I changed my headgasket last week and replaced all the wear parts on the engine, but when I pulled the intake manifold of I found a lot of oil residue in it. It was also fouling the map sensor.
I reckon it is because of the short oil breather pipe, has anyone ever put an oil catch tank or filter between the intake manifold and the breather pipe? Or even maybe elongate the hose with an upwards bend in it, to keep the oil from getting in the manifold. I cant imagine all the oil in there is making it run any better.

the breather is for just that, to let the car burn off the oil vapor from the crankcase. chances are if you were having hg issues then it put a wee bit more oil than normal in there - clean it out, and don't worry about it

Yep my inlet manifold had a lot of oil residue inside it too. Best thing to do is drown the inlet manifold in a bath of solvent cleaner or petrol.

I think when it all goes back together I'll re-direct the oil breather out under the car.

Out of interest what year is your engine from? I'm having trouble finding an inlet manifold gasket. Mine is a 1997-1998 1242 16v MPI engine.

you should be fine with a gasket off a newer one also, iirc there is no real difference on the inlet side of things (the stud pattern changes on the exhaust side though)

the headgasket was only leaking coolant, no problems with my oil whatsoever. It had already done 200k km and I reckon the last owner has never cleaned it out. I guess if noone else is complaining about it, I should just suck it up and clean it out every now and then.

I'm trying to clean the filter in the oil breather in my 1.2 16V, but I can't get this thing out. Anyone made any success with it?

kido resuri said:

I'm trying to clean the filter in the oil breather in my 1.2 16V, but I can't get this thing out. Anyone made any success with it?

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How about putting some clean oil in there, leaving it to soak in and then running the engine for a while to suck the oil out and repeat that a few times. If the oil all comes out then the filter is working and in the bigger picture if it was not working you would have gas blowing past the dipstick and oil filler O rings and generally oil coming out everywhere.

Thanks, I managed to get it out by simply twisting and pulling, it was stuck a little bit. Cleaned it with some break cleaner, it's nice and (almost) shiny now.