I took my Mazda Familia in for a tune up yesterday, to a referred mechanic from BBMS web site, after I played with the setting in the dash controller, so should of just needed resetting. But when I was picking it up I noticed that the air filter was dripping with oil and oil was coming out of blowoff valve. When I got it home again on the back of a trailer I removed intercooler and found it was full of oil as well. I was told that it had a lot of blowby. Just doesn't add up as it didn't blow smoke or have any trouble like this before I took it in. Any ideas what it would be Turbo or top end ????
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[SIZE="1"][FONT="Comic Sans MS"]1986 RX-7 [URL="http://www.automotivemazparts.com/mazda-turbo/"]Mazda Turbo[/URL] (highly modded), 1978 RX-7 Beater (Dead, parting out), 2001 Honda Insight
"If one more body-kitted, cut-spring-lowered, farty-exhausted Civic revs on me at an intersection, I swear I'm going to get out of my car and cram their ridiculous double-decker aluminium wing firmly up their rump."[/FONT][/SIZE]

Sounds like turbo oil seals to me mate.

I would have thought turbo aswell, but dont know why the air filter would be covered in oil, unless its coming up the breather pipe and back into the induction hose. I'd do a compression test and check all the breather pipes to start with, it could be breathing heavy.

turbo gets my vote aswell or possibly a blocked breather

more likely than a breather i'd say. don't they normally struggle to hold boost though when they start leaking badly?

Not in my experience no. It'll take a little longer to spool up, but it wouldn't be overly noticeable if you're not on the ball. There's a chance it's getting back into the air filter via a breather hose , although there is always some form of reversion from the turbo and it's possible it could blow some mist back up which gathers over time.

It's worth whipping the tubby off to have a look see.

there goes that wife's tale then.

Well, if you had a really small turbo then it'd probably struggle. If you think about how small the leak is when the seals fail, and consider that the lubrication system itself is under pressure too (a lot higher than the boost pressure), then there's very little scope for the pressurised air to escape through any leaky seals.

The biggest problem is when the leak gets bad enough to stop feeding the bearings, a seized compressor wheel usually struggles to hold boost!