oil catch can
- Thread starter 95escahoe
- Start date
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2002DenaliXL
TYF Newbie
- Joined
- Jan 12, 2017
- Posts
- 6
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- 4
As stated above, the PCV system is great for oiling up the intake manifold. When you get time, remove your throttle body and look into the intake with a flash light. You will see the inside has a film of oil all over it. I can post up a picture of my heads (lq4 with 159,*** miles before it died from lifter failure) that I took off that after cleaning in the parts washer, is still covered in build up. This PCV system is used to pass emissions and reduce carbon output.
This thin film of crap from the PCV system leads to what is called coking up of the intake runners on the intake and heads. With the new direct injection motors, this will be much worse as the there is no fuel washing the runner down as it goes into the cylinder.
The build up of oil and crap via the PCV system leads to restrictions and lack of power. I swapped to the LS6 valley cover which is orifice based, doing away with the driver's side valve cover port. Also my motor is naturally aspirated as I don't have boost.
pnwdan
Cunning linguist
I understand this. The only reason I was surprised was that when I replaced my lq4 at 170k I had zero valve coking or any signs of pcv problems. One of our other cars is direct injected and boosted and I keep it cleaned out regularly but have been looking into a catch can for it.
I pulled the intake manifold on my '01 Yuk and couldn't believe the amount of black crap coating the entire inside. It had about 235,000 miles on it but even so it was substantial. Not wanting to spend the bucks for a nice machined aluminum can I used an old Sears airline oil/water separator I had lying around. It has a clear plastic bowl, probably polycarbonate to handle the pressure of an air system and I was concerned it might be affected by the heat as it is mounted to the back of the little red plastic battery cable box above the exhaust manifold. After a 600 mile trip this summer in Florida heat at 80 mph I saw no signs of thermal stress. It collects a fair amount of oil as indicated elsewhere in this thread but I have not seen any water yet. I have not inspected the inside of the intake manifold but its clearly removing oil. After couple of thousand miles I probably have drained a couple of ounces.
