is that the same as a cam oil baffle? a piece that sits over the cam shaft and deflects oil away from the breather?
No- they are different, but you can do both. The oil separator is a device that takes the oil-laden fumes that the engine pumps out at the top of the valve cover, sends them over to a device, spins them around and separates the lighter fumes (which go up to the intake manifold) from the condensing oil ( which is returned to your sump).
that sounds like it has potential. Am i just putting off the inevitable though?
pulled off the breather hose while the van was running just to see, i was half expecting to see globs of oil pouring out, the gasses leaving were smokey, but no globs of oil, i dont really know what it is supposed to look like so i'm not sure that did any good.
i'm considering a swap to a 1.9 TD AAZ but its really expensive and i would way rather just repair this engine if possible.
If it wasn't dripping I bet the cam baffle will cut it down to at least 25% of what you were used to.