Possible for a valve-cover breather to be blown off?

[HoldMyPocket]

I noticed that my valve-cover breather was missing and the underside of the hood had a nice wet spot on it. I really doubt that I forgot to put it on during the last oil change but I won't leave owner-error out of the equation.

I replaced it about 2 weeks ago and I've noticed a few times when downshifting from 3rd to 2nd at maybe around 3,500 rpm's I get a puff of grayish smoke that smells like burnt oil on the passenger side from the front wheel well.

I checked and the oil is coming out of my dipstick tube (push in kind, rtv'd to the oil pan and has been fine up until now) and hitting the headers. I also checked my PCV valve on the passenger side valve-cover and it rattles so it must not be stuck, however I didn't notice a little oil residue around the hole it goes into on the valve cover. The dipstick reads at half way between ADD and FULL so I don't think I have too much oil.

Any ideas?

 

[broncnaz]

Always possible to blow off a breather cover if you have way to much blow by which may happen on high RPM down shifts. Best way to tell is pull the breather and the PCV valve out of the cover an watch to see how much blow by is comi9ng out the holes.
But most likely your breather was not in correctly and just came out.

 

[DirtDonk]

Does the oil smell like gas by any chance?
Just thinking that another thing that can blow a breather off is a bit of fuel in the oil getting ignition.
Just a bit though. Very much and I think more than just the cap would be flying around.

Gas can only (usually) get in if the mechanical type fuel pump is failing.
Hopefully that's not the issue here, but I thought I'd mention it.

Paul