I opened up my cans the other day (sadly I did not end up taking pictures.) The scrubber material looks to be in pristine condition still, with a nice coating of oil of course. I also went ahead and doubled the scrubber material which easily fit in the cans. No noticeable difference yet so it does not appear to be restricting the flow of gasses out of the engine.

Also, on a fun side note a while back I was making some changes in the engine bay (UICP) and I accidentally tilted one of the cans a bit more than usual and got this lovely sort of mustard baby poop junk out of them. Immediately I was thinking coolant in oil, thankfully after some searching on here I found it was actually water in oil from the condensation caused by the cold cans coming in contact with warm air from the engine. (Which made sense)

 

Cool!

 

Yes that is what you will find. You only need the one pcv valve though. You still want the intake to pull crankcase air to reduce emissions and burn up water vapor from the crankcase. Keep the line from the intake to the pcv valve as short as possible. That is where any boost leaks will occur.

Also i have found the factory pcv valve to be much better than the replacement ones from Advance or Autozone. Those ones will not hold boost pressure, they leak like a sieve.

 

Nice!

 

Great Write up! I'm going try this eventually

 

Thanks for this writeup. Is there any advantage of doing this on a stock engine with a stock tune?

 

As far as I understand it, the stock engine and stock tune still have some blow-by, so it would help eliminate having oil in your intake system just the same. My car doesn't have the stock tune (still on stock boost though) and I still get a decent amount of oil collected in it over the year. I'd say its worth it.

 

Excellent write-up. Just one question - does it matter that you don't have a breather filter on top of your catch cans? Are they necessary? I'm just now starting to look into adding catch cans and I've noticed a ton of designs with and without. Did you look into this before going with the cans you choose? The DC3 setup seems to be popular and those don't have breather filters eithers. Is it maybe advantageous to have a breather filter on one of the catch cans and not so critical on the other?

Thanks in advance.

 

Sorry I found the answer to the question. It's not a good idea per this nasioc FAQ Saikou Michi posted in another thread.

Can't I just vent these lines to atmosphere?
You could indeed, but there are several reasons why you shouldn't.
1) You'll lose the benefit of having the inlet's vacuum help suck filthy air out of your crank case (thanks to Wylde Horses for this one)
2) It's bad for the environment
3) It'll make a mess of your engine compartment.
4) It'd let metered air out of the system

 

I was just going to tell you something similar to that =). My main reason was to keep all the metered air in the system and to not vent that into my engine bay. I had not thought about the vacuum actually promoting the filtering process but that makes perfect sense since the cans are really active under vacuum.

Those Saikou Michi cans are quite awesome and perhaps eventually I'll put the cash in to buy a pair since I would expect they would filter the air even better than what I currently have set up in my system.

 

Thanks for the reply. Do you know - is it more advantageous to have 2 PCV valves inline with each other to better prevent a boost leak and possibly inhibit the vacuum from pulling the contaimnents out of the engine OR is it better to have one PCV valve that might have a slight leak to it under boost (mine does) but doesn't provide as much restriction for the vacuum pulling the containments.

I ask because Kracka/MAP sell that dual PCV valve setup where you put an extra one in each loop of the PCV system.

I imagine there's a difference of opinions on the subject but I was wondering if you came across this debate in your research. Cheers.

 

You need at least one PCV valve on the pressure side (tube connected to the intake manifold) this will stop the catch can from getting pressurized when you are in boost. You can eliminate the one in the stock location. You definatly want it to have no leaks in boost, not sure if two would really do anything to help. I have heard good things about the map valves though but I never heard anything one way or the other if its necessary. When I do a boost leak test I disconnect the catch cans so I can hear if the value is leaking. Hope that helps.

 

Gotcha. When I do my catch can setup I may try just the one Kracka/MAP PCV valve in each loop and do a boost leak test to make sure I'm good to go.

Little by little.....

 

I didn't see any mention of this, so I figured I'd bring it up for building a baffled/drip tube catch can.

What about eliminating the PCV system completely? I've seen setups where people have plugged the intake manifold, removed the pcv and had the 2 lines from the valve cover running into the catch can (drip tube side). The other port on the catch can would run to the intake to provide a constant vacuum. This would eliminate the potential boost leak (assuming your plug on the IM doesn't leak) and would keep a constant vacuum inside the valve cover. Thoughts?

This is how I intend to run my can once I'm finished.

 

Great thread.... Plan on doing something like this on the X.