I put a homemade oil separator on my Firebird, and it’s interesting to see the combination of water, goo, and clean oil that comes out of it. I drain it every 600 miles or so.