QuestionIn the last year my wing has been running poorly, upon looking at the Air Filter Im finding the filter and air box soaked in oil, where can I start to look for the problem.
AnswerThis is usually caused by a full condensate storage tank or a blocked hose between the air cleaner housing and the condensate storage tank (parts of the breather system).
Here's why your engine needs a breather system and how it works:
It is impossible to make piston rings seal properly all the time. They must have gaps between their ends when they are cold so that when they expand when hot they don't become larger than the bore. The problem is that before the engine is fully warmed up the gaps leak a tiny bit & some of the expanding gasses in the combustion chamber get past & into the crankcase. This is called blow by. If you didn't vent the combustion chamber it would become pressurized & cause oil to blow past any seals & you can imagine what kind of other problems. Besides this, it's a good idea to let most of the products of combustion that is in the blow by to get out of the crankcase before they contaminate the oil.
If you look at the left rear corner of the air cleaner housing you will see a hose that runs between it and an L shaped fitting on the crankcase. (It actually connects to a small separator chamber below the main air box.) The blow by gasses are drawn from the crankcase & into the airbox by the intake suction of the engine. If everything has been maintained properly and the separator chamber is empty, when the blow by gasses reach it the liquids mostly condense out of it and run into the drain tube to the storage tank while the gasses are drawn into the intake of the engine to be burned.
The condensate that collects in the storage tank is made up of unburned fuel, oil vapour that was picked up in the crankcase, & moisture condensed out of the air when it was compressed in the combustion chamber (this is why it fills up faster when it is wet out).
The manual says that you should remove the storage tank & empty it when you see fluid in the clear tube, which was fine 20 odd years ago when the tube was clear, but now that it is yellowed & has a coating of scum on the inside it is often pretty hard to see the level.
If you don't want to have to empty the storage tank you can remove it and put a fuel filter in the drain hose. Fuel filters have filter media that is at least as fine as that in air filters so nothing harmful can be sucked in through them. The biggest drawback is that it leaves spots on the garage floor.
