I've read all about OCC's and how effective they are at capturing all that nasty oil and such. So I thought I'd take a look inside my InterCooler. Guess what I found? Nothing. Just the slightest film if you rubbed your finger along the inside. '02 at 30k miles, some spirited driving and a half day at the track. I washed the outside real good, got all the dead bugs out of the fins, dried it real good and put it back together. Then made the 1200 mile round trip to VB.

Now I can spend that OCC money on something else. Like ICE CREAM and lots of it.

...Les

 

I agree. I've got 2600 miles on an 06 S and it's bone dry. If at a later point I find a substantial build-up of oil I'll consider it, but not until then.

 

I guess it depends on how you drive it too...did you spray any solvent into the IC? The oil is not on the outside of the IC hopefully!...also I am not sure I would wash it in water but....

When I cleaned the IC in my 04 MCS (bought used at 18400 mi and checked out by our Mini Dealer)...a ton of crapola came out of the IC, along with the solvent and pics are posted in the OCC thread along with others. It was pretty dark and thick even though the solvent made up about 1/2 the volume in my photos...You usually can only see and feel a slight amount of oil on the IC Boots...it is the fins that are coated inside, and it takes a solvent like break parts cleaner to remove it....

From what I have been told a light foot on the pedal can make it worse...no knowledge...just what I have been told by those better at this than I.

I will say that the car seemed to run much better (supercharger response) in the 95 degree heat after cleaning...but it could have been my imagination.


A bigger problem may be that the engine is trying to burn off this non combustionable stuff while it runs out as a vapor from the Crankcase! $120 is cheap (Supercharged engines use more oil than NON....ever wonder why?) and I MAKE MY OWN ICE CREAM! Spiked with a little Irish Cream too!

 

I have an 06 MCSa with 27k miles on it and when I removed the intercooler recently the rubber boots had a significant amount of oil in them. Made me realize a can is necessary. I'll be getting one soon. so I'd suggest you check it every so often to make sure yours stays dry.

 

You also might want to check to make sure your PCV valve is working. That is where the majority of the vapors are coming from.

 

I attached an Alta OCC per polizei's nice diagram (to the PVC side only. This was due to the thread on the OCC by polizei .

I removed my IC at 19000 mi and found it pretty well coated with oil. It was also very evident in the rubber boots of the IC. There are Pics of polizei's cleanout and my own...bear in mind that some of the volume is the solvent...in my case about 1/2 of the volume in my photo is solvent but the rest is crap!

Anyway I removed the OCC the other day to do a little stiffining mod to avoid possible vacuum collapse and destruction of the can body. (at about 600 mi after occ install) and found the foam filtering material just beginning to discolor from oil blow by ALREADY. (the compression in the car is fine so the rings are too!) There is no question in my mind that there is a pretty fair share of blow by gunk coming from the PVC end!

 

The oil doesn't just reduce IC efficiency, it also reduces the effective octane number of your fuel.

Probably not a biggie, but for $15, an OCC is probably worth it - can't hurt, might help...

 

Yeah, when I changed out my fuel injectors, I had my first look into the intercooler and what have you. There was a pretty good amount of oil on both the hot and cold side of it. Catch can is a pretty high pri on my list.

 

congradulations ... you have minimal blow bye . most of us have some , that's why we hang a catch can on there . believe me ; if it doesn't add power i'd prefer not to have it . but it does help with the oil . so ; no we are not out hooking crap up to our cars that we don't need .