catch can, but oil in air filter??
 

Hello guys,
I recently noticed that my aem intake filter is drenched in oil and dripping down onto the air damn that is underneath the car. i have a catch can venting to the atmosphere installed to prevent this, so im guessing it is coming back through the throttle body? any ideas on this? iv owned the car for two years with this exact set up and never have had this problem until now. It's a 05 4port with aem intake and midpipe.

Pics of your install? Maybe we can spot something.

hopefully i can get you guys a pic soon, its dark where i am and i only have a phone camera with no flash so the quality is going to be horrible. im simply at a loss for the moment about this.

Wait till daylight then take a pic. I can't imagine the catch can not done properly, but you never know.
When was your last oil change and who did it?

last oil change was about 2500 miles ago and i always do my own oil changes. never have over filled and like i said i just noticed this yesterday. i do not have a grill so its very easy to spot and it was fine just a few days ago. havent driven it any differntly than normal and have not added oil in the past few days so the only thing i can think of is oil is coming back up and through the throttle body :dunno:

Over oiled Air filter?

naw man, it just started happening yesterday. catch can is fine, empty and clean. been running everything like it is for two years, then randomly see oil all over the air damn underneath the drenched filter. no other source of oil except from the filter of the aem...

Is it in the intake tube as well, or could the tray be getting it from a oil cooler line leak?
I know you say the filter is all oily, but think you should see if it really is coming back through the intake.

yea its all in the intake as well

Pull down your catalytic converter and see if it's plugged. Excessive back pressure can cause the oil to back up into the intake.

i have a midpipe

so im guessing nobody has any clue as to what can be the cause of this? checked oil the other day and its between the top two markers on dip stick so its def not overfilled. guess this is just a cold case file. somebody call scooby and the gang, looks they got another mystery to solve lol

Need pic of your installation and the disaster scene....

well i have since cleaned everything, filter, tray, etc and resorted to just a breather on the the "fill up post" if you will... and its fine. no oil seeping into the breather, however my filter is dripping again after maybe 20 miles of driving. i'll shoot a pic for you guys but im sure its not going to really help you out in a possible diagnosis. i mean its been fine for two years and then all of a sudden...bam! filter and tray drenched but catch can empty and clean. iv torn the search up trying to find another example of this happening with a catch can....cant find a thing.

AEM uses a dry-flow filter... so you never oil it.

How far up the intake did you observe oil?
Was it to the throttle body and past it?
Did you notice oil in one of the air lines before the throttle body?
Did you also clean the filter with the appropriate cleaner?

Without a pictures...

Best bet is that the breather line from the oil filler is the one you put the catch can on. The other two can barf oil as well. One if a check valve fails on an OMP injector, the other if the check valve fails on some other little thing, I think the OMP oil access point itself. Then engine pressure oil will come back through the line. I think the line the feeds the OMP can move a lot more oil. The injector lines do not see that much at all.

Good news is that when you pull the entire upper intake to clean it, you can get to the valve pretty easily...

I run all three to a catch can because I am paranoid.

If not the above, picture please.

i am almost certainly inclined to believe it is coming back through one of the other vacuums as you suggested. when i pulled the intake off it didn't seem as if the throttle body had oil on it, however the holes where the other vacuums hook up seemed clean as well. however, the rubber couplings that join the metal pieces of the intake together had little oil puddles gathered behind the airflow screens. so, if oil is indeed coming back up through one of the other vacuums (which is what i think is going on) is 3 catch cans the only way to solve, or better yet, what does this mean and how do i fix???

One of those air lines (btw... none of the three are vacuum lines) is used for the Jet Air-Fuel Mixing System.
The tube delivers a jet of air in the intake port that speeds the flow of fuel over the intake port walls and boosts atomisation of fuel particles adhering to the walls.
Not sure what noticeable effects will occur if you remove this line from the intake.

But you also wouldn't need 3 separate catch cans... just tie all the lines into one can.

ahhh i see. thanks for that bit of info!

And, before you do the plumbing, figure out what failed. If it is intermittent, it will be hard. But, I recommend you try. Run a q-tip inside the lines looking for oil, that might help. If they are clean, means it has been awhile since it barfed, and you may be good.

Good Luck.

Check you oil cooler for a leak.

The wind is pushing it towards the filter and it is sucking it up.

Make sure it's not an external source.

I hope you don't have someone that hates you and is squirting oil on your filter because they are jealous.

lol!! yea i checked the only source was from inside the intake. its been a few days and about 30 miles of driving and everything is dry so far.... which is better than when i drove 20 miles or less after first clean and it the filter/inner intake was drenched again. hope it was just a one time random situation. something along the nature of jons comment is what i believe happened

04 6spd. ive got the same problem... went on a "spirited" drive cleaning out some winter carbon, came home, few hours later while putting on my summer rims i see a spot of oil on the ground. WTF! so i opened my hood and found a lot of oil in the air box and K&N airfilter was oily. oil was on the radiator/fans and crank pulley. started my car checked the 2 oil lines beneath the airbox to see if they were leaking and they didnt. oil was in my intake (K&N typhoon Short Ram intake) and a film in my upper intake. i check oil level often and never overfill. what are the purposes of the 3 rubber lines after the MAF? ive seen mixed answers, but the first from the MAF and the oil filler tube had oil in them the most. I'm not sure what to do. other than clean or replace MAF and replace plugs(they are due for it but this didnt help im sure) no CEL's either.

just clean them. those tubes are breather tubes so gas vapor goes back into the engine not to the air.

Update here, if you run all three to a catch can, make sure you plumb the catch can back to one of the ports on the intake. Just cap the other two. The two related to the OMP seem to draw a LOT of air, and it all goes into the engine. Enough air that if you do not read it with the MAF, it looks like a huge vacuum leak. I found this out during the Mazda Maniac tuning process.