Little Oil Breather

[ian187]

Whilst fiddling around under my bonnet - polishing anything that will shine! I came around to the little oil breather on top of the left rocker cover (as you sit in the driver seat looking forward) so I decided to take off the plastic cover and check out the foam filter in it.

I was expecting the filter to be a bit oily and maybee gunged up, but mine is absolutely bone dry and I'm fairly certain that no oil fumes have passed through that foam, so I took the foam off, looked under and I can't see anyway for anything to come out of the rocker cover through the foam. The foam sits on a metal disk (bit bigger than a 2p peice) and there looks to be a small circular hole (size of a pea!) in the centre. However this hole is not a hole, it has metal in it! The whole metal disk seems to be solid with no way for anything to breathe. Is this what anyone elses is like?

The reason I became concerned, is that I also noticed a little oil around the rocker cover gasket and after reading the bible, it sounds like this filter maybee blocked and the presure is building up inside the rocker cover.

NB Does the whole of the breather bit come off (apart from the plastic top cover) if so how?

Thanks for reading

[jigs]

Get it opened up - I'd want to know why was it blocked?

[ian187]

Thing is, as you know, its not a 2 minute job to take off that rocker cover, so I was hoping someone else had looked under their foam bit to see what theirs looks like!

Do you have a hole under the foam? or is the hole closed with metal?

At the moment I've got no idea what it should look like

[spend]

If memory serves me correctly it is actually a one way valve and only a pin hole is evident under the foam filter.

[ian187]

Ahhh, so me poking it with a screwdriver, probably isn't helping it

[ian187]

Has anyone looked under this filter? I can't see a hole at all, not even a pin prick one! I'm still confused whether its possible to take this filter off or not - anyone tried?

Help

[greenv8s]

The breather is connected to the low pressure side of the throttle so the crank case should be under slight suction most of the time. The filter you're describing should let air into the engine rather than out (so it is important that you keep that little filter on) although I don't see what purpose it serves. But you would expect the filter to be dry rather than oily if everything is OK.

[shpub]

Tis normal. As Pete says it lets air in rather than the other way round.