HELP! Vortech'd 04 GT - Oil getting in Powerpipe, car barely running....

[Sinister SN95]

Basic background, In August, me and some friends installed a Vortech V2-SQ Supercharger on my 2004 GT. The past month or so, I've had nothing but problems with it.

It has been getting tons of oil inside the powerpipe and airfilter/MAF. So just last week, cleaned the MAF completely, sprayed with cleaner, Put a brand new airfilter on, cleaned the powerpipe, and added 2 oil separators (One on the PCV valve line, and on from the other driver side valve cover)

Ran good for a day or 2, and now its back to the same issues. The car barely starts, it won't get up to idle without me mashing the gas, and there is oil already back inside the powerpipe.

Does anyone here have any similar experiences or know what could possibly be wrong???

Here are some pictures of what has been going on:

(PICTURE OF THE SETUP AND OIL SEPARATORS IN LINE)

(PICTURES OF OIL IN THE POWERPIPE AREA)

(PICTURES OF OIL BETWEEN THE DISCHARGE TUBE & HEAD UNIT)

(AND THE WEIRD ONE, MILKY LOOKING SUBSTANCE ON THE VALVE COVER AND OIL CAP)

This is only after about 3 days of driving it after it was all completely cleaned out and dry.

Any advise you guys can give would be of great help!

-Mike

 

[blacknblue2002]

I'm sorry I can't be of any help because this is beyond me...but I am running the same setup and am curious as to what the problem is.

Are you running Synthetic Oil??? The guys at MPH say that superchargers can fail and leak if synthetic is used, and they only recommend Valvoline 5w30.

 

[AmBo]

Dang. Well you're going to get blowby regardless if you put oil seperators or not. It's just the beauty of the beast.

However, the majority of that blowby SHOULD be burned up. To gunk up like that doesn't sound right. I do get a little collection of oil between the head unit and powerpipe, but i never have a problem with her starting up (knock on wood). I've had the blower on since last August (~15-20,000 miles).

Where are the pictures of your catch cans? I only see one and it looks like it's the one coming off your plenum. Where is the catch can from your driver side valve cover?

 

[BennyBlown2v]

Looks like your head unit blew the front seal. If you bought it new it's still under warranty from Vortech so call the and give them the serial number and you'll have to send it in and get it replaced. Turn around time can vary from 1-3 weeks, so hurry up and check into it.

Oh yeah and that milky substance is from water getting into your engine - either from a headcasket, cracked intake, or sometimes when its cold water vapor condenses in the valvecovers.

 

[Sinister SN95]

I'm sorry I can't be of any help because this is beyond me...but I am running the same setup and am curious as to what the problem is.

Are you running Synthetic Oil??? The guys at MPH say that superchargers can fail and leak if synthetic is used, and they only recommend Valvoline 5w30.

I'm using 5w-20 Dino Oil still... Haven't done anything with Synthetic.

Dang. Well you're going to get blowby regardless if you put oil seperators or not. It's just the beauty of the beast.

However, the majority of that blowby SHOULD be burned up. To gunk up like that doesn't sound right. I do get a little collection of oil between the head unit and powerpipe, but i never have a problem with her starting up (knock on wood). I've had the blower on since last August (~15-20,000 miles).

Where are the pictures of your catch cans? I only see one and it looks like it's the one coming off your plenum. Where is the catch can from your driver side valve cover?

Shouldn't the separators catch some of it though? Both of them are completely empty.

Do you ever get as much oil in there as I have shown in that picture? You should have seen it before I cleaned it, it was a huge puddle of oil in there.

If you look at the top picture, look to the bottom of the picture near the middle... thats the drivers side separator there. The other one is right by the oil cap.

 

[Sinister SN95]

Looks like your head unit blew the front seal. If you bought it new it's still under warranty from Vortech so call the and give them the serial number and you'll have to send it in and get it replaced. Turn around time can vary from 1-3 weeks, so hurry up and check into it.

Are you pretty positive that the seal is shot up front there???

That isn't something that I could fix myself is it?

 

[BennyBlown2v]

Are you pretty positive that the seal is shot up front there???

That isn't something that I could fix myself is it?

Yes - and probably not. There are some writeups out there on how to do it, and its cheaper to do it yourself if you don't have a warranty, but it's pretty mechanically involved and requires a couple specialty tools I believe.

 

[2002BLGT]

yea looks like the blower is leaking , or you could have some oil drain back holes in the heads clogged up with gunk , so when the oil gets pumped up to the top of the engine , its not draining back down quick enough , but you would normally only see this if you had a crap load of miles on the engine and someone didnt change the oil properly ......

 

[Sinister SN95]

Yes - and probably not. There are some writeups out there on how to do it, and its cheaper to do it yourself if you don't have a warranty, but it's pretty mechanically involved and requires a couple specialty tools I believe.

Is there any way possible that it may just be extra oil that got inside the head unit that is coming out now?

I'm just trying to figure out any other ways that this may not require taking the head unit out, never expected this to happen on a new piece on my daily driver

 

[Sinister SN95]

yea looks like the blower is leaking , or you could have some oil drain back holes in the heads clogged up with gunk , so when the oil gets pumped up to the top of the engine , its not draining back down quick enough , but you would normally only see this if you had a crap load of miles on the engine and someone didnt change the oil properly ......

I change the oil every 3K miles, so thats not the problem. Car has 26K miles on it only as well.

Blower leaking is the last thing I wanted to hear


Thanks for all the help everyone...

 

[SADL-UP]

Sinister,

How much oil is the engine using. Have you checked the dipstick to see if the oil level is low? If you are going through oil like crazy then you definitely have a problem but if you are only using, say a quart, every thousand or two thoudand miles then it may not be of concern. It could be that the extra boost created from the supercharger is drawing the oil through the intake plenum and when you turn the engine off, the oil has a chance to drain down the intake pipe to the Supercharger. Just a thought...

 

[VPStang]

you should be more concerned about water in you motor at this point--the blower is the least of your problems...

 

[mineralgraygt]

oil cap should not be that milkey i would do a compression test on it. does the coolant look low? that what oil looks like when its mixing with antifreeze. if the blower was leaking you would have a bunch of oil in the tube going to the tb

 

[04YELLOWGT]

Looks like your head unit blew the front seal. If you bought it new it's still under warranty from Vortech so call the and give them the serial number and you'll have to send it in and get it replaced. Turn around time can vary from 1-3 weeks, so hurry up and check into it.

I know about 10 people with Vortechs and Prochargers and when I first saw mine had oil in my pipe I asked them if they had the same and they all said they did. All it is, is blow by, the more boost the more blow by. I think if the front seal was blew there would be more oil than that. If he never had the pipe off quite a bit of oil could have built up over time.

 

[Sinister SN95]

oil cap should not be that milkey i would do a compression test on it. does the coolant look low? that what oil looks like when its mixing with antifreeze. if the blower was leaking you would have a bunch of oil in the tube going to the tb

Ill have to check the coolant tonight, didn't even look actually. If it is low, what exactly does that mean when the oil is mixing with the coolant... is the motor going to be f'd?

I know about 10 people with Vortechs and Prochargers and when I first saw mine had oil in my pipe I asked them if they had the same and they all said they did. All it is, is blow by, the more boost the more blow by. I think if the front seal was blew there would be more oil than that. If he never had the pipe off quite a bit of oil could have built up over time.

These pictures are the second go-around of the oil in the powerpipe area, I didn't have pictures of the first one... I only have one of the airfilter from when I first cleaned it:

View attachment 346937

Lots of oil was in the airfilter, and you can even see how much drippage was there on the bottom of the MAF.

This was from August until about 3 weeks ago, thats how much was in there... and the car has never been to the track, and I get into boost once in a while.

 

[BennyBlown2v]

I know about 10 people with Vortechs and Prochargers and when I first saw mine had oil in my pipe I asked them if they had the same and they all said they did. All it is, is blow by, the more boost the more blow by. I think if the front seal was blew there would be more oil than that. If he never had the pipe off quite a bit of oil could have built up over time.

Yeah except he says his car runs like crap and there was enough oil it fouled the maf.

and OMG to those pics, thats ALOT of oil! Get that blower pulled off and rebuilt, also you will most likely need a new maf....

 

[Skud]

(AND THE WEIRD ONE, MILKY LOOKING SUBSTANCE ON THE VALVE COVER AND OIL CAP)

This is only after about 3 days of driving it after it was all completely cleaned out and dry.

Any advise you guys can give would be of great help!

-Mike

When you've driven your car have you brought it up to operating temp for any length of time? This happens to my car when I don't let it get up to temp. You get the white/milky substance because of the condensation in the engine and it mixes with some oil. Getting your car nice and warm will evaporate the condensation and you won't have this problem..

I'm assuming that since you're having so many problems with your car you've been running it for only 20 minutes or so and then shutting it down.. The white crud is the result..

Once you get the head unit fixed take your car for a nice long cruise and all the white crud should be gone..

Riley

 

[SilverBullet00]

I wouldnt be concearned about the cap. Skud is right, its probably from not letting the oil get hot enough to burn out water, etc.

Check your fluids, make sure there is no oil in the water and no water in the oil. Do a leak down test. Have the supercharger rebuilt.

 

[Sinister SN95]

Thanks guys for all the replies.

Come to think of it, those pics of the oil cap and pcv were mainly after a 15-20 minute ride to AutoZone and back... Ill keep an eye on my coolant and make sure it is ok.

Guess it looks like the blower is going to have to come off Public Transportation is going to be my only option for a while, hopefully my MAF is going to be OK, don't need to search for another one of those.

 

[darkside03gt]

I'm sorry I can't be of any help because this is beyond me...but I am running the same setup and am curious as to what the problem is.

Are you running Synthetic Oil??? The guys at MPH say that superchargers can fail and leak if synthetic is used, and they only recommend Valvoline 5w30.

I call totall on the synthetic causing superchargers to fail. NO way vortech puts thier supercharger on cars that are required to run full synthetic like the corvette camaro and lexus. also our gts service manual recommends a synthetic blend. If that was the case those OTHER guys would have nothing but problems. total