Hello guys. Today as I was cleaning the maf sensor and the throttle body I saw a pool of engine oil in the intake manifold. I had changed the pcv valve (with original OEM Toyota part) myself 40.000kms ago and the car has 171.000kms and runs quite fine(no problems). Should I worry about it and what should I do?
All the way back to the first generation, people have been observing that Prii have some gloop in the bottom of the intake manifold. It's what they do. Most people just keep driving the car.
The function of the PCV "loop" is to suck oil fumes out of the crankcase and into the intake to be burned along with the fuel. Some of that instead condenses in the intake manifold. Whether it actually pools there or not is a function of the manifold design.......and maybe the engine type. With some different designs, that occurs inside the air filter housing. Many engines do that to some slight degree. Unless there is enough accumulating there that it might be sucked into the engine as a liquid, I wouldn't worry about it. Are you keeping an eye on the engine oil level ? Does it "use" much ??
The pool at bottom of intake manifold is just the oil vapour that managed to condense? Wonder if there's a way to determine how much doesn't condense, gets swept right through into the combustion chambers (contributing to stuck piston rings?), or coats the injectors and intake valves.