Krank Vent replacments

[Kracka]

^lol yea that pic gives me a headache too but it's all I could find. Where can I find one of these metal catch cans or how are they made?

Scheides and I both got ours on eBay for a little under $30 shipped. It is best to lightly pack some steel wool in them to help catch and condensate the vapors.

[Halon]

^lol yea that pic gives me a headache too but it's all I could find. Where can I find one of these metal catch cans or how are they made?

They are actually extremely difficult to find. I'll let you in on a secret though, there's a place online called ebay, and you type in "catch can" and you can usually find 1 or 2 or 50 of them.

[turbotalon1g]

^dude i tried it and i got like 10 pages of results, now i have one in my car. Its sweet.

[Halon]

yeah, I was being sarcastic brownski!

[Halon]

There's one thing I just noticed Chris that contradicts what I've heard in the past. I've always understood that you don't want to place a check valve inline between the VC and the intake pipe. Leaving that line open should better help ventilate the dirty blow-by air out, by not only allowing the old air to go out the PCV line, but by also allowing fresh air from the intake in. By putting one in line with the Intake & VC, I understand that at idle you'll create a much stronger vacuum under idling or low throttle conditions, but I don't understand the benefit of that. It wouldn't ventilate the dirty blowby air out of there as well as if you had the open line allowing in fresh air. That dirty air is bad for the oil, and you want to get that out of there as quickly as possible. If it's creating excessive vacuum at idle, enough that it's actually difficult to remove your dipstick, that seems like it may actually be bad. My CCV system is one of the little things I was going to improve upon this summer, so I actually read up a bit on this subject not too long ago. But my plan only involved using a check valve (as a back up to the PCV) between the VC and the IM. Here's a nice little MS Paint version of what I planned on doing to give a visual idea, using 2 catch cans.

Edit - picture added.

[Andrew7dg]

There's one thing I just noticed Chris that contradicts what I've heard in the past. I've always understood that you don't want to place a check valve inline between the VC and the intake pipe. Leaving that line open should better help ventilate the dirty blow-by air out, by not only allowing the old air to go out the PCV line, but by also allowing fresh air from the intake in. By putting one in line with the Intake & VC, I understand that at idle you'll create a much stronger vacuum under idling or low throttle conditions, but I don't understand the benefit of that. It wouldn't ventilate the dirty blowby air out of there as well as if you had the open line allowing in fresh air. That dirty air is bad for the oil, and you want to get that out of there as quickly as possible. If it's creating excessive vacuum at idle, enough that it's actually difficult to remove your dipstick, that seems like it may actually be bad. My CCV system is one of the little things I was going to improve upon this summer, so I actually read up a bit on this subject not too long ago. But my plan only involved using a check valve (as a back up to the PCV) between the VC and the IM. Here's a nice little MS Paint version of what I planned on doing to give a visual idea, using 2 catch cans.

Edit - picture added.

I think I asked the same question here and thats what it also stated on the link below.

http://www.autoshop101.com/forms/h63.pdf

I am just posting this for people wondering how the PCV valve works. It provides good basic info about the system (even if it is Toyota).

After reading this something came to my attention

"A plugged crankcase breather hose may cause the engine to consume oil because of the increased level of crankcase vacuum."

It doesn't go into detail as to why but wondering if the check valve by the breather hose is really necessary?

I highly recommend the check valve (with a catch can!) by the PCV valve as the PCV valve tend to leak and cause most of the symptoms that you have listed.

Also if you haven't figured it out by the article, you still need a working PCV valve in the car (or should have one)

One of the things that KV supposed to do is stop oil leaks

What the Krank Vent does to stop oil leaks coming from the Valve cover and other places is create a vacuum inside the oil pan and other oil areas when under regular driving conditions. remember when you are driving on the highway that the car creates vacuum. So even if you do have a leaky seal, you will be pulling air through that seal to prevent oil from leaking by.

This was my question too if it harms the car to have a vacuum inside the oil pan. Maybe not right away but overtime I wondered if this would cause a problem to the seals. Especially to an old DSM with original seals. It doesn't recommend it in the article that i posted. So I am also wondering how important is fresh air that comes into the engine through the VC is. I would think that it would dirty up the oil a little more.

So Halon I think what you have is actually the ideal situation setup to have instead of the check valve on the VC. If you have leaky seals, just fix the seals.

[Kracka]

I'll post when I'm not full of alcohol :)

[turbotalon1g]

So was i homey.

[Kracka]

Even with the 2 valves, if you have a proper setup, you will always have a vacuum source to the valve cover evacuating any dirty air, blowby, or other gasses. Like anything else in the automotive community there will always be differing opinions (i.e. engine break-in procedures) and that is fine; these KV's are just the opinion and route that I have chosen for my cars. I like the idea of a vacuum in my crankcase to reduce resistance on my crank and pistons. Now another thing I have noticed, is that since I installed the KV's on my Evo my mileage has gone up about 2-3mpg. I noticed this exact same thing on my S2k. I have no way to prove with 100% certainty that it was caused by the KV's, but my driving style did not change and it was an immediate observation I made with both cars.

[Halon]

Yes you are correct that with your 2 valves, you will always have vacuum. But all that 2nd valve is doing is staying closed when your boost gauge is showing a vacuum condition. I'm not saying what you are doing is wrong, I'm simply asking the question as this is different then what I've heard in the past. Having too much vacuum in your crankcase I had understood as being possibly harmful to the motor as it may start causing oil to be pulled away from components. You want vacuum, but not excessive amounts. Both of our setups should act identical while in boost, whether it be mild acceleration, or WOT, both equally battling the "dip stick popping out" issue.

But if you leave out that 2nd valve, you will also still have vacuum during idle or low throttle conditions, but not as much. You will have similar vacuum to what you had stock. Again, what is the advantage of having even more vacuum while at idle or during light acceleration (no boost, constant vacuum). With both setups, you have the same vacuum source wtill, that vacuum source being the Intake Manifold. But in addition to that, if you don't put in that 2nd valve, you will also be drawing in clean air through that port connected to your inake. I didn't quite understand the whole picture right away, but someone once put it in simple terms that made me completely understand.

It was explained that you're not only trying to release pressure build up as efficiently as possible, but you're also trying to ventilate that dirty air out of there as quickly and efficiently as possible, because it's that dirty blow-by air that likes to cause build up on components, and also causes your oil to breakdown quicker. So he gave 3 scenarios to better explain:

Say you are a young teenager smoking in your bedroom. Your mom calls and says she is coming home early. Not wanting her to find out you were smoking, what is the best way to ventilate that room as quickly as possible?

Option 1: Crack a window and let the air go out the window. (Compare this to just running hoses out of your valve cover to the ground to just allow the pressure a way out.)

Option 2: Crack the same window, but hook a fan up that's blowing out that window to help draw air out of room. (Compare this to your 2 valve setup).

Option 3: Do the same as option 2, but also open up the window on the other side of the room, and hook a fan up taking fresh air from outside and blowing it into the room. (Compare that to setup in the picture I made, allowing air to not only escape out the PCV line, but also draw in air through the intake.)

Made perfect sense to me. Based on my research on the subject, my setup will be using only 1 check valve in line with the PCV. Plasic ones can be had for a buck plus shipping from USPlastic.com. I plan on running the brass one from McMaster Carr for $10 plus shipping unless I'm able to find a nice aluminum one.

Again not saying what you are doing is wrong, I'm just simply stating what I've found in my research, and how I'll be doing it. To each their own!