Who's running a catch can?
 

Who's running a catch can and did it come with your kit or did you rig something up yourself?

Only one I've seen so far is on Bullits car.

I don't remember seeing that, do you remember what pic it was in?


Biggest thing with a catch can on the VHR is the dual breather setup. You almost.need something custom to work well.

I've been running two "home-made" catch cans since day 1 of TT upgrade. When I was installing the turbos, I noticed a layer of oil accumulating in the intake manifold. Since installing the catch cans, I've been catching ~ 2 tablespoons of oil per 1000 miles.

Are you on the fresh air tubes, pcv, or both?

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-..._1645857_n.jpg

I have one

We offer Catch cans in Blue, Red, Silver and carbon fiber :)

Prosport Gauges - Search

I'm not F.I. but i'm running a GReddy catch can. It's mounted on the driver's side between the intake pipe and radiator fan.

Here is one at Baker Tuning! Top Secret Ti Catch Can. This TTed Z has two of them!

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c2...g?t=1288790272

Seems like as good a thread as any to report on my catch can results from driving so far. My can has been on ~2,000 miles, and I dumped it last night for the first time and measured it. It collected 1/4 cup almost exactly, which matches perfectly with the "2 tbsp per 1K" modme posted above, and "1 tbsp per 500mi" someone posted in another thread.

My car is NA, so apparently FI doesn't really increase the catch can fill rate. Looks like engine oil but a little thicker and darker than mine looks when I drain it, leaves a greasy residue, and smells of fuel a little bit, which I guess makes sense considering it's condensed crankcase vapors.

Mine's running on both PCV lines. The fresh air tubes should be bringing fresh air into the crankcase, not venting gasses from the crankcase, so I don't *think* you need a catch can on those. Since we have two separate PCV lines, you'd need either a can with 4 connections, or two cans, if you want to leave everything else about the PCV system bone-stock.

As it happens the M370 manifold from Motordyne requires to you tee-adapter your 2x PCV into one vacuum connection anyways, so that made a single can setup on my car a no-brainer. Even with the stock manifold, you could tee them together, run a single can to one of the original inlets, and cap the other off. Just a matter of what you want to do with the hoses.

Can some of the guys that have done this think back and write up a DIY for those that would like to do this, but don't wanna cut/swap the wrong hoses to the wrong spots and making something simple a big problem? :tup:

I've definitely seen a catch can in a few TT Z's down here in Florida.

:iamwithstupid:

i guess the real question is, do we really need to have one? Like what are the Pro's and Cons of it

Pro:
-Prevent oil from gunking up the MAF sensor and throttle body
-oil will lower the octane level of gas in the engine

Con:
-Cost of the catch can

No cons other than extra connections and a marginal amount of extra weight and space needed. Pros are less oil coating the intake tract as well as the fact that the vapor that is burnt off in the combustion chamber allegedly lowers your effective octane rating i.e. tends to promote detonation. That's what I was told at least on my old STI. I would be very surprised, however, if NA cars collected the same amount of oil as FI cars. The increased pressure of the FI tends to cause more blowby and more junk ending up in the intake tract. With that said, factory turbo cars come without catch cans so it may be overkill.

Note: I also had two lines on my STI and I ran twin cans rather than 1.

seems like a mod I should do then. Modme could you give us a DIY since I am familiar with your style and used your TT Diy to install mine into my Z

I'll try can to check mine tomorrow. I've had mine about 2k miles also. I'll see if I have anymore or less.

I posted a DIY when I did mine, over here: http://www.the370z.com/diy-section-d...att-reloc.html. Mine's specific to my setup though (M370 intake manifold, and an empty battery compartment as a convenient location - may as well use the battery compartment heat shielding to promote vapor condensation in the can), but there's some general notes and ideas there too if you read through it.

All in all, doing your own catch can install is pretty simple once you understand where things hook up, you just have to decide where and how you'll mount/attach it.

I would think in general you'd be right about FI getting more blow-by, seems to make intuitive sense. But that just puts more blow-by into the crankcase, which is mostly fuel vapor. From there you're venting the crankcase through the PCV valve, and the crankcase shouldn't be at abnormal pressure, and most of the rest of the vapor is oil vapor from there. It may be that the rate of catch can condensation is mostly driven by crankcase pressure/airflow, which shouldn't vary much for FI vs NA.

Oh and the primary Con, IMHO (and the reason factory cars never come with a catch can): it's another maintenance task you have to keep up with. If you don't dump out your catch can on time (on our cars, seems like once an oil change would be fine most likely, maybe twice if you're paranoid), the can could eventually fill up too much.

If it filled completely, or even filled far enough that the fluid can creep up the sides to the level of your outlet hose in a high-G corner, you could suck the liquid contents of the can into your intake. The condensed oil vapor + whatever else is thicker and greasier than your normal engine oil.

Imagine pouring 1/4 cup of thick greasy oil straight into your intake in one shot, while the car is at high revs pulling through a corner or whatever. At the very least I'd think you'd get some bad knock for a couple of seconds and have a mess to clean in your intake manifold, but there could be worse consequences. I don't plan on finding out :)

Actually, crankcase pressure/airflow are completely different from NA versus FI. In NA, you will never reach positive pressure inside the intake manifold. During WOT, pressure in the manifold will drop down to zero, the PCP valve will close and crankcase air will vent minimally through the crankcase vent.

However, in FI, your manifold pressure will reach up to 12 psi or whatever boost level you are running during WOT. So now the PCV valves close, but you have significantly more pressure venting from the crankcase vent to the air intake piping. How much oil vapor is blown through during this process, I am not sure.

Yes, that's basically true. Given positive manifold pressures from FI, I wouldn't be surprised if some of your crankcase venting ends up exiting the fresh air inlet tubes under hard acceleration as well (as you'll be building crankcase pressure from blowby, but the positive manifold pressure will keep the PCV valve forced closed). I doubt the factory puts one-way valves in them (which aren't a great idea), so you might want to experiment with canning those as well.

Another thing could affect all of this on NA cars is your driving patterns I guess. Engine braking produces more vacuum than idle or steady-state driving (faster rate of PCV system flow), whereas hard accel (WOT) produces almost no vacuum (slower rate of PCV system flow). If you use engine braking a lot, you could be scavenging from the crankcase at a higher average long term rate.

Guess that experience from 350Z or any predecessor engine will help. Is catch can really so important for our cars which don't have direct fuel injection?

Carbonization is really painful on AUDI engines with FSI (Fuel Straight Injection) , or TFSI (Turbo FSI). My old 2.0T FSI with 82 000 km's on the clock didn't have any issues. But on other hand, there is owners in US which experienced problems after 1000 miles! Even RS4 are really sensitive and catch can should be factory fitted, due to liquid which looks like mud in catch can cas :roflpuke2:

BTW: Due to no big fuel quality difference and huge price mine 2nd hand TT used 95 RON fuel instead factory recommended 98 RON:wtf2:

It's just another one of those minor optimizations. I doubt it's "really important" for anyone unless you're running FI and/or a very aggressive tune that's more octane/knock-sensitive than stock.

The vapors condense to some nasty greasy stuff for us, but at the rate of 1 tbsp per 500 mi mixed into your intake air, it's not a *huge* amount. It will contribute to carbon/sludge buildup over the very long term though, and it will effectively very slightly reduce your fuel octane rating.

Bumping this bc I am looking into adding 2 catch cans since I am installing a TT. Based on this pic:

http://i108.photobucket.com/albums/n26/ro903/ARCpcv.png

This is how I think they should be connected:

http://i108.photobucket.com/albums/n26/ro903/PCV.png

I welded my intake inlets shut, PCV valve is still stock and the crank case vent tubes are open at the moment, debating on hooking them up to a can to collect the very tiny amount of oil that vents out @ WOT. If you go w/ that setup get small cans!

That's a good looking setup!

It was dark in my garage so the iPhone pics are horrible. I had to use regular black hose that does not bend easy because the clear hose Top Secret sent was too short due to TT setup. Does anyone know where I can get more clear hose so I can get rid of this black stuff?

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c2...E/e60ec4f7.jpg

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c2...E/387e914d.jpg

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c2...E/3a7b2877.jpg

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c2...E/26fcb05c.jpg

Are SC guys running these, Get my SC installed on Tuesday?

The pic *does* look sort of like that, but it could be that the pic is deceiving, or that there are some additional one-way valves at various points in his hoses, or perhaps the setup is simply ill-conceived, I donno. Most likely the rather expensive and nice-looking setup in that pic works correctly, but I'd need more details about the components to tell you exactly how.

In any case though, your translation to two simple cans in your hose map drawing isn't going to work. The two PCV-related outlets on each valve cover are not both outbound. On each side of the engine, one is outbound from the crankcase, and one is inbound fresh air. The factory setup is that, separately on each side of the engine, one hose flows outwards from the crankcase to a manifold vacuum inlet, and the the other hose flows inwards from filtered intake air into the crankcase. At least the vacuum-connected ones have PCV valves on them, I'm not sure whether the fresh-air-connected ones have a valve buried in there somewhere (or perhaps just some foam or something).

So to run a dual-can setup, the normal way would be to splice one can into each of the vacuum<-crankcase lines. Or you could set up a single can with 4 connections the same way. Or you could do what I did and use a single can with two connections to cover with both sides, by tee-ing the pairs of vacuum and crankcase lines together (my instructions are M370-specific, but the same general idea could be done on the stock manifold): http://www.the370z.com/diy-section-d...att-reloc.html.

If you want to catch oil in the fresh air side (which, tbh, I'm not really sure is worth it. It normally flows the other way, *into* the oily area, but I guess under various transitional conditions it must backflow a little), you probably would have to have a separate chamber for that, either as a combined setup or again one per side.

So these are the ones toward the front of the engine that connect to the two V shaped nipples on the front of the manifold. They flow OUT from the crankcase to the manifold?

So these are the ones that connect from the intake tubing through a plastic baffle and then into the valve cover? Where/when is the air recirculated back to intake then?


So splice a can in between each of the red hoses pictured here:

http://www.z1motorsports.com/g37_370...600&page=popup


I'm confused now :confused: lol

go to any auto parts store and ask for Clear PVC fuel line, you should then be able to buy it by the foot and reinstall it. make sure it is stiff enough not to kink.

Ron:

You are going to have to share notes with me when I get back. Let me know how those catch cans work out for you and how much they fill over say a month. I never had one in any of my other turbo'd cars, but I didn't have crap in my intake either. I did have a variety of other issues, that were heat related though.

I sure will.. If I can figure out how to hook them up lol, everybody seems to install them differently, JBs right there has a PCV port blocked. I saw a TT car at baker that had the vacuum inlets (Vshaped) on the manifold blocked too.

Note: You want one that is baffled and/or filtered to actually trap the oil and not just recirculate it...

You also want steel braided hose lines so they don't collapse under vacuum.

Probably not a big deal on a N/A car, BTW.

yep I took that into consideration, I am looking into these:

42 Draft Designs

or

Radium Engineering
Universal Dual Catch Can Kit

Jordo right here is pretty knowledgeable :icon17: ... how are we supposed to connect them?

^^^ Now of that I'm not sure off the top of my head.

I think previous page someone posted a diagram...

Those cans are really nice! Especially the ones at second link.

PCV line, your red hoses! I'm interested to see how much you collect too. Had one on my TT 350, didn't collect much at all. Get that 42design can, looks like a great design with the screens and all.

I posted that diagram but it turns out it seems to be wrong lollol.. Yep that is the one I am leaning towards.

Both cans look good, read the other one as well!