...Because mine does, on the euro wagon.
And here’s how I found out. Over the weekend I trucked on over the Chad300TD’s house to install a new air cleaner housing that he was graciously willing to part with. My housing was okay, but it always had oil in the bottom of it and the drain hose in the bottom of the housing leaked oil all over everything under the air filter. I’ll try to describe that drain fitting…it looked like a 1” threaded pipe stuck through a hole in the bottom of the housing with two thin nuts holding it in place, one inside the housing and one outside. And at least one of the nuts looked like it was welded in place. So the fit of that pipe in the bottom of the housing was very loose and allowed oil to leak out. And the was no oil separator, the oil came in through a tube in the bottom of the housing, and I guess was expected to flow back out of this pipe thing. Then when we tore the pipe out of the housing, we saw that the end of it had been welded shut. So all of the oil coming from the valve cover was either in the air filter housing, or under it.

Once the old housing was out of the way, we saw that the drain tube was actually a braided steel hose with a female threaded end that attached to the air filter housing, and the other end went right into the exhaust pipe, just after the turbo. It didn’t look like an aftermarket “mod” either. But it was stopped up with who knows what. A little work with a straightened coat hanger got through the clog, hopefully it’ll clear up a little more on its own, or I can get the hanger back out.

So Chad’s filter housing that he gave me has a nipple sticking out the bottom that’s supposed to go into a rigid pipe, like on his car. So we got lucky and found a fitting at pep boys that fit the threads in the end of the braided hose and had 5/8” hose barb on the other side, so we ran a heater hose from the bottom of the filter to the end of the braided hose. Not the cleanest looking solution, but its better than before. And using his mad sheet-metal hammering skillz , Chad fashioned me a heat shield extension to keep the heater hose from melting…the part right under the filter housing.

So now I have a much improved air filter housing that should be oil-leak proof, with a real oil separator built in! So the oil vapors go back into the air intake, but it amazes me that all of the liquid oil that blows out of the valve cover goes right into the exhaust to get burned up. Are other euro versions set up this same way? I’m also wondering now if exhaust gasses are working their way up that drain hose into the air filter…its probably not much, but still.

Another small problem was my EGR valve was hitting the side of the new filter housing, so we move the housing over to the other set of holes in the support bracket, and then the U-tube going to the turbo didn’t fit right. Chad sliced off the end of my old one and we kind made it work for now, but its not a tight connection at the turbo…I’m planning on working on that soon.

I can see now that pictures would have made this much more interesting…I’ll take some next time I’m under there, but at the time we were set on the replacement and photo documentation didn’t really occur to me.


Chad, I want to thank you again for all the help, the parts, your proficiency at making things that are functional and pretty, and your grilling and beer-making skills.

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1985 300TD-euro 352,000 mi
1974 240D (1?)52,000 mi - has a new home now