intercooler covered in oil

[barryemm]

sorry about this guys no doubt am giving yous all a headache
i noticed there is oil covering the bottom of the intercooler on my hdi 110 some oil was on the pipe cleaned it off but the pipes ok could it be possible my intercooler is buggered
also today i went to drive the car and it started rattling a loud cracking noise came from nowhere and suddenly there was a loss of power any chance this could be intercooler related also the EM light came on, Took the car back home sat for 10minutes started her back up and it drove fine no nasty noises or nothing any ideas what this could be
my hdi 110 is on a 2000 plate and has covered roughly 110000 miles

[Welly]

There's two things here,

One may be that a stone has damaged the intercooler air ways and causing oil to leak out, and another is that the bottom hose has worn-through underneath (I had this). Excess engine movement because of a dicky rear engine mount causes the bottom hose to rub on a the coolant radiator bracket/lug and eventually wears a hole underneath the bottom air hose (you can't really see this).

Air leaking out causes the engine light and limp mode sometimes because of a difference in metered air and boost pressure etc but it's a kinda 'soft' warning and resets by restarting the engine.

[steve_earwig]

I remember my 2.1 sounded like a tank when the pipe from the intercooler came off but I'm not sure about this cracking noise Still, could be.

[barryemm]

will check bottom hose for any wear am hoping its just the hose

[puggy]

have you checked your turbo pipe work especially near to the intercooler ??

This all happened to me when we had a meet in south wales , Loud crack loss of power black
smoke , reluctance to start although if i didn't floor it ran reasonably well . Split turbo hose
from the bottom of the intercooler .

[barryemm]

checked all pipe work no holes or no splits on the pipes am thinking the intercooler has cracked at the bottom causing the oil to leak maybe this is whats causing my car to misfire when cold and sometimes cut out after a good amount of throttle and revs. i was going to do a front mounted intercooler conversion anyway so this gives me an excuse to do it quicker now

[FlySpeck]

there shouldn't be any oil in the cooler mate, if there is then the turbo bearings are shagged and it's blowing your engine oil through the compressor which then collects in the bottom of the IC.

[steve_earwig]

There'll be a small amount due to the nature of the seals but large amounts is bad news

[easthams1958]

How much olil was there and was it fresh....Mine had oil on the ledge of the intercooler as you look down it and I washed it off with degreaser and none has come back...A mechanic said it had probably built up over 10's of thousands of mile so not to worry unless in the next few hundred it came back...I have done 5 thousand now and still clear. You can wip you intercooller off and flush with petrol (if you have a death wish) as a ceratin amount of oil in vapour form will go through it naturally Your car has done 100k mine has done 140k so we should expeect the odd thing like this

[FlySpeck]

any oil inside the cooler has to have come from the turbo bearings cos the cooler is before the inlet obviously so there should be no oil in the air, vapour or otherwise unless the turbo bearings are passing, but then they will be after big miles.

[DRTDVL]

I know an old post... But it's relevent maybe????

I've got a 96 Stdt and when i was playing with the intercooler piping i noticed there is a oil film/visible oil runs inside the piping, i've been told this is normal for the early dt's. The cars done 260,000 odd km, is this something i should be worried about?