Residue in Oil Cap

[Compkidchris]

Has anyone noticed a milky residue in their oil cap, and if so, anything that can be done about it? Here's a picture: http://imgur.com/a/w6tA2 .

[Russael]

That's usually an indication of moisture in the oil.

 

Does your car ever go in to Oil Maintenance Mode, and if so, do you cancel out of it or don't let it do its thing?  If so, that's the end result.  The car goes in to OMM to get the oil hot enough, long enough, to remove most moisture.

 

If you do let your car do the OMM thing and still have that much moisture in the oil, you may have a head gasket leak and that is actually antifreeze in the oil.  Only real way to validate that is to have the oil tested.

[Compkidchris]

Figured it was moisture, seeing as I only purchased the car two weeks ago, I have yet to see OMM kick in. Is there a way to manually trigger it? At this point I'm going to run it in EV Later for the next week or so to see if the residue goes away. Thanks for the information!

[openair]

There was an article in the news here in Canada a couple months back about a woman who's 2013-2016 (I forget exactly) fusion hybrid had been in the shop for months for an engine problem. It was eventually decided it was her fault for only driving the vehicle short distances so the oil never got hot enough to clean out all the moisture. Ford told her the solution was a minimum of 15 minutes at highway speeds once a week.

 

Omm is to prevent this kind of thing from happening in these phevs but I don't believe omm runs anywhere near that frequency, length or as though the vehicle were driven at highway speeds. I wouldn't count on omm to prevent this sort of thing or that omm not preventing this means a gasket leak.

 

In fact if our ice were run about as much as her full hybrids ice would have for her 3 miles each way commute it would probably prevent omm from running at all.

Edited January 19, 2017 at 01:20 PM by openair

[Timewellspent]

Has anyone noticed a milky residue in their oil cap, and if so, anything that can be done about it? Here's a picture: http://imgur.com/a/w6tA2 .

 

This helps explain what's going on.  https://youtu.be/71itwBP7akA

[Russael]

Figured it was moisture, seeing as I only purchased the car two weeks ago, I have yet to see OMM kick in. Is there a way to manually trigger it? At this point I'm going to run it in EV Later for the next week or so to see if the residue goes away. Thanks for the information!

 

I would give it an oil change as soon as possible and clean off the cap.  I saw you had a 2014 in your description so I presumed you owned it for the entire duration; didn't know you bought it used.  It's possible the car was abused by the previous owner.

 

The engine typically idles much higher than traditional cars, so having it run for 30 minutes like that should be more than enough to maintain the oil.