what up peeps,
quick question sorry if its a stupid one, but what is the purpose of a oil catch tank? i was givin a nice lookin one for free, just wanted to know if it was worth it..

thanx

 

It catches the oil and moisture you get from blow by gas that can gunk up your intake. How effective these things are I do not know but I guess it depends on the design. Generally its just a means of keeping your engine clean. People rant about the greddy ones all the time saying how "great" they are and how much they help out. I personally have no experience with one and would be curious myself as to how well it works. If it were free I'd def install it; don't let free shit go to waste. I may invest in one myself if I can get some more info as to if its really worth it or not or what applications its most useful for. If anyone else has any extra info please chime in.
-Rob-

 

i hear they are almost a necessity on boosted honda motors as they spit oil all over the place

 

It keeps vacume and catches the gunk. If you have a honda, and dont link the hose from your valve cover to your intake, you have a vacume leak. If you put a can in, it reconnects the line, and puts the catch can in between to get your gunk and oil, and stops it from getting in the intake, clogging up the t.b. and inturn keeps your engine a bit cleaner. For highly modded or built engines, especially with large turbo's or highly modified/built all motor cars, I think it's a must.

btw, I have one on my civic.

 

hmmm... I may have to invest in one for my SR. I read up a lil more and they say its a must for any boosted car.

 

I run an elite engineering catch can on my car. It goes in the PCV line to catch excess oil vapors that run through the system and would go back into the intake manifold.

It catches abotu 1/2" of oil every few thousand miles... after seeing what I dump out I wish they came factory.

When I pulled my intake manifold doing some work on the car it was coated in oil from all the beating.

Here's what my setup looks like... top notch piece.

 

They're useful when you're doing a lot of cornering or have a turbo setup, oil blowout (boost) and slosh (cornering) from the valve cover are a problem. They're not really necessary on a stock engine under normal street driving conditions, which is why they aren't on most cars from the factory. They can only help though, never hurt, so if you have a free one then put it on.

 

I agree w/ other ppls comments if you are boosting or running a high compression motor. catch cans are a good investment. now you could go and put that littel air filter on your valve cover and plug the hole on the intake. where the hose use to be. How ever the bad thing about that is. If you have blow by now it's going to blow all over your engine and engine bay.

I also have seen ppl do a janky catch can but this involves some new rubber hose and a fram g3 fuel filter. it does not look as pretty. but it seams to do the job.
~skott

 

i put one on just cause its not expensive and i consider it a "reliability" mod. im so paranoid after having an fd, i figure why risk it, midaswell throw one on just to be safe