TRY THIS EXPERIMENT...

[00prowler]

Every Viper needs a oil catch can...Try this.. get your car to operating temp with your headlights on. Pull the hose from your PCV system that goes to your air filter on the drivers side and let it hang there. Close hood. You will see hot oily choking smokey vapors rising out of the seam of your hood...The headlights really make it noticable...Pop the hood and feel how hot that smoke vapor is with your hand. It is poisoning your fresh air intake charge, robbing you of horsepower and reducing your octane level...See if you agree...AL...

 

[Vic]

I'll recirculate in the name of the environment!

Hah hah, NOT! I've got a catch can....

 

[Schulmann]

Thanks for this experiment. Points out very well how it is important for supercharge vipers to install a free air venting system. Yes it is bad for the environment ... we have to recognize that.

 

[hemibeep]

not the greatest thing for the intake, BUT every engine does have blow by, at 488 ci., ours have a bit more than average, I think it is good to pull out some of the pressure inside the crankcase. High internal pressures can work against the motor and create other problems. A solution that many racecars use is exhaust evac where the valve covers have lines tied to headers to scavenge the internal pressure, this is NOT environment friendly.

 

[sbkim]

I have a Greddy catch can that I have yet to install due to limited space in the engine bay. Is it "OK" to have more than 2-3' of hose going to and from catch can? Only place I can think of is under the car - the catch can is rectangular about 9"x 3"x3"

 

[Fast Freddy]

Every Viper needs a oil catch can...Try this.. get your car to operating temp with your headlights on. Pull the hose from your PCV system that goes to your air filter on the drivers side and let it hang there. Close hood. You will see hot oily choking smokey vapors rising out of the seam of your hood...The headlights really make it noticable...Pop the hood and feel how hot that smoke vapor is with your hand. It is poisoning your fresh air intake charge, robbing you of horsepower and reducing your octane level...See if you agree...AL...

smokin

 

[cgmaster]

I just have to wonder how you found this out. Your point is taken and it is a good one.

 

[-FROG-]

I have a Greddy catch can that I have yet to install due to limited space in the engine bay.....

Have any of you tried the smaller cans, by Summit? $50.00

red
polished

 

[sbkim]

Frog - can you use these for oil? ******* look kinda small

 

[-FROG-]

I don't know... I didn't do enough research, just throwing out more options. I'm sure someone will chime in with more info. It would be necessary to vent the valve cover though, so a small filter would need to be installed somewhere, I guess. I always deleated the stock crank case breathing into my motor air intake, on my Mustangs. I always removed the breather line and put rubber ******* over tha holes, then added a small breather filter in place of the origional oil cap. I was looking at doing something like that on my RT/10, but really havn't had the time to experiment, so this is a good thread for me. I never thought about needing a catch can though.... May be necessary, although I never used one for this application on my Mustangs. Motors are different though obviousely.

Here's my type setup. kinda hard to see, but I have a breather filter on the left valve cover and totally capped off the stock type tube setup. It was robbing a tiny amount of air to my direct flow to the engine.

IF YOU GET A RED X... right click and click "show picture". Sometimes it works.

You must be registered for see images

AH! Here's a better pic of my motor, with my SC setup. There's a breather filter on the left valve cover, where the origional oil filler cap would go on a stock car. This allowed me to cap off the crank case breather from the air intake. The supercharger would force air into the crank case if I didn't do this, but I also do it on all my natural aspirated cars too. I will figure out something for the Viper when I have time. I never had a catch can though...

You must be registered for see images

Look here for more ideas on setups:
http://images.google.com/images?q=breather+filter&hl=en

 

[00prowler]

I just have to wonder how you found this out. Your point is taken and it is a good one.

I pulled the tube off one day thinking of how to mount a catch can... forgot to put it back on...Closed the hood, took it for a ride and saw smoke pouring out of the left side of my car...had my lights on and even on a sunny day it looked my car was going to catch fire!!!...Al...

 

[-FROG-]

hmmm..... just a thought. Can that tube have a little filter placed on the end, and then route the tube (or add a longer tube) to a location so it is stable and NOT hanging? Maybe it can be a tad bit higher than the valve cover, not allowing oil to drip out? Zip tie it to a more hidden location behind the motor or something, where it may look cool.

 

[00prowler]

FROG...I think FLX109 made a homemade unit from some sort of air compressor parts he got at Lowes...Maybe he can chime in this one for us...AL...

 

[-FROG-]

I was just out messing around with this on the car. It was just as I assumed. A typical crank case breathing system, that breathes through the air filters. I pulled the hose out of the valve cover and shoved my finger in the hole. Shut up you perverts.... anyhow, there is a baffle int there, like on my stangs, which keeps the oil from splashing out and into the hose. I had 2 grommets laying around, but they were both a little too big. I plan on stopping by the auto parts shop tomorrow and looking for a few smaller grommets. This will allow me to pop one of these (picture below) in there and totally seperate the crank case from the air intake to the motor. I will also look into placing one in the oil filler hole and do away with the oil cap.

You must be registered for see images

 

[twinturbo3150]

Every Viper needs a oil catch can...Try this.. get your car to operating temp with your headlights on. Pull the hose from your PCV system that goes to your air filter on the drivers side and let it hang there. Close hood. You will see hot oily choking smokey vapors rising out of the seam of your hood...The headlights really make it noticable...Pop the hood and feel how hot that smoke vapor is with your hand. It is poisoning your fresh air intake charge, robbing you of horsepower and reducing your octane level...See if you agree...AL...

what about the new 06 coupe's do they have the same problem?

 

[00prowler]

Every Viper needs a oil catch can...Try this.. get your car to operating temp with your headlights on. Pull the hose from your PCV system that goes to your air filter on the drivers side and let it hang there. Close hood. You will see hot oily choking smokey vapors rising out of the seam of your hood...The headlights really make it noticable...Pop the hood and feel how hot that smoke vapor is with your hand. It is poisoning your fresh air intake charge, robbing you of horsepower and reducing your octane level...See if you agree...AL...

what about the new 06 coupe's do they have the same problem?

Your on uncharted territories on that one my friend....AL

 

[-FROG-]

If the car (any car) has a hose going from the top of the valve cover, into the motor's air intake, then yes, 00Prowler's theory should stand for all cars. The contaminated air from the crankcase is entering into the pure, clean air of the motor intake. Therefore, less air molecules are getting into the motor. This will not allow the motor to run at maximum potential. I don't know if the fumes will be enough to lower the horsepower of the motor, or not, but it's an easy, cool looking fix. It's common for any hot rodder / racer to put on the little crankcase breather filter, like in my pictures. sometimes the filters just pop in with no mods, other times, you need to come up with an idea to make the filter work. Also, you need to cap off the origional holes, where the hose used to be.

 

[-FROG-]

ok... I did this tonight and it was a success. Test drove with no oil leaking or anything like that so it looks good to me. I documented the process here:

http://vca2.viperclub.org/forums/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=UBB2&Number=641447&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1

 

[Konstantin82]

ever seen the roe racing crank case breather? what do you think is it good?

 

[-FROG-]

I havn't seen it... I'm sure it's good! Can you post a link?

 

[Konstantin82]

http://www.roeracing.com/ProductCart/pc/viewPrd.asp?idcategory=64&idproduct=245 (try that.)

 

[Konstantin82]

but I dont get where to install it, also im instaling there air filters and I never changed them on a viper before, do you just stick them in or you have to do something before you put the filters in, any advice would be great.

 

[Tom F&L GoR]

Fleet testing shows this vapor contains the heavy ends of fuel, especially when measured at idle. (Not much cylinder pressure at idle to cause blow by.) With mineral oils, the vapor could also contain the volatile component of the base oil, but this issue is eliminated with synthetics.

Those folks that have 180F thermostats would see more of this since it takes that much longer for the oil to get up to temperature, as would multiple trips under 20-30 minutes. Full throttle enrichment is frequently thought to be the cause, but given there is typically 1-3% fuel in the oil in taxi engines, the fuel dilution is caused to a large degree by gasoline that condenses on the "cold" cylinder wall and is wiped by the rings into the oil.

 

[GR8_ASP]

Just saw this thread for the first time. I guess I do not know what you are trying to do. But a properly functioning crankcase ventilation system is a good thing for your engine. It evacuates the vapors, which if prevented from escaping would collect in your oil. Then as Tom said they will add up unless the oil achieves enough time at temperature to evaporate them off. Given that the crankcase would be semi-sealed the evaporative loss would not be very efective.

The real answer it to install a check valve in the vacuum side of the pcv circuit so that intake pressure cannot flow into the engine. You can add a catch can if you want, but unless you have significant oil getting into the pcv area (due to a less than effective pcv baffle system - normally located in the valve cover). The second pcv hose, connecting the crankcase to the clean side of the air cleaner should stay clear. A catch can can be installed there as well. Though air flow on the make-up air side is quite a bit lower than the vacuum side, it can still move oil through poor baffling.

The way the system should work is that it creates a crankcase vacuum anytime the engine is operating with no intake pressurization. In that mode it is removing contaminants from your crankcase (water, gasoline components and other airborn contaminants) which is good. You do not want them to stay in the engine. When the intake is pressurized (from a turbo or supercharger) the vacuum side seals off due to the check valve and the crankcase is vented via the make-up air side, which as stated is vented to the clean side of the intake. Note the clean side is at a slight vacuum as well due to the pressure drop across the inlet filter.

So the bottom line from my perspective is to add a check valve on the vacuum side if you charge your engine and to add 1 or 2 catch cans as necessary if the pcv baffling is not working effectively.

If you have a catch can collect the contents and let them sit for a while. You should have less than 10% of oil and such and mostly water. If that is the case the catch can is probably not needed as it is catching the parts that the pcv is intended to remove. If it is a high percentage of oil then the internal baffling is not working properly.