Pulled intercooler to clean, found oily residue, help!

[Jeff]

I just removed the IC to clean it per the Spring Cleaning tips on gnttype.org. I noticed that the outlet side (to the TB) had quite a bit of what appears to be an oil/gas mixture puddling around the IC hose and coating the outlet neck. There is nothing like this on the inlet side, and the outlet from the turbo is very clean and nice. Is this normal for a high mileage car? I have not yet installed the breather bypass kit, but plan to.
Also, I felt around the turbo and the impeller was nice and smooth with no lateral play or end play that I could detect by hand.
Thanks!
Jeff

 

[Roc87]

That's why you are cleaning it, who knows if it's ever been cleaned out, so some oil is normal. If you start seeing smoke while driving around that's when you start to worry about your turbo seals....and from what you said the turbo is fine.

 

[svtnos]

could that build up in there cause the engine to back fire at WOP?

 

[Kevin Turch]

WOP?, hey im a WOP , actually mine was pretty dirty but never backfired at WOT, might be something else causing it to backfire.

 

[ALBERTAN]

WOP = Wail on Pedal

 

[svtnos]

oops LOL i meant WOT. sorry

 

[ALBERTAN]

On a more serious note, I wouldn't expect it to cause a backfire at WOT (someone correct me if that's incorrect please). You can have that oil blown into the intake under boost though. It would effectively lower the octane of your fuel and could certainly cause detonation and decreased performance.

When I cleaned mine out last month I got a can of Cleens from the dealership and poured it in. Came out filthy black so I filled the IC to the top with mineral spirits and let it sit for an afternoon. That did the trick, though it may have been clean after the first step. IC seems to work great now. But then I am used to the L2A setup on the SyTys.