my mechanic says it is not a squeaky belt but the oil air seperator that needs replacing....

he said it was 1500 dollars in labor alone, you had to pull the engine and the unit was in the oil pan...

i have the dealer manuel which show an oil seperator behind the oil pan however allt he how to articles show replacing a unit on the back side of the engine on the driver side....which is hard to get to but can be done by removing the intakes and what not.....


i am assuming that there are 2 sides to the unit....and the one on the top side is the side the crank case.......am i correct? does the unit on the exterior the one that actually goes bad?

 

I jus had mine replaced. it cost me 550ish...

My mechanic, an independant, says that a lot of places remove the motor and that's what the book calls for but he could get to it with his smaller hands and experience...

Thats all I can add...It is behind the tensioner and under the intake manifold i believe

 

well it is behind the drivers side of the engine , have to remove the 2 plenums, and am working on removing the upper intake, i have the 2 bolts removed from it, i just need to get to where i can see it and remove the other hoses and put in the new one....

the mechanic was looking at tube that extends from the oil pan to the crank case , so he was looking at the wrong thing......the manual as fas as i can tell doesn't mention anything about the exterior unit, which is surprising considering how often people have issues with it

 

well the 2 plenums and upper intake on the driver side is off, changing the actual oil separator will prob only take 1 hr, getting to it took 3, WOW the boxers must have it easy changing these things

 

What were the symptoms that lead you to start this replacement?

 

the porsche tech told me so

there was excessive amount of vacuum in the crank case, if you puled out the dipstick it would throw a vaccum leak code, and after warm up it would make a horrible noise, the tech said the crank case builds up so much vacuum it starts pulling air past seals and is not good, so i am replacing it...

upon pulling the intake there was a lot of oil in them, i am surprised the car didn't smoke.....

 

Did you take pics of the install?

 

i can take pics if you like, i didn't really see a lot of documentation on the web about it, but it is very difficult to take pictures of as you cant see any of it through out the diffrent states...you mostly do it by sticking your hand behind the engine and "guessing" that you have the correct part.....


not that i have the intake out i may be able to get some good pics....i will work on it tomorrow and if i can put something informative together i will post a how to

 

That would be a very beneficial thing to this community. Thanks iornman!

 

excellent!!!!!

 

It's not easy. But it's not super hard,just time consuming. On Boxsters it takes a lot of switching from working on top and bellow the engine. It's also a pain lining everything up.

FYI using hose clamps pliers makes removing the oil separator much easier.

Thanks for all the good info.