Should there be oil?

[Randall Smithson]

2001 Boxster 2.7, 70k miles, 5 speed, just purchased and replacing power steering pump and bad lower reservoir and return line.  When removing air guide saw wet oil throughout air guide inner surface tubing and in both (L&R) intake distributors (plastic manifolds).  How could that even get in there?  Thought maybe could be PWS fluid sucked in crevices on 3 hour drive home from purchase.  Otherwise assuming that air system should be fairly dry.  ??

Randy

[JFP in PA]

Welcome to RennTech 

Normally, oil films on the inside of the intake system is a sign the AOS is on its way out.

[Silver_TT]

Yes, definitely agree with JFP.

 

Just did a similar job on my car about a week or so ago and I was puzzled when I pulled off the intake and quite a bit of oil dumped out (much more than just a film).  But upon close dissection/inspection of the AOS unit I could see it was on its way out and allowing much more oil to "bleed" into the intake than it should have been.  I wasn't losing any oil between 5K changes as of my last change but I suspect if I would have let it go longer it would have started to burn some oil if the car didn't CEL first alerting me to the issue (I changed the AOS as a preemptive precautionary measure after realizing it was 80K+ miles/7+ yrs old).

 

Congrats on your purchase!

Edited January 12, 2021 by Silver_TT

[Randall Smithson]

Thank you Sirs, another Boxster 101 project to add to my list.  

[mcmike27]

Yes... we have a similar 2001 S that we acquired with 16k miles....it looks like new but allot of those rubber and plastic bits are well past there prime with age....you should also look at the rubber bushings and motor mount mine was starting to tear and needed to be replaced with only 18k miles on it but the rubber was hard and fatigued from age alone... my drop links are getting hard and brittle so they are next...