[turbulence]

I'm diagnosing an air leak right now, so I took of the rigid plastic pipe connecting the throttle body to the accordion pipe (from the intercooler) to gain better access to the VNT actuator. I noticed that the butterfly valve and throttle body were covered in soot and the rounded "wells" in the accordion pipe had little oil (I'm assuming oil; it was black) puddles in them. Is this normal? If it is, is there a cleaning procedure? If it is not normal, what could be the cause, and could it be related to my air leak (possible recirculation of exhaust)? The car is an '06 TDI with 102k miles on it.

Thanks for any input!

 

[Seatman]

I'm not familiar with newer tdi's but a little bit of oil in the pipes from the turbo is normal and nothing to worry about unless your oil is disappearing a bit quick. Also there tends to be a bit of soot from the egr valve in the intake manifold area. What usually happens is that the oil vapour and the exhaust gases mix and form a gungey black sludge which can choke the inlet manifold and a good clean is recomended. Check out the 1000 how to index and faq at the top of the page or you could also try youtube for tdi manifold cleaning. You can clean the plastic pipe with a cloth if you want.