Valve cover breathers

[Jtfarra36362]

I have a 2011 Camaro RS package with 3.6 engine. I've been fixing it up maintaining it the best I can and I decided to install valve cover breathers on ot today. I did my research to decide if it was a good move or bad move. I have never installed breathers nor really know too much of them besides their purpose of relieving unnecessary crankcase pressure. However idk if my setup is going to do more harm than good here. I installed a breather in place of the oil cap and I removed the PCV tube that goes into the air cleaner and plugged it then I put a small breather where the tube was on the PCV. I have a picture of it but I just want to know if this is going to be fine or not. Thanks. If not which of the breathers could stay? And ignore the cover I kinda screwed the cover up and took it off and removed it with the breathers still in place like in the picture.

[Vicster]

Personally I would not add a breather to one of the computer controlled engines. It can mess with the air fuel ratios (as it is sucking air from outside a closed system) it also may be sensed as an air leak and the engine runs better with a vacuum in the block. If you do want to add a breather add one with a check valve, that way you can release extra blow by but still pull a vacuum on the block. I use the CFM P/N: 1-0204-WB breather, when getting off the throttle at 7200 rpm the blow by unseats the valve cover gaskets and blows oil everywhere...

But I have to ask why do you think you need a breather?

['10CamaroDude]

Breathers on that side is just fine Vicster, that will not have any effect on how
the engine runs. There is no vacuum there either, so no issues with that. It's
just ignorant doing it. These are the same type of people spreading Coviid-19
because they don't care about anyone else. He would only mess up the A:F ratio
did not plug where the line went to the intake tube. Even then, it's not much.
I ran mine for a DAY with the hose that fallen off the intake tube part. Didn't
even notice it, neither did the engine.

You also don't need breathers on both the oil neck, AND the back of the valve
cover. One or the other, is just fine. You're also venting fumes into the atmosphere;
another example of how people just do not care about the environment and other
people.

You can put breathers on all the PCV and vent lines, as long as you plug up where
they went into the intake. You wont' be burning any fumes, the worst that happens
is you lose a mile or two per gallon. Sucking air in through the vents and PCV
has no bearing on A:F ratio, none of that air goes into the combustion chambers!

[Badbubba]

Originally Posted by Jtfarra36362

I have a 2011 Camaro RS package with 3.6 engine. I've been fixing it up maintaining it the best I can and I decided to install valve cover breathers on ot today. I did my research to decide if it was a good move or bad move. I have never installed breathers nor really know too much of them besides their purpose of relieving unnecessary crankcase pressure. However idk if my setup is going to do more harm than good here. I installed a breather in place of the oil cap and I removed the PCV tube that goes into the air cleaner and plugged it then I put a small breather where the tube was on the PCV. I have a picture of it but I just want to know if this is going to be fine or not. Thanks. If not which of the breathers could stay? And ignore the cover I kinda screwed the cover up and took it off and removed it with the breathers still in place like in the picture.

Originally Posted by '10CamaroDude

Breathers on that side is just fine Vicster, that will not have any effect on how
the engine runs. There is no vacuum there either, so no issues with that. It's
just ignorant doing it. These are the same type of people spreading Coviid-19
because they don't care about anyone else. He would only mess up the A:F ratio
did not plug where the line went to the intake tube. Even then, it's not much.
I ran mine for a DAY with the hose that fallen off the intake tube part. Didn't
even notice it, neither did the engine.

You also don't need breathers on both the oil neck, AND the back of the valve
cover. One or the other, is just fine. You're also venting fumes into the atmosphere;
another example of how people just do not care about the environment and other
people.

You can put breathers on all the PCV and vent lines, as long as you plug up where
they went into the intake. You wont' be burning any fumes, the worst that happens
is you lose a mile or two per gallon. Sucking air in through the vents and PCV
has no bearing on A:F ratio, none of that air goes into the combustion chambers!

If OP did what they stated, and appears so in their pic, then Vicster is correct. And a bad idea in my opinion, because it does not resolve the issue for the direct injected engine. Valve coking, not crankcase pressure, being the issue. Besides, nothing has changed except fresh unmetered air is now being pulled in from the oil filler breather and small breather. The hose that was cut from the intake tube is the fresh air feed into the engine. Originally, fresh metered air, since it is after the MAF sensor, would enter the engine and then be circulated through the crankcase, pulling dirty air into the intake manifold. If you take the engine cover off, you will find a hose on top of the intake. This hose is the vacuum side from the crankcase for the PCV. This is where you should put a catchcan and undo your breather modifications. If you did leave your breathers, then block off the vacuum line on top of the intake manifold. But this will not allow the dirty air in the crankcase to be removed. It will just vent with any pressure, but keep the vapors (acids, blow by, water) in the crankcase and will condense back into the oil. As of your setup right now, nothing has changed, except your sourcing your air differently for the PCV. Btw, I use the CFM breather at the oil filler. It has a "check" valve, so it doesn't pull in unmetered air, yet will allow air out if crankcase pressure becomes excessive. And a catchcan on the dirty side. Different engine, same principle.

[mikeman]

I don't think breathers are a good idea especially on an engine like the 3.6L with direct injection. I would return it back to stock and save up for some catch cans, dirty side and clean side.

From what I've read on here, engines with direct injection are prone to building up carbon deposits on the back of the valves. The catch cans help reduce the buildup by a large amount.

[Vicster]

Originally Posted by Badbubba

If OP did what they stated, and appears so in their pic, then Vicster is correct. And a bad idea in my opinion, because it does not resolve the issue for the direct injected engine. Valve coking, not crankcase pressure, being the issue. Besides, nothing has changed except fresh unmetered air is now being pulled in from the oil filler breather and small breather. The hose that was cut from the intake tube is the fresh air feed into the engine. Originally, fresh metered air, since it is after the MAF sensor, would enter the engine and then be circulated through the crankcase, pulling dirty air into the intake manifold. If you take the engine cover off, you will find a hose on top of the intake. This hose is the vacuum side from the crankcase for the PCV. This is where you should put a catchcan and undo your breather modifications. If you did leave your breathers, then block off the vacuum line on top of the intake manifold. But this will not allow the dirty air in the crankcase to be removed. It will just vent with any pressure, but keep the vapors (acids, blow by, water) in the crankcase and will condense back into the oil. As of your setup right now, nothing has changed, except your sourcing your air differently for the PCV. Btw, I use the CFM breather at the oil filler. It has a "check" valve, so it doesn't pull in unmetered air, yet will allow air out if crankcase pressure becomes excessive. And a catchcan on the dirty side. Different engine, same principle.

Thank You,
I let the system in my car operate as much as the engineers designed but, modify it were needed. I am running a McNally catch can and it does make a world of difference.

OP, do some research and see what people have done and what works for your engine. BadBubba makes some good and valid points.

[DSX_Camaro]

Just add a catch can and clean side separator.

[Elite Engineering]

DSX_Camaro is correct.


Almost never is it beneficial in any way to defeat the PCV systems functions. Adding breathers is technology from the early 1900's and NO person knowledgeable on proper crankcase evacuation does this, and no where in Professional racing is this done either unless a specific class prohibits it as an "unfair advantage" such as Stock and Super Stock in NHRA and IHRA.


Why is this? Well, it is common to see with the "self taught" tuners/builders as there has been no teaching of this in the past few decades in Automotive Tech Schools or Factory training.


What happens when you add breathers? Well, we must first understand what the PCV system does and why.


This video is one of the only accurate training videos out there, and is very generic and basic, but it does a good job of explaining it:





So, why does your engine have a PCV system? Well the most common reason most think of is pollution control. But that is only a small part of what the PCV system does for your engine. Prior to the early 1960's, all engines simply "vented" crankcase pressure and vapors to the air. Back then engines rarely went more than 30-40k miles before internal wear required a complete rebuild. Wear back then was so severe at this point the pistons could not be removed due to a large "wear ridge" in each cylinder, so we needed to cut the ridge from the cylinder before the piston could be removed. Ask a Grandparent or Great Grandparent about this. So, back to pollution. All engines had a vent tube, or a "draft tube" that was simply a tube that ran down below the car connected to the crankcase. Engineers did not understand all that was occurring in the engine, but they knew there was blow-by and the related pressure this caused had to be dealt with. The simplest solution? Vent it out into the atmosphere. Around this time, Government regulators wanted to address the ground water pollution this caused as the oil and other pollutants would run off during rain and enter the ground water. This was also the first step in addressing air pollution as well.


Now, oils have improved greatly since then as have the materials used and more, but in the years following this Federal Mandate, these same engines, using the same oils and change intervals (was every 1000 mules back then) were now lasting well over 100,000 miles before needing a rebuild, and even then the wear was a fraction of the pre-PCV days. Why? Well along with the blow-by that enters the crankcase are the combustion byproducts. These consist mainly of water, acids, raw fuel, and abrasive particulate matter. What the engineers found studying this for several years is the PCV system was doing far more than addressing oil dripping on the roadways, it was actually flushing and evacuating (sucking out) most of the contaminants that used to remain in the crankcase accumulating and causing most of the internal wear. Now, if your defeating this, your going back to the same outdated technology and greatly increasing wear and more. As the oil portion of the vapors cause detonation, there is knock retard so timing is pulled.


What else occurs with a breather? Your allowing in un metered air. As all incoming air eventually becomes part of the air/fuel mixture, if you bypass the MAF sensor, the ECU is looking at the data from the MAF, IAT, MAP, and upstream O2 senors. As more air is entering than the computer see's should, so as the data does not fit into the tune parameters, it commands more fuel. Then the O2 sensors show its too rich, and it takes fuel away. Logging with HPTuners or similar will show the short term fuel trims going crazy trying to find the proper A/F. So, your bringing un-metered air, your leaving most all of the damage and wear causing substances in the crankcase to accumulate, and your also going to smell the oil mist.


A proper air/oil separating crankcase evacuation system like our E2-X not only retains all of these functions while removing 95% of the oil and other contaminants (vs 15-30% average of all other can designs) but it also converts to full time evacuation VS part time as the factory system provides. Here is an example of how the system keeps your oil cleaner, longer. This is at over 13,000 miles on this oil. Read the comments in the report:






So, knowing now what you didn't realize before, why would anyone use breathers? Remember, our dual valve system pulls suction on the crankcase at all times so pressure can't build to begin with.


Questions? Just ask.

[Vicster]

['10CamaroDude]

Except the video is based on the same year technology...

Some PCV systems now days don't even have a check ball, they're wide open
and are diameter'd appropriately for the correct flow.

You can run a vents, it won't hurt anything, despite your video. I have done it
plenty of times, with no issues. There is no unmetered air getting unto the
combustion chambers with vents. If you're stupid enough not to cover or plug
the nozzles on the intake where the hoses used to go, then you get unmetered air.

You still won't have positive pressure with vents. You won't have fumes to burn,
but you won't have pressure. While it is 100% illegal to vent, it will not harm
the engine, don't care what you think, write, or show in a video, it just won't.

['10CamaroDude]

Fact also happens to be, the Camaro PCV is just a nozzle with two holes in the
bottom and one hole at the top. There is no check-ball or spring. Also, the holes
are too small in the V6 10-12. 2013, they opened them up because of oil leaks. I had
an oil leak out the main seal, then I did the upgrade, drilled out the holes in the PCV
"valve" and it went away. One hole was even clogged, so this helped a lot.

TOP hole gets drilled to 7/64th. The two bottom ones to 5/64th. You pull the
metal nozzle from the rear of the RH valve cover and drill them, or buy the updated
part.

Drill instructions:
https://youtu.be/yL0DIBV1hck

You will also see, that's all it is, is an orifice, no check ball & spring, just a wide open
device.

[FasNuf]

OK, so without having to quote people above in the thread, there is a lot of misinformation, but I want to explain why I had to get an MBR0003 one way breather. I have a ZL1 and it and its stock PCV system was happy enough until I got much higher in boost. I had enough blowby to start pushing oil out my front crank seal. It was enough to make puddles on the belly pan. After cleaning everything up and installing this Metco breather, all is fine again. I decided the small amount of oil vapor I allowed into the environment under extreme boost situations is better than allowing my engine to pump oil out onto the ground. Try taking your oil fill cap off when the engine is running and tell me if the engine stumbles. Tell me if there's a vacuum there too. I found both to be true and thats why the valve is there. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but anytime there is a change in vacuum on the engine, there will be a change in AFR.

https://youtu.be/s1yBJ-syZts