Pure gold, Thank You. This is one of those 'thankless' mods no one wants to think about, but I agree the benefits for us long-term owners is most definitely worth the time.
About that Audi... VAG (Volkswagon/Audi Group) makes possibly the WORST ECMs, not because of any inherent durability issues (although their official response to our shop when dealing with an electronics module problem was "Well, your customer doesn't leave the car parked in the rain and weather do they, because that could cause problems..." -I kid you not. But the issue is with the maladaptive coding, especially on their forced-induction models of that era (and a bit earlier at least) that will jack around with every other parameter -including wildly swinging spark-advance to well into
ATDC ranges(!!)- in pursuit of a tiny internal vacuum leak. We now have TWO in the family (TT Roadsters, one FWD one Quattro), so I'm not being mean out of bias -I just know what they do. GM's of our era may be a blunt stick in comparison to the higher technological sophistication of the later Euro imports, but at least they aren't a sword made of glass.
The shear volume of condensed vapor-oil you have there in just 1500 miles is surprising, though the condition is exactly what I would expect to see. Do you do a lot of short trips, or does the engine get heat-soaked and cooled-down more between drives? The evil muck my old Honda 750 (high-tech 16-valve V-4 liquid-cooled Quad-Cam engine) used to ooze from it's crank-case breather reservoir was worse, but only in that the drainage-tube would allow it to layer like strata.
What would happen in the event that the tank isn't emptied before it filled up and backed the fluid up into the lines? Just start dribbling out the filter, or could the fluid get drawn into the intake somehow?
Thanks again for all your diligence and research on this, yep now I have another (several) projects to do...
