The PO had this on here when I bought the car.

Ive seen them before, little mini filter, but what is the use/purpose of it?

Reason I ask is it was smoking some when I popped the hood yesterday:(

Thanks in advance

http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h155/atlfokus/lilguy.jpg

That is a crankcase breather.

thanks, if its smoking do you think a pcv valve is stuck up?

Yours vents to atmosphere because the car is FI. On engines that produce a vacuum, it would be routed into the intake, before and after the throttle body. The M30 doesn't use a PCV valve -- it uses a maintenance free plate in the top of the valve cover. I have never seen one fail, I suppose enough sludge in the head could do it.

I would call some venting a standard operating condition of the engine.

Was this the first time that the car has been run for a while or anything like that? My friends VR6 golf smoked out of the breather for a little after it sat for awhile. It went away though and I dont think its done it since. Maybe thats the same case here?

If it was right after you shut the car off its ok they all do it if you take your oil cap off right after you shut your car off it does the same thing. If it steams for long periods though could have gas in oil from sitting for a long time. If it didn't sit, don't worry about it.

The 240sx we built a few years ago got one of those, briefly. We replaced this big black box attached to the engine with the breather, then saw it pour out tons of smoke at the dragway. Turns out the point of the box was to allow the oil to condense from a smoke back to a liquid, and run back into the crankcase. If that were my car, I'd run a hose around to your turbo oil drainback hose, it will allow it to do the same thing, without venting oil film all over your engine.

I had a similar setup on my supercharged 535 and when two of the pistons melted, the supercharged pressurized the crank case and guess where the oil went? Yep. 6 quarts of oil went thru the bleeder. That car is never going to rust. There is still oil on the bottom of the car from that, and that happened 6 years ago. But unless you're planning on blowing up the engine you should be fine. I would recommend using a catch can w/ a breather instead of a direct breather. $20 from Jegs.
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http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2337/2021113647_a387f50294_o.jpg

ttt

thanks for the responses. yeah the car had not been driven for about a week so maybe that's why the little fucker was smokin'.

redfive- thanks for the input sorry to hear about what happened.

best news of all --- I paid a guy off today to pass emissions!:buttrock

she's gonna feel so much better with a tag :)

When I started gettin blow-by on my supra that thing was kicking out mad oil..some smoke is ok ....lots of oil is not ...lots of pressure is def not!