Do Oil Catch Cans Actually Work?

hello everyone and welcome in this video we're gonna be talking about why oil catch cans are a great idea especially for direct injection engines now this video is brought to you by RetailMeNot I will talk about that more at the end of the video but know that there is a relevant link in the video description and in this video we're gonna be focusing on four main topics so the first one being a quick overview of how these systems work how oil catch cans work the second one will be looking at some scientific research to see what data-driven answers we can get behind whether or not these devices are effective the third thing we'll be looking at a real-world example so looking at an oil catch cans use on a Volkswagen and then finally we'll end with looking at different priced options so I have a twenty five dollar oil catch gain right here $100 oil catch can right here and then this one is two hundred thirty dollars so we're going to look at different priced options and see if it's actually logical to spend more money or whether or not you know you can get away with something that costs a bit less so looking at my s2000 engine here it makes it really easy to understand how these oil catch cans work and so here we have the valve cover on top of my engine and you can see this hose leading from the valve cover over to the intake manifold now this is the positive crankcase ventilation system and so what it does when you have combustion strokes you're gonna have that high pressure on top of the piston and some of that high pressure called blow-by can come past that piston and it'll pressurize your crankcase the area underneath the piston and so you need that pressure to be able to escape and that's why they have these positive crankcase ventilation systems so it allows that high pressure to travel from your crankcase over to your intake manifold now in doing so any oil mist that's turning around within your engine as well as contaminants that have passed by your Pistons from blow-by can then enter back into your intake manifold through this positive crankcase ventilation system and that means those contaminants can then hit your intake valves the oil can hit those intake valves and you can start having deposits build up on your intake valves so the idea behind an oil catch can is that you reroute this hose so you take one end of the hose and you send it to the inlet of this oil catch-can and then within the oil catch hand you're going to have a filter as well as this baffle here in school going to separate out that oil from the air and so you'll have the oil trapped at the bottom of this catch-can and you'll allow that air to travel then you'll have a hose routed out back to the intake manifold so you don't allow those contaminants from reaching your intake valves and thus you help prevent deposits from forming on the intake valves now with port fuel injection like on my ass mm this isn't that big of a deal because the port injectors actually spray fuel which goes over these intake valves and helps to keep them clean with direct injection engines you don't have that fuel cleaning the valves and thus they're more likely to have deposits form moving on what does science tell us about positive crankcase ventilation systems and how they affect intake valve deposits with direct injection engines so I found a very cool study published in Society of Automotive Engineers and they were looking at a 2008 Pontiac Solstice with eight hundred thousand kilometers on the clock so very impressive that a solstice made it that far the reason they chose to use one with such high mileage is that it accelerates the deposit forming process and so as a result they're able to run these tests more quickly and see what would happen what scenarios caused deposits what scenarios do not so the Pontiac Solstice used for this experiment has a 2-liter turbocharged gasoline direct injection engine it produces about 255 horsepower and it's doing so with about 20 pounds of boost so the experiment the study performed was to take the Solstice engine and to put it on a repetitive Drive cycle that would last for 16,000 kilometers now at the end of those 16,000 kilometers they would replace the spark plug the fuel injectors and the intake valves for the next test and they would weigh the weight of the intake valve before and after those 16 thousand kilometers to see how much valve deposits were formed how much weight gain was formed on that intake valve during those 16,000 kilometers now what they found was pretty fascinating and the set up is actually a lot like - 2000 engine here where there are two valves per cylinder and then there are four intake runners and then that positive crankcase ventilation system comes here to the center of the intake manifold and what they found in this study with the solstice engine is that valves 2 4 5 and had the greatest amount of deposits formed and so why might that be well if you see this positive crankcase ventilation system here it's routed in and then depending on whichever cylinder is on the intake stroke that's where the air is going to be flowing and so the side that's closest to the positive crankcase ventilation system got the majority of the deposits and that's because those heavier elements those oil droplets of course go to the closer intake valve they don't travel further now those heavier elements don't travel as far and they go to the nearest that path of least resistance the quickest route and they just go straight to that first intake valve so on this side that's valves 2 & 4 and then on this side that's going to be those left valves valves 5 & 7 so for the first part of this experiment they found that yes they will have carbon deposits forming on the intake valves so for the second part of the experiment they're going to run the exact same cycle those 16 thousand kilometers but now they're gonna reroute that positive crankcase ventilation system away from the intake manifold so the intake manifold is then going to be plugged and you're not going to have any of those contaminants traveling from the PCV system to the intake manifold and what did they find well crazy enough the intake deposits forming on valves 2 4 5 & 7 was dramatically less than when they did have the PCV system routing to the intake manifold so what does this prove well if you can reroute those fumes and effectively capture that oil like in an oil catch can then you can dramatically improve the amount of integral deposits that are going to form on your engine so what might we see happen in the real world well all of my cars are either port injected or they run on like electrons or something so I reached out to my good friend Charles Hummel mechanic who is a Volkswagen enthusiast he has spent quite a bit of time with quite a few direct injection Volkswagen engines and he said some experiences using oil catch cans in direct injection Volkswagens so we're gonna send it over to Charles to learn more about that what's up everybody's Charles from humble mechanic calm today I'm gonna give you guys some of my experiences dealing with catch cans and VW direct injection engines like I got sitting right here for the most part all VW gas engines at least in the modern day are too Injection which means we're putting fuel right into the cylinder and while that's awesome and gives us a ton of flexibility with fuel timing it does have a pretty significant drawback and that is carbon deposits building up on the backs of the intake valves this carbon buildup on the back of the intake valves can cause things like cold start misfires pour fuel economy and even a reduction in power something that a lot of people have done is install a catch can to reduce the amount of carbon buildup on the intake valves this catch can is from Black Forest Industries retails anywhere from 350 to about 550 bucks depending on how you want to trick it out and I installed this one on my 2015 volkswagen tiguan i first drained this catch can at about 3,000 miles and as you can see there was a lot of junk that came out of the catch can it looks like a mixture of oil fuel and water so Wow I don't think a catch can is going to solve all of the direct injection carbon buildup problems I really think the less of this junk running through our engine the better off we're going to be and on vehicles that are modified this becomes even more important alright everybody thank you so much Jason I'm going to throw it on back to you thank you so much Charles so now let's talk about how much perhaps should one spend on an oil catch can so I've got three different ones here about 25 dollars a little over a hundred dollars and over two hundred dollars here so what features do these have and what price range makes sense for you so honestly as far as build quality I've been impressed with all three of these I don't think any of them really are that bad of a decision so with this cheaper one here this $25.00 one two the features that I do like I does actually come with a dipstick so you can check the level of contaminants and oil that you've caught within the catch can you don't actually have to unscrew it every time so you can check on that I think that's nice and it does have a very simple baffling system to help prevent that oil from going back up and then traveling over to your intake it is fairly small and there is not a drain port on it so this hundred dollar one here quite small very nice build quality to it it does have a bronze filter which is nice so this one doesn't actually have a filter on it it just has some baffling so this has baffling as well as a low micron bronze filter on it to help prevent that oil and those contaminants from going back into your intake the only thing about it is that it's pretty small but nice that it does have that drain port down at the bottom and then the big guy over here this is probably the nicest one I could find when I was looking around on it different ones online so it does have a nice bronze filter right here it does have the baffling system like the hundred dollar one also has the drain port there at the bottom and it's a good size to it so you know you're not gonna have to dump it out as frequently you're able to hold quite a bit more in this of course just looking at these size-wise so nice if you have the space within your engine compartment to stick this guy it'd be good you won't have to check it quite as frequently but honestly overall none of these really look like that bad of an option the big advantage to these more expensive ones being that bronze filter whereas this doesn't have a filter so you're really relying on that oil and air to cool and separate out as well as just the longer passageway that that oil has to travel and hopefully you catch it rather than relying on a filter to make sure it doesn't go into the engine so you do get a little bit more if you pay a bit more but honestly all of these seem like a butter system than doing nothing at all now again this video is part of a series where I have teamed up with RetailMeNot which has a free browser extension called RetailMeNot genie that's designed to compile all the coupon codes out there so that when you purchase a product online you get the best deal in this case we've created a unique promotion just for you viewers so if you click the link in the video description you will get $10 off any purchase made on auto anything comm over $50 they have all kinds of products and performance parts it doesn't have to be an oil catch can that you use the discount on and this offer can be combined with any other deals that they're offering as well which you can easily get by downloading the RetailMeNot genie browser extension personally I've had a great experience using auto anything comm because if you ever use their chat feature they have always helped me beat the lowest price I can find out there simply by saying hey I found it for cheaper on this website and then they'll match it or beat it and then you can take an additional $10 off using the link in the video description again a big thanks to RetailMeNot for hooking up all the viewers with $10 off I hope you're able to take advantage of it and thank you all so much for watching if you have any questions or comments of course feel free to leave them below

Channel: Engineering Explained

Views: 3,167,725

Keywords: oil catch can, what is oil catch can, engineering, tuner car, tuned, ecu tune, best oil, pennzoil, mobil 1, toyota, supra, nsx, acura, integra, wrx, sti, brz, mini cooper, honda, subaru, ford, ferrari, lamborghini, nissan, chevy, GM, cadillac, dodge, chrysler, RAM, mazda, mercedes, audi, bmw, porsche, turbo, engine, horsepower, torque, catch can test, science, test oil catch cans

Id: T-B4VRxAtbw

Length: 11min 6sec (666 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 17 2019