alltrac 3S-GTE PCV system cleaning?

Are you sure the replacement cam cover gasket isn't leaking?

The PCV system is not designed to suck crud out. All it is supposed to do is burn off the gases and fumes that accumulate in the crankcase.

If there is no PCV valve, then I would imagine that the system is basically a vacuum hose. Can you just replace the hose?

You could remove the PCV hose and suck seafoam through it, or replace the hose and suck seafoam through to clean the TB...It is probably not clogged since it is a 19mm hose...

Pull your hose and feel for excessive pressure, you should almost feel little to nothing. If you feel a lot then something is seriously wrong to be pressurizing your crank case which means you would have bad valves or more likely, bad rings.

HTH

--Josh

The 3sgte PCV is known to clog on higher milage engines - its not common but does happen. No, you have to pull the cover or you risk dropping the cack back into the engine - next time you'll do it while you have the top off ;-) lol.

I used brake cleaner in the end.

Blew a load into the rocker inlet. Then blocked the hose to the intake to stop a large vac leak, started the car, and let it blow the crud out of a small hose into a bowl. Came out brown brake cleaner instead of clear. Used a tie wrap to scrape out the heavier more solid stuff like a pipe cleaner arround the pipe end first.

Afterwards, blocked the PCV tube on the rocker for a few seconds, then removed finger, even at idle got a small "Pstch" from it as pressure was released.

Flushed the hose too, into the intake, so that will burn (white smoke for about an hour afterward).

Ran a good oil flush (millers) round the engine before changing the oil straight after. If I kep the car long enough, I remove the rocker and do it properly with the next change.

Switched to 10w40 semi synth (on two or three different recomendations) from the 10w60 3 ester full synth I was using. Both people reckoned that it does get hot enough, road driving to make full use of a w60 on uk road (different on a track), so oil pressure was getting too high combined with the partially blocked PCV. They also reckoned that an older Toyota turbo engine should be running semi, not full synth. The oil I'm using (for this first test) meets toyota requirments, and is expensive enough to give some confidence, but cheap enough to throw away if it doesn't work out. I'm doing 3k mile changes anyway. And it is half the price of the Millers, which is cheap for a branded full synth anyway. Going to give it go.

Yep, pretty sure. Can just about see under the intercooler, to where the cover ends and the throttle body over hangs the fuel rail. Lots of old crud and dirt mixed with oil (from past leaks). No fresh wetness there. Oneday I'll get a bottle brush and some solvent/degreaser to clean that.

In this case, you get quite a lot of carbon/sludge build up from the last few owners who have done strictly service book interval oil changes, rather than go by the sticker under the hood, and in the owners manual. It isn't the all encompassing fill it up and block it full sludging, but enough particle build up (in places) and carbin build up internally to restrict vapour flow.

I know it isn't designed to suck the crud itself, but the crud gradually builds up as a varnish, then a solid as the pipe gets restricted. The more it is restricted, the quicker and tyhicker it builds up as a solid.

It isn't the rubber hose itself that clogs, but the metal elbow on the cam cover, and the narrow galleries inside the cam cover, that it conencts to. They are enclosed by a baffle plate rather than a valve to act as a simple flame trap for backfires, and to stop liquid oil being sucked from the cam area by the intake vacuum as the turbo spools up.

The hose/Intercooler/throttle body/intake manifold are fairly clean and very clear of blockage.

It is the smaller tube on the cam cover that is the outlet to the galleries that form the baffled path of the PCV system inside the cam cover that gets blocked.

That is what I wanted to get cleaned out with solvent (back into the oil), immediatley before doing an oil flush and change of the engine oil.