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View Full Version : Oil separator, not!



Bimmer Nut Ed
05-13-2009, 08:27 PM
So I finally figured out, and understand what an oil separator does. This is out of an E38, and for the life of me, I never knew how the mechanism worked. Well, with the help of a vacuum cleaner, I figured it out. It's a way over complicated PVC system. All it does is MAKE LESS VACUUM, or essentially keep an even vacuum level. And when the diaphragm fails, as it certainly will, it'll suck the **** out of your engine, fail valve cover gaskets, blow oil all over, and even cause engine failure. Way over engineered. All they needed was the old style PVC system that used a skinny hose and a little particle filter like on our old American v8's.

What I did was look at pictures like this, and finally I used a vacuum cleaner applied to the center of a good Oil Separator, to see that the vacuum out the other side always remained much less and even.

http://www.bimmerboard.com/members/cmartin248/MVC-003S.JPG