Hi all - is there a breather pipe on the 1.9JTD 8 valve 105 bhp engine?
I've just finished putting my MkI 2005 1.9JTD back together after doing the timing belt side crank seal again. Had to do this job when I first got the motor 20 months ago. Fair play, I have done 11,000 miles since the initial seal replacement (9.000 or them in the last 8 months) but did think it should have lasted alot longer than that.
Got talking to a neighbour who asked the question 'is there a breather pipe from the cam cover that may be blocked'.
If there is, maybe my problem is the engine isn't breathing correctly and nett result is an oil seal lets go.

Sods law - got it all back together, done the 30 mile drive to work and the bloody seal let go again.
Another 3 litres of oil to get it home and a right old mess underneath the car and the rear door has got a new coating of oil from the vortex.
Status is I've got it stripped down and the crank shaft seal as literally been blown out of the oil seal housing. It was only the fact that crank shaft timing belt and auxilliary belt pulley held it in or else it would have blown right out.
So this weekends mission as been trying to find out what is causing the crank case excessive pressure that is strong enough to blow the crank seal out of it's housing.
Indeed, there are breathers on the 1.9JTD engine. Both going from the right hand side of the rocker cover. Crank case breather run feeds from the lower depths of the engine block up to the back of the rocker cover. The second breather pipe runs from the front of the rocker cover down towards the turbo feed pipe under the air filter housing. So my mission today as been to check the breather pipes are not blocked. What a sod of a job to reach the engine block connection. EGR valve off, fuel filter off, inlet manifold throttle housing off and with the engine pulled forward to gain excess to the pipe connection. The other option would have been to take the starter motor off, but as I've got timing belt end all dismantled, I choose to do the top end component dismantle. After all that, the pipe was clear. Never mind, I had to know for sure. Same with the breather pipe at the front down to the air filter, turbo pipe.
So my next train of thought is perhaps exhaunt pipe, particularly the old school particulate gauze filter. Rather that take all the exhaust off, I'm going to disconnect the exhaust just down from the turbo and stick an air line in there and see if the air blows through the exhaust as it should.
From there, it'll be the oil pump/cooler components. I'm told there is a release valve in the oil pump that potentially is not going it's job. If anybody on here can give me any advice on an oil pump pressure release valve functions I will be all ears.
I have read about blow by/back caused by wear and tear between the cylinder chambers and piston rings. I'm tentively trying to justify if this is the problem. The engine as done 118,000 miles on a 55 plate so not really excessive. When running OK, there was no blue/black smoke out of the exhaust and no excessive oil consumption, fingers crossed that's hopefully not the problem. I guess the real way to check the condition of the cylinders is to do a compression test, but I really want to check out the other theory's first. If it goes as far as a compression test, will this involve removing the injectors? If so, would it require new injectors seals/O rings on refitting the injectors? I image connecting a compression test via the glow plug bores would be a right pain on these engines.
When the car was running, excessive engine top pressure could certainly be felt when the oil filler cap was removed. The other thing I noticed was that first thing in the morning, the car did struggle going up an incline at the end of my road. Below 2,000 rpm, the car wasn't happy in second gear, drop down to first gear and get the revs above 2k, the turbo would boost in and it flew up this hill, even in 2nd with the turbo boost.
If anybody else can give me other pointers as to the cause of the excessive crank case pressure I'd be very happy to hear.
Last but not least, the engine did have an engine flush 9,000 miles ago.
I do have my doubts if the engine was serviced correctly by the previous owner. She was a single mum and money was tight - good chance it was run way past it's oil change due date.

That is a head twister.... But I am not convinced a blocked breather would cause a new oil seal to blow out!

It is possible the oil pressure relief valve is jammed, more credible due to the previous history and the flush... It is possible the flush has loosened something which has lodged somewhere.

I had a neighbour who laughed at me and my changing oil every three months. He boasted how his little Toyota hadn't had an oil change in the four years he'd had it.

Few months later I saw it being loaded on a transporter to take it to the scrappy, apparently it had seized.... I never laughed. Not even a little bit

My own car has 118,000 miles and before two of the injectors died, it was being driven flat out every day and not a peep of oil problems, so unless yours has been particularly poorly serviced, I cant imagine the wear being that catastrophic!

I also own a 2004 Zafira 1.8 petrol 16v with a whopping 216,000 miles on the clock and I regularly take it to 6500rpm in several gears (just because) and it doesn't suffer oil leaks or oil use.

Is the air filter coated in oil at all?

Is there high pressure when you remove the filler cap while the engine is at idle?

I wonder if one of the oil galleries is choked due to the flushing process?

What about the gearbox end, is there a mess of oil weeping out the bottom of the box (surely there would be a problem with both seals)?

Is it possible the seal has been damaged due to eccentric movement of the crank shaft? This would suggest shell bearing wear which again would lead back to lack of oil servicing back in the days before you got it. But then that would be noticable as a noise on acceleration.

It may be that the seal wasn't properly bedded, but unlikely.

It is strange that this has all happened since the engine flush..... I would start with the oil pressure relief valve.

Cheers Andoo for reply
Oil pressure release valve is the next on the list to check. Is it part of the oil pump and is it a serviceable item?
The high blowing pressure with the cap removed on idle has always been evident and was certainly there before I done the original engine flush.
When you say oil galleries Andoo, would I be looking at uneven flow of oil under the rocker cover for evidence of this. All the cams look as if they are getting an even coating of oil right across the cam shaft.
The gearbox end looks all clean with no evidence of oil seepage from the gearbox end crank seal. I had the small inspection plate off the bottom of the gearbox so that I could lock the engine via the fly wheel ring gear to undo the timing end crank shaft pully and there was not a drop of oil in the gearbox bell housing.
The air filter is clean as a whistle with only the normal black dust dirt as would be expected and there is no evidence of oil contamination. There is evidence of the air filter slightly blowing outwards, maybe extra combustion pressure finding is way into the air filter chamber is the cause.
Re any crankshaft movement, we done the end float test by depressing the clutch to see if there is any crankshaft end float movement. Got to say I didn't feel any movement on the crankshaft whilst the clutch was being pressed down. Neither could a feel any crankshaft movement, either up or down or side by side.

Normally, the OPRV is removable when oil pump is dismantled....normally! But this is Fiat!

What you could do is undo the oil pressure sensor, screw in one of these double electronic ones and attach a gauge to see what the pressure is sitting at.

Cold pressure should be high-ish, dropping when warm, then a bit more as it gets hot.

It will climb as you rev the engine.

Anyway, if the rear seal is fine, I would still be thinking relief valve as the pump should be at the front of the engine, near the oil filter.

Thanks again Andoo for heads up on sensor fetling to see if I can find the source of the problem.
If it proves I can remove the sensor and get in amongst the valve, sounds like the set up could be critical with the various pressure readings required at different temperature conditions. Bit of shame the old Doblo hasn't got an old school pressure gauge in the dashboard rather than on/off lights.
Hopefully, you've got a point with the pressure being at one end of the engine, the timing belt end oil seal is £8.68 a pop as opposed to £77 for the seal at the gearbox end.

Beginning to think this could be 'blowby' in the piston chambers.
Got talking to a fella up the road who restores and rebuilds classic cars and super fast monsters for a living.
Straight away he said crank case pressure and felt that to produce enough pressure to blow a seal off, it's got to be combustion gas pressure. As previously posted, first thought was breather pipe blockage, but if the pressure is very evident in the top of the cam shaft casing, to me that says the crank case excess pressure is being part allowed to escape up through the crank case breather pipe.
Another question put to me was is the car gutless. Could only answer 'yes' based on the fact that it struggles to go up the hill out of our estate in second gear and of late, been having to drop down into first gear. Since using my son-in-laws 1.8 Focus diesel, it's become apparent how gutless the Doblo was.
So I'm thinking that I need to get the cam belt back on so that I don't have timing issues when doing other fettling.
Need to have a go at the oil pressure test first, then if that proves inconclusive, thinking about having a go at new piston rings and crank shaft shells with the engine still insitu. Potentially, although a pain, I'm hoping I should be able to do the piston rings from the bottom end to avoid taking the cylinder head off and doing it from the top.
A possible blocked up EGR valve was also mentioned, but I couldn't see that because surely a blocked EGR valve as the same effect as a blanked off EGR and I haven't read any post from people that have blanked their EGR having running problems.
If it is 'blowby', I still think it's a bit weird that I wasn't using oil or blowing smoke.

Finally got my act together and finished the re-assemble (which must have pleased the neighbours). First turn of the key and it fired up first go. What's that, nearly 9 months. Was expecting the fuel pressure to have dropped but happy days, kicked into life first go
Thinking of trading it in if somebody is doing deals, wife wants a new car