I took the filter of the supercharger today to install my SC CAI, and in doing so I noticed that there was a slight bit of oil in the SC inlet. The impeller blades were clean.



I didn't have the crankcase vent. hose hooked up to the filter, so its not from that. Therefor I assume this is oil from inside the blower.

This normal I assume/hope?

 

Mine has just a non visible resedue it only feels greasy, basically bone dry.

 

I have something to report as well, though I shouldn't be jumping to conclusions until I take the piping off...

When I was cleaning the engine bay a little bit a few weeks ago I noticed a greasy substance in the vicinity of the MAF socket on the s/c intake pipe... took a closer look to see a sweat-like effect going down the pipe towards the cone!

I haven't looked closer yet, but I assume that it's either some kind of gunk that just happened to hit the piping in that particular spot, or the blower is spitting oil upon release of throttle at boost (backpressure effects?). It sure seems to be motor oil though...

 

hmm.... seals going out...?

 

Blower only has 2000 miles on it....I sure hope not.

 

Well, there isn't any other reason for that much oil to be there that I can think of.... anyone else wanna take a shot?

 

I suppose it would be covered under warrenty (still stock pully), but I can't imagine why the seals would be bad already...

 

You guys aren't making me horribly happy right now

 

You're right ejj, there is no reason... call Vortech and see what they say about it.. I'm sure they'll just have you send it in for a quick seal replacement though, and yeah, it's still under warrenty. Good luck.

 

There's no way oil can get from the bearings to the air inlet against the flow of air. There are types of oil seal that uses air flow as the sealing effect (pressurized labyrinth seals, to name one).

I think it's oil from the K&N filter.

 

That could be. I cleaned the inlet and installed a new filter (CAI) yesterday, so I'll look again in a few hundred miles, although I suppose I'd expect to see the same thing if the filter was at fault.

 

There's no way that's oil from the filter. I'm 110% sure that's motor oil dude. Besides, when was the last time you've seen dark brown filter oil?... Every other one i've seen is clear or pink. It's motor oil. And there's only one spot that it could have come from... I can see how it's odd for the oil to go backwards.... but maybe that's what's leaked out while the car was off... the rest just made it's way down the sc piping..

 

The oil would be brown from filtered dirt. At any rate, I don't think we need to jump to conclusions just yet. If it's just oil from the filter, it should gradually get better as the excess oil gets used up. If it's the seals, it will gradually get worse. But I still maintain that it's not possible for oil to make it from the bearings on the other side of the impellor to the blower inlet. Hmmm, unless there's some weird vorticity in the airflow causing some recirculation at the inlet. Naaaah. Hmmmm. Naaaaah. Hmmmmmmm.

 

Yeah, the more I think about it, the more you would think that if oil could get past the seals, it would get caught in the impellor blade and send down the intake piping.

If its a leaking after the cars been shut off, you'd think it would end up at the lowest point (bottom of the compressor housing) rather than in the intake path.

Like I mentioned, brand new filter yesterday, so I'll have to wait a while to figure this out. I'll call vortech today though to see what they say.

 

well. Using your idea of the vorticity of the airflow the brown oil with filtered dirt would have been sucked into the pathway as well....

It's motor oil damnit

 

I know color doesn't mean much...but my oil that's in the now is much darker than that. Its seen about 2500 miles, and is close to black.

 

well the pic you showed us is on a silver surface with good lighting through it....


smell it!...

 

The fact that it looks like the oil goes around the whole inlet makes me think it's dirty oil from the K&N. Let's not forget that the SC moves a lot more CFM than stock so it's quite possible the SC could suck out much of the excess oil from the filter.


Dave

 

If it was the K&N filter recharge oil shouldn't it still have a pink tinge to it?

 

If it was clean, I'd say yes, but we're thinking here that the trapped dirt has changed the tinge from pink to brown.

 

Looks more like yucky cooking oil to me. Unfortunately I get stuck cleaning the air vent on my countertop kitchen range and it sure looks like that.

 

That's what I thought, too. Did Eric lose a hamburger in the intake?

 

I doubt it...We would have seen some streaks of ketchup in there too

 

mmmmm...cooking burgers in the manifold again?

 

That's where that went!

Probably have ground beef shooting out at the cars behind me!

 

My blower had a bit of stuff in there.

 

I know you were all wondering....

Checked the blower this past weekend and there was no sign of oil.

Must have been from the filter.

 

That's a relief!

This may be a dumb question, but do K&N filters come pre-oiled? I'm seeing conflicting information on this.

 

Um, I dunno. I was under the impression that they were. I though that's why they come wrapped in a plastic bag.

I didn't oil either filter before putting them on...

 

Well, that's what I thought, too. I came across a cardomain site where somebody thought otherwise, but I seem to remember reading the literature that came with the filter that said it was pre-oiled. Thanks, Eric. Also thanks for the ASP link.

 

I had the same thing right after I put on my new K&N filter when I did the CAI write-up. I had the same exact pic as you and looked again like 2-3 weeks later and there was nothing. So I would agree that it is oil from the K&N filter.