[ryszardsh]

Have a couple of engine issues looking for help/thoughts:

1. Had/may still have a small oil leak on front of engine. Did the oil filter mount gasket, stopped one, did the valve cover gasket, stopped another. Replaced the power steering hoses and resevoir, stopped another. Result of the 3 is an engine front with black gooey crud on it - even if I had a leak I would never see it. Any suggestions for how to clean it w/o taking the belts etc off? Hoping someone has used a spray degreaser that works well w/o risk to the belts and rotatable seals.

2. Planning on replacing the injector air lines, as those hoses look like cr#$p. Along the way, want to know if it is OK to reuse the two gaskets between the upper and lower intake manifolds. I do not think I can do the airlines w/o removing the upper intake manifold, would resue the gaskets but dunno if that is a bad idea for any reason. Do you routinely always replace or reuse when pulling the upper manifold?

3. Similar area, have been thinking about replacing the PCV valve on the intake with the catch bottle. Have a good bit of experience with CCV issues on airplane engines, which routinely vent the crankcase overboard. How often (if ever) does the bottle have to be emptied? Not looking to add work for every Saturday. Anyone install a catch bottle and are not happy? I do not like the crud I see in the intake that comes from consuming the crankcase vent products.

4. Last, just a data inquiry. In the course of running down the fix for my P0420 code problem, I watched a lot of O2 read-outs in real time on OBDII monitor software while the car was driven. Every once in a while, at least once every 3-5 minutes, the engine would go dead (0 volts) lean for an instant. No noticeable roughness was related, do not think it could be tracked to always under power or power off but seemed more common on power off ops. LT fuel trim is +3% or so, not too bad but my mileage has been down a bit, -4 or -5 mpg. I have owned the car since new, now have ~134k miles on it and still runs well; I have a pretty good feel for the car.

I am thinking that something may be causing the dead lean event every once in a while and the computer, not recognizing the very intermittent nature of the event, is trying to balance the lean events effect on an average that is pulled down by the far out of normal (4.3-4.7 v) range lean events. I have no idea if a normal M44 exhibits this lean event - or if mine has something odd that is causing this. I do know it is not a clogged fuel filter - b/c that is very recently replaced. Maybe some fuel pressure problem but the event is so sharply defined I have trouble imagining how a pressure drop could cause this. I would think a bad injector would be more consistent - and i doubt it is a dirty injector b/c I have seafoamed the engine 2 times in recent months. A misfiring plug/ignition problem should push the O2 to the rich side, not this 0 lean side reading. I am assuming that what I see is the result of some action I do not see, rather than an ECM effort to lean the engine, altho I suppose that too is possible. Any experience/ideas?

Thanx

RAS