Hi everyone,
a newbie here from Australia.
Has anyone successfully, or otherwise, tried ultrasonically cleaning of plastic manifolds or even things like oil separator parts for their TDV8? My 3.6 has been diagnosed with excessive carbon buildup inlet manifold and intake pipes leading to oil coming out of the dipstick. I've only seen one other person on the forums having this exact issue and they never said what the cause was..

I'm thinking about cleaning the inlet manifolds, air intake pipes, crankcase ventilation oil return drain pipes etc but before I do, and possible stuff them up completely I thought I'd ask. I've seen cleaning of injectors on the forum but not manifolds and given their cost new here in Australia I'm keen to look at options.

Any brilliant ideas?

Cheers

Best of luck. Ive left this site,

Last edited by IronDuke50 on Thu Jan 07 2021 11:37pm. Edited 1 time in total

Yep that looks even more tempting now I've seen what they did with that manifold in particular. I'm going to a cylinder head rebuilder tomorrow for my boat motor and I know they use their ultrasonic cleaner for their headwork so I'll see if I can organise them to try one of my manifolds. There's no end to what could potentially be cleaned.

Assuming they say yes then I guess the next thing I need to plan is when I could do the work, pulling all the manifolds etc and then organising new gaskets etc so my car isn't off the road for weeks waiting for parts.

I'm still struggling to completely understand why the blocked manifolds would cause too much crankcase pressure but I'll keep reading about it. I'll let you know once I've spoken to the head guys.

Cheers
Matt

If you're taking the manifolds off and cleaning it all out, may as well replace the EGRs and the crankcase ventilation oil separator. They'll have to come off anyway. 2012 SDV6 - it's missing a couple of cylinders
2008 TDV8 - it was a labour of love and is much missed

Yep, looking forward to seeing what's underneath the manifold cover. Hopefully nothing major broken but I couldn't be that lucky.

Hi,
just a follow on up on this in case it helps someone else.

The issue I was having with the dipstick pushing out oil when driving my 3.6 TDV8. It turns out I had a hairline internal crack somewhere in the inlet manifolds/rocker cover. I was able to do the right hand cover myself at home but couldn't do the left without removing the a/c gas so I paid for that to be done by someone else.

I was going to be charged for pressure testing the old manifolds so I just replaced both. I initially only intended to replace the right hand one if it was broken but I was told (after I'd spent 2 cold nights in the shed) that if you replace one, and even if it's broken, then the other 'good' manifold will likely then also fail because there's now going to be more airflow through the one that's okay. It would have been nice to know that from the start.

I'd seen write ups where people were told to remove the PCV system but after studying that I couldn't see how there'd ever be enough positive airflow into the sump from that. It was only happening when the engine was on boost and then the crack expanded enough to allow excess air into the crankcase and then the dipstick was the only way out.

Either way, replacing the manifolds worked and it's been great since. Dipstick hasn't moved and no oil spray anywhere like before. Something for someone who gets this issue in future.

Thanks for the follow up Slowpoke.

That's useful data for the collective and it's also nice to see a recent member following up their issue.

Here's to many happy miles in the future.  2012 SDV6 - it's missing a couple of cylinders
2008 TDV8 - it was a labour of love and is much missed