I have a carmel brown foam inside the air resonator and all the air intake tubes all the way to the air filter.

Coolant level has stayed steady for several weeks. The water/condensate inside the resonator box is clear; it is not coolant.
Changed oil twice now; oil looks fine; no discoloration like the foam.
Truck idles rough.
Any idea's?

2006 Hummer H3; 53,000 miles.

 

Probably the head isint any good. Let us know what happens

 

pcv valve upchuck?? juswt guessin

i had zero idle on car with sluggish pcv valve

 

What is inside the air filter box? Have you been fording water, playing in mud?

I cannot imagine the scenario where that brow crud can go against the directional flow of the intake, and to get out of the resonator into the intake accordian pipe towards the filter, it would have to defy gravity (go up into the intake) or it must have got deep enough to spill out of the resonator box? I've worked on a butt load of H3s and Colorado/Canyons, never seen that one.

I've seen muddy water and crud in there before, but your pics look like chocolate milkshake?

 

Looks like that poor HUMMER was swamped. What does your oil look like?

 

The oil looks fine. Just changed it Tuesday night.
I just bought this vehicle and dont have any real history on it. I have not had it off road and the previous owner was a woman and I highly doubt she took it off road.
When you ( PCV Valve )?? There is a simple black tube that goes into the bottom of the air resonator and is attached to the valve cover; also another one on the right side of the valve cover in the rear. This one looks like a spark plug boot. Which one is the PCV?; or is it both??

The valve or nipple (PCV??) that goes into the air resonator box is non removable from the outside. Do you have to remove the valve cover to replace it from the inside??

 

Clean it all out good and see if it comes back,
I had a Dodge truck the would have that in the oil fill opening but I only ran it short distances, when I would run it longer the moisture from the oil would be dried out and it would go away,

 

Mine looks the same, I think it's likely because of 3 solid months of freezing weather. It's a mix of normal oil spray out from the crankcase vent and water condensation formed when the warm air from the crankcase enters into the colder airbox resonator. In your case, it also spilled down the air tube to the filter probably when you made left turns.

I've seen this in the past with several cars of mine (import and domestic) when I had only a 3 mile commute to work each day. During the cold months, there was always a tan sludge collecting even on the bottom of the oil fill cap too.

I just cleaned out the tan stuff from our H3 last month. This Spring I'll do it again when it warms up so I can monitor if it also happens again during the summer.

 

i took a stab at the pcv, but if it or any of the above are the cause,ITS ABNORMAL FOR ANY VEHICLE!, change the pcv valve. its the first thing you can hope for,,,(cheapest)!! if it continues after that,,u got trbl

 

Our trucks don't have a PVC valve, just an oil spray baffle inside the valve cover with a vent to the air intake resonator box through a rubber hose.

I considered that maybe my oil baffle plugged up somehow so that oil was having a hard time draining back into the head. It's just been too nasty outside to take a look at it further and I also need to find out if it's pain to remove the valve cover for inspection.

Like the OP said, oil looks fine on the dipstick and there's no oil consumption issue noted so I'm happy to wait until the Spring to look at it again.

Regarding rough idle: New plugs @ 100k miles made a world of difference with my truck, if I would have known I would have done a simple regap at 50k miles for solid driveability all the way out to 100k. Another thing to look at is pulling and cleaning the idle speed control valve plunger and its associated throttle plate bypass bore in the throttle body. That was just an issue on my commuter car at 85k miles where the bore was maybe 1/4 gooped up. Now I'm just going to do a complete throttle body cleaning every 50k miles and not wait for problems.