Hi all, just joined, this forum looks like its the best one around for Mini's. Glad to be hear an look forward to helping where I can.

I did some searching but came up empty.

My mini is getting a bit of oil in the supercharger intercooler. Is that normal?

 

Could be coming from seals in supercharger, the two oil resorviors. I recently bought a mini that the pto gears ate themselves because ran dry, and i had a ton of oil in intercooler i cleaned out. have you recently checked/changed the superchargers oil?

 

PS little bit of oil may be okay? mine was never in good running condition to tell you lol. Maybe others will chime in.

 

It's normal to find a little oil inside the intercooler.

 

+1 on Minibeagle

 

Ok so sounds normal. Thank you, sirs. It was just a bit in the rubber seals on both sides. I whipped it up with a rag...

this feels like a dumb question, but how does it get there? I thought the intercooler was on the air intake side of the engine?

my only guess was Pcv system.

i do need to do an oil change on the supercharger. Planning to just haven’t gotten to it. How often does it need to be changed I wonder?

 

Supercharger should be serviced at every 80,000 to 100,000 miles.

 

You are exactly right that the source is PCV and is totally normal. The PCV system sucks the cylinder blow by gas together with oil vapour from the crankcase into the intake. The oil vapour is absolutely also normal - formed from liquid oil at few hundred degrees F. The intercooler does exactly what it is designed to do, cool the compressed air and the oil vapour condense from gas into liquid and loiter at the bottom of the intercooler. No harm at all. Yes, you can argue that the oil film forms an insulation and the intercooler is hence less efficient than if otherwise clean.

 

Many thanks, sir

 

Good to know. Thank you. I think I might put in a fresh pcv valve. Guess I’ll be routinely cleaning the intercooler as well

 

Old car, a little is norm. Swap out the pcv, you can clean the intercooler w/ 100% acteone before reinstalling. If you're getting into racing an anticipate a future prob w/ blow by look into an oil catch

 

yes sir, solid advise. Thank you. I have a pvc valve here waiting to get some time for install. And I will try the acetone.

however I heard kerosene works well. Is it safe on the aluminum, anyone know?

*pcv