I had one in my TDI but I had to remove it after it completely froze up. It was made by a company called AGS. There's a lot of water vapor in the crankcase vapors in a diesel along with oil. The oil fouls up the intercooler, bonds with the EGR gasses to form gunk. But since a diesels crankcase is always under pressure, any blockage of the crankcase vent will cause oil to be forced past the rings into the combustion chamber, which happened to me and then if left plugged long enough, could blow the seals. A TDI's crankcase vent is one way, exit. There's no entry at the air filter for intake air and exit at the manifold like a gassers PCV system. The crankcase is pressurized by blow by gasses that escape past the piston rings due to the high combustion.
I'm getting my EGR recalibrated to where it'll very seldom engage, therefor no soot problems. Means a little more NOX, but since there's not a smog problem here, it's not a big deal.
I'd still like to install another filter (maybe a homemade one) and if I use 3/4" fittings like the CCV hoses in the TDI, rather than the 1/2" fittings, like the ones in the filter I had. Reducing the size helped contribute to the blockage.
Since my oil changes were at 10,000 miles, I drained my filter at 5k miles.
Last edited by PackRat; 01/29/03 01:45 PM.
