360 Oil in Manifold

I removed an air flow meter on my recently purchased 2002 360 Spider and noticed a shallow pool of oil inside the manifold. What's the conventional wisdom; pull the intake cover and mop up the oil, or let sleeping dogs lie?

 

I had some of this on a perfectly running 360 when I changed intake gaskets.

I would verify level is not overfilled.

 

It's from overfilling the oil, there was a ton sitting in the intake manifold when I took mine off. Check you oil level when it's hot and see where it's at. I would take a throttle body off and take a peek inside with a mirror to see if there's any oil puddles in the manifold.

 

Yes, I understand that oil in the intake manifold a common result of overfilling. I also understand that oil volume increases substantially when hot and that the the low and high markings on a 360 dipstick is less than a quart. Yes, the oil was slightly overfull when hot, but it has since been drained.

So, my original question remains: should I go through the trouble of removing residual standing oil, or leave it for another day when the intake manifold cover must come off.

Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

How about this ..put car on incline and then vacuum out oil since it will pool at the front edge

Just thought of that .. that would be easier than taking out plenum

Sent from my moto g power using Tapatalk

 

That sounds easy, so worth a try. I'll let you know how it turns out next week.

 

I don't think it will hurt anything leaving it in there. It would however hurt me mentally knowing it's in there and not getting it out.

 

I'd be more concerned with the throttle bodies and MAFs.

 

I'm not certain why; please explain.

The MAFs are upstream of the disareator and the vacuum lines that run to the intake manifold. The throttle bodies likely passed through oil from the disareator when the engine was overfilled. Would that harm them?

 

The oil from the overflow goes both directions and contaminates the sensor in the MAF. There's no cleaning it. The throttle bodies can ingest the oil and it can seep past the butterfly shaft, contaminating the innards of the TB and ruining the very sensitive potentiometers.

So be sure to carefully clean the throat of your TB's as they can and will fail from oil contamination. If the oil has already gotten past the shaft, then no cleaning is going to change the fact that your pots are ruined.

 

OK, I don't recall reading experiences of anyone removing the plenum cover on a Spider. Have you done so? Is it straight forward, or are there hidden bolts and linkage to contend with?

Sent from my SM-G781U using FerrariChat.com mobile app

 

OK, I'm being stupid again. I had it in my head that there were eight individual throttle bodies under the plenum cover, and not one for each bank.

 

The throttle body is between the MAF tube and the plenum. There's one on each side and they are both the same part number. Unfortunately, to clean the throttle body throat, the MAF has to be removed and it's attached to the throttle body by a no-longer-available 90.5mm ear clamp. Break it and you're using silly looking hose clamp. The ear clamps are a one time use unless you carefully prise apart the crimped ear with something like an awl. You'll need a $15 ear clamp plier to crimp it again.

The throttle bodies are circled in red in this picture.
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

I changed both my MAF's by doing just that. Carefully prise up the latch on the clamp just barely and you can remove the MAF, Then access the throttle body. Good luck, I guess I am blessed that no one overfilled my car (that I know of anyway) before my ownership.

 

To hell with ear clamps; W4 worm gear clamps may not look as Purdy, but they do the job and you don't have to stop and wonder if the job is worth the effort required to pry up those little tabs and lock it back in place.

 

So I lifted the front higher than the rear and gave it a day. I don't know if any oil drained down because it didn't look like any more. I reduced my 1 7/8" hose down to a 5/8" tube and sucked all the oil out. There was only a few tablespoons of oil; not enough to even make it to the vacuum head. A review of former owner maintenance records showed that a mechanic noted oil in the intake four years ago.


Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

I’m convinced oil artiates and will accumulate in the plenum even w correct oil level,

my buddy has a catch cat setup in his 360 and he drains oil from the catch can,

 

Clever idea, those hoses are very accessible for such a device.

 

Pardon mis-spell typing on glass...

 

When I did mine there was oil front to back, left and right side. I don't think you can get all the oil to run to the front due to the shape of the intake runners, there's lots of low spots that hold oil in there. It really sucks but I bet you have quite a bit more still in there. You can see some of the oil puddles in mine, the areas with red dots are where it pooled up.
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

Ok, so there's oil in the intake plenum. So what? What harm can it cause?

 

I bet you could vac that oil out... then properly fill the oil for 5k miles.... then pull upper intake and see oil in the intake.

I suspect the upper plenum acts as an oil collector of sorts.

 

Its normal, leave it and drive it.

 

Hi all
So is it safe to say this is not a major issue that may cost alot?

 

It would be interesting to hear from a Ferrari mechanic about how common this is!

I suspect it's normal and unavoidable. Crankcase ventilation goes right into the intake plenum housing. Any droplets that do not get sucked into the cylinders will fall out and accumulate there.