The other day while changing the oil and doing some other maintenance on my '85 300D that when I pulled the air filter canister out to clean it I noticed that there was some oil in the intake hose as well as in the turbo inlet. It was a bit more than just a residual amount, in fact it was dripping a little out of the hose and the bottom curved section of the turbo inlet had a 3/8" wide strip of oil sitting in it as well. As far as I can tell it seems to be sucking it in from the breather pipe that leads from the valve cover to the intake hose. Is this serious enough to worry about that it could also affect my turbo and oxidation catalyst or is just normal? It doesn't seem to have that much blow-by at idle but I've never checked it at higher engine speeds.

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DJ


84 300D Turbodiesel 190K with 4 speed manual sold in 03/2012

I have a 85 300D California, mine is like your's.
Not much blowby.
Don't worry about it.

Thanks for the reassurance. I'm thinking that there may be a connection with finding the oil in the intake system and the high speed driving I had been doing lately. I have seen some smoke in my mirror a few times as well but that's probably normal in any diesel.

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DJ


84 300D Turbodiesel 190K with 4 speed manual sold in 03/2012

A little bit of oil coming from the breather hose is normal. Afterall it's a ventilation hose that's there to relieve crankcase pressure by redirecting oil-saturated air from the crankcase back to the intake. Watch your oil consumption. If your car uses less than a quart in 2000 miles, I'd say it's in great shape.

BTW, if your car still has the original trap oxidizer, I'd get it replaced under warranty ASAP.

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2004 VW Jetta TDI (manual)

Past MB's: '96 E300D, '83 240D, '82 300D, '87 300D, '87 420SEL

Fortunately, the previous owner took care of the trap oxidizer. As far as oil consumption, it looks like I had far more than one qt/2K miles. It looked like I was down almost 3qts/3k miles. I always refill the old oil in the bottles I used for the oil change. That way I can sort of tell what kind of oil consumption I have. This time seemed much more than the last time but then I was doing a lot of high-speed highway driving recently. I check oil level from time to time and its always been within the operating range on the stick but I hadn't checked for the last 1K miles which was about when I started the high-speed driving.
Since new, the car always had 3K mile oil changes.

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DJ


84 300D Turbodiesel 190K with 4 speed manual sold in 03/2012