G'day people, I was poking around the ea this arvo trying to suss out if I had a stuffed throttlecable, and basically eventuated to me checking the oil and noticing it was black as night. I thought "this can't be right the oil is barely over 2000kms old if that". Then I spotted the pcv valve not sitting flush in the rubber mount so I pushed it in, until the entire valve just about fell through the rocker cover!









Question: Does this often occur? I mean the rubber mount has swollen/bulged and is now buggered; is there a likely culprit to causing it to deteriorate? I only have been using Penrite oil (HPR 30 I think, basically for older cars as I have about 250'000 on the clock).

Cheers.

just but a new grommit and pcv valve. only 30 or so bucks from fraud

Repco and such sell them aswell.
Make sure the replacement PCV is metal bottomed (like the one you already have).

Using HPR30 oil is too heavy, try HPR15 (15W60). If the engine is turning the oil black in that time you say, you may need to run some Nulon oil flush, just follow the directions on the bottle, then in goes new oil, with some Nulon Lifter free & Nulon E20, it makes them run so much sweeter.
I have an 88EA, and I found using these has helped a lot.
A mate used to own the car before me, and it use to have lifter rattle all the time, after doing this a couple of times, it hasn't rattled since. I've had it for 5 years now. The oil turns black after a couple of weeks, this is because the engine is very worn, so I change the oil every 3mths to keep it going till I can afford to put in my new engine.
Hope this helps

I got a replacement grommet from Fraud for $3 and it's a shorter one but has done the job so far.



Cheers I'll give that a go.

It's called old age bud, buying a new grommet might fix any ereatic idle problems but won't help much else. additives are a band-aid solution.
You have to consider how old the car is, think about how many moving parts are inside an engine & think about how you would go lubricating the thousands of moving parts inside.
Change oil every 5,000 perhaps after an oil flush as per previously suggested. if oil isn't clean after a few changes then it won't get clean. it's all the burnt on sludge from the oil over the last 10-15 years & an improperly functioning pcv (egr) system will not help at all.
The purpose of the pcv rather than solely being an emmisions solution is to vent the rocker cover (& apparently crank case) of foul fumes & oil saturated air to stop that fouling of rocker components. if it isn't working properly your pcv valve is sucking from atmosphere & not from the sealed rocker cover resulting in black sh!+.
Also if your thinking of upgrading your pcv system i deem it paramount to invest into (or make your own) oil catch can as falcons suck alot of oil vapour through the pcv system which contributes to their rich nature.