Recently I crawled under my car to change the oil and noticed some oil coming from one of the couplers on the intake piping. I took the coupler off and the piping has a slight coating of oil inside it, there is not a lot of oil but you can definatly tell some had been going through there. This is the piping between the turbo and intercooler, I did not check on the other side of the intercooler. I talked to someone else and they said this is normal but I want more opionions. This is a 06 MR completly stock.

 

That is normal due to the PCV recirculation. Look at the line that come of the valve cover and it follows to the intake pipe, and thats your source for the oil. You can remove the line the put a breather on the valve cover and cap the intake port off, or run a catchcan. I have a Saiko Michi can, but the breather is cheaper to do.

 

Your turbo might be on its way out. How much shaft play do you have? Have you been running high boost for an extended period of time?

 

The way I read it, it isnt the intake, it's the j pipe between the turbo outlet and intercooler.

 

Intake pipe leads to the turbo, which will then dump the oil into the lower IC pipe.

Like chu mentioned, oil in the intake is normal because of the hoses off of the valve cover. If you don't like the mess, you will want to run a catch can.

 

I know that and I see he put "intake piping" in the first sentence, but later in the post on he says "This is the piping between the turbo and intercooler". He just wasn't very specific. If the oil is leaking from the LICP coupler, it would seem it was more than just PCV.

 

Anyone found a good way to clean an oily intercooler in this case? The charge pipes would be easy enough but the ic is going to be tricky. The oil gets in the way of rapid heat transfer by the intercooler.

 

Soak the intercooler with brake cleaner or paint remover

 

Yeah, I like that. I guess hitting it from both ends would be best (). That's going to be quite a soak.

 

Im sorry for the confusion about the intake. I meant the lower intercooler pipe, between the turbo and intercooler. Testudo, the car has 30,000 on it and has always been completly stock with stock boost. I really appreciate the info, and just wanted to make sure it wasnt the turbo.

 

Mine does this too even without the pcv valve recirc to the intake. I heard its normal to get a little oil blow by in the intercooler pipes as long as its not too much.