Off Roading Offroading + Open Crank Case = Mess

[rfinke]

This is my first post so please bare with me. I have had my '02 Ram for about a year now, this fall I finally got to test it out offroad on some trails in Colorado. It was a fairly easy trail, wide open, but with some very steep inclines and declines towards the top. The truck was handling awesome until I had reached the final summit and was descending down to a turn around, when about halfway down the descent about 2 quarts of oil spilled out of the breather bottle. After spilling out of the bottle it hit the fan spraying the oil all over the inside of the engine compartment and the front bumper. I talked to a local mechanic that worked on dodge diesels and he said that it may be due to the steep angle and or the pressure that had built up in my crank case due to the high elevations. My question is what can I do to avoid this situation next time, other than just not drive on anything that steep. I have read some advertisements in the magazine for an "Airsep" that essentially closes the crank case, by venting it into the air intake. Has anyone had any experience with this product, if so please comment good or bad. Any other experiences or suggestions would be gladly appreciated. Thanks for the the advice in advance.

 

[kaptn]

Go to search and check around their are all kinds of remedies.

 

[BarryG]

rfinke:

Your mechanic was right. It was the down angle (not pressure)that caused the spill. It's something like 25 degrees will do it. Dodge has a tsb on it (you could always go down backwards). Some members have had luck getting it done for free others not. They relocate the breather from the front of the engine to the side (not the bottle the tube feeding the bottle). Removing the bottle or lengthening the tube won't fix this issue it would move the location of where the oil spills and might keep it from getting all over your engine but won't keep it from happening. The tsb seems to be a fairly involved deal.



I also have thought about the airsep for this but if I recall it sends that stuff back to the air intake. Which would probably be fine for the amount of oily vapor that makes up the drip on the driveway. Now I know I am not the brightest bulb in the pack but what is my intake going to do with 2 quarts of oil or even 1/2 pint? If you could route the oil back into the valve cover or something that might be something or even the exhuast at least it wouldn't end up all over your engine. Sorry not trying to be a smart A but I see trouble written all over the airsep if that happened while it was installed.

 

[dseabaugh]

WARNING!!

If you are sending two quarts of oil into the intake going down a steep inline in a Diesel engine you are going to get a run away condition like floorboarding the throttle except there will be NO top end. It may go to 7000 rpms if holds together and shutting off the key will not stop it! I had a John Deere engine do that. Trust me, you don't know whether to run or try to stop it. I don't think you want to suddenly go down the steep incline at 160 mph. !:--)

 

[JHerrlich]

Guys,



I have an Airsep and it does a pretty good job for itself. The crankcase breather is routed through a filter and is allowed to separate. The separated oil moves to the bottom of the filter assembly and is routed back to the sump through a check valve and the balance of the vapor gets drawn into the intake via a venturi affect. I've been running it for a while and my intake is still as clean as ever with no oil residue. The way the breather is routed to the Airsep, you would be very hard pressed to get straight oil into the Airsep (you'd have to be almost straight down). If you did, you still wouldn't get much into the intake, it would just drizzle down to the oil return (the vapor inlet to the intake is at the top).



The only problem I've had with the Airsep is that it has a vacuum regulator thing in the path from the breather and if your intake pulls too much vacuum it'll shut the breather off. This isn't a problem for you seals because the kit comes with a different oil cap that'll let pressure out, but when it does, a little oil goes with it. Not very much at all, but enough to make it wet around the oil cap. That's the part that irritates me. Other than that, I think it's a pretty good system. The whole reason I got it was because of the oil drain on downhill slopes.



BTW, the price isn't near what it used to be a year ago. Pretty reasonable now.

 

[BarryG]

JH:

It sounds like I need to further investigate the airsep. If oil cant get into the intake it may be a lower cost solution to the oil problem. I do have a question for you though since you have one. You mentioned the vacumn regulator, I guess I am thick if the CTD doesn't create intake vacumn and is in fact pressurized because of the turbo how/when does the vacumn regulator create a problem. Sorry just trying to understand how the thing works. TIA for the info.

 

[JHerrlich]

The engine doesn't create vacuum. But that turbo does. The airsep is placed on the intake side of you're turbo, between your air cleaner and your turbo. I think the regulator is there to keep from pulling too much vacuum from your crankcase.

 

[HC]

The TSB can be found here:

http://dodgeram.info/tsb/2002/09-002-02.htm



It's not the altitude, it's the steep downhill. If you're still under warranty, a good dealer "should" do this free. It's pretty involved; 3. 2 hours labor, and includes removing things like the injection pump, so it's probably more than some "shadetree" mechanics would want to tackle.

 

[Joseph Donnelly]

The fix is to install the 12-valve breather system that is near the back of the engine block side cover. I have heard of a few being done under warranty.