Oil Catch Tank

[dandan]

Hi all,
I\'ve been told by Tim at rxmotors that i need to rig up and oil catch tank as a safety feature on my engine, and considering i\'m refitting the engine myself, I need all the safety features i can get!

I\'m not spending £75 on what is essentially a metal box just because it has a tuner name stamped on it, so I just need a few details about them.

*How big should it be, capacity wise?

*does it need to be sealed up tight or should it be open to air?

*what sort of heat is it going to have to withstand?

I was just thinking of going to one of those household equipment places, like robert dyas etc and finding a decent sized metal box/tin with a small lid, then piercing a hole in the lid and sticking an oil pipe into it. Do I really need anything more complicated than that?

Any tips appreciated

[stuart wizy]

go to  your nearest steel stores and tell them you want 100mm dia tube length at 200mm long, im sure they will sort you an offcut out, pipe benders also stock different sizes of stainless tube and have offcuts.
get 2 square pieces 0f 3mm stainless plate cut 100mm square and cut both of them round to make end caps. find these at local fabbing shop.
work out how many outlets you want and what size you need and get it welded up somewhere.
or go and buy one for 100 quid !!!!
get friendly with someone who can tig weld somewhere, and you can make anything you want.
stainless polishes up real nice.......

[asp]

bought mine on ebay for 20 quid,

[MikeLMR]

we\'re using an aluminium drinks bottle from a bike.

Theres nothing complicated about a catch tank, all the happens is the oily air from the engine enters the tank, swirls and slows down as its a larger volume than the pipe and because of this the oil drops out of the air and collects in the tank, some may have baffles etc. to help seperate the oil. You don\'t want it sealed as you want the air to escape from the top of the tank, some have those small breather filters on the top too, we\'re not bothering but they aren\'t a bad idea I suppose (stops muck getting back in to the engine if the air flow is reversed I suppose ?!)

[stuart wizy]

i used to use the bottom of a plastic coke bottle to catch my oil on my old ren 5 turbo drag car!!!!!!!!!
I pumped that much boost through the poor little 1400 pushrod engine that oil would be pushed back through all the oil breather pipes and collect in the half bottle of coke at the end of the 1/4!!
this was due to piston rings being shot and extra boost slipping past the rings and pressurising crankcase but the principle worked.

[dandan]

cool cheers peepes, I will go on a hunt for something shiny for the oil to drop into!
So if it is getting a lot of oil in the tank on a regular basis, would this be a bad thing? also could I just tip any collected oil back into the filler?

[Grizzly]

This may sound realy Dumb but where do you pipe the Tank too?

I know on a Boinger engine its Crank case and cam breathers but what about a Rotary? the only place i can think of is the oil filler tube breather? but there is no moving parts in the bottom end/Sump area? so is there a breather in the Timming cover etc? what advantage do you get on a Rotary? i understand how it works on a Piston engine but this just Confuses me a little (i\'ve also not seen one Piped up on a Rotary so i can\'t imagen what benifit it would give you?)

[edgasket]

:confused: I was gonna ask the same question as Grizzly...

[kev-yorks]

Mines a home made one dandan. 3inch exhaust pipe blanked at both ends. With one breather outlet and two inlets which i\'ve piped to both engine breathers one on the oil filler neck and the other on the engine itself. Being a lazy git the engine breather is piped in at the bottom of the tank so its self draining via gravity once the engines shut down. The tank is mounted where the charol canister used to be.
Kevin

[Grizzly]

This was going to be my next Question, Did it replace the Charcoal canister?

I\'ve just had a look at mine and i found the Charcoal canister that has 3 pipes coming off it, the first looks like its the Drain at the bottom, the second goes to the Fuel tank? (or at least its some sort of Fuel Breather) and the Third goes all the way throught the little tank next to the Throttles then through a Solenoid (Purge Control) to the Upper inley manifold. The thing where it goes to there is three vac take offs? so i\'m no better off?  

I know a good mate of mine had a Turbo bearing that was on its way out that used to smoke on Start up, Pip put a catch tank on that which did help a little but i did\'nt pay much attention to where it went as i had a T2 at the time.

[G@NDY]

An interesting thread, i want to fashion a catch tank aswell. As i feel the same as you Dan, its alot of money for a bit of metal, and im tight

[kev-yorks]

Grizzly the purge control went the same way as all the solenoids and rats nest so the charcol canister was redundant i\'ve just put a small breather filter on the pipe from the tank. Due to the volume of air the gt42 is chucking into the engine i\'m suffering from a certain amount of blowby hence the catch can, as there was a little oil loss from the breathers on full boost. Problems solved now as it just goes into the catch can then drains back into the engine later.
Kevin

[Grizzly]

Ahh ok so this is only on Singles? Do you still take the Breather from the same place on the manifold? Becouse if so won\'t it cause a vac/Boost leak? becose by the looks of it Mazda Intended it to only be used at set times hence the Solenoid?

[dandan]

errr, right this has gone way over my head from a technical point of view!!

Literally all i was going to do was run a pipe from the oil filler neck into a bottle, so if the oil overflows up the neck it will go into the bottle instead of through the one way valve and into the engine again. Tim said this would be much safer if things went wrong. I would love to see a diagram/sketch of how yours works kev, sounds a lot more complex than what i was planning. I\'ll be honest I am just trying to follow the instructions I was given, I genuinely don\'t know the tecxhnical reason behind what I am doing!
Oh and mines running a single too.

[M@r]{]

Dan

Not sure how quickly you are looking to do this but i\'m hoping to come down to you early May, mine has a Oil Catch tank fitted (not a home made jobby) so you are welcome to have  good dig around it and see whats what - if that would help??

errr, right this has gone way over my head from a technical point of view!!

Literally all i was going to do was run a pipe from the oil filler neck into a bottle, so if the oil overflows up the neck it will go into the bottle instead of through the one way valve and into the engine again. Tim said this would be much safer if things went wrong. I would love to see a diagram/sketch of how yours works kev, sounds a lot more complex than what i was planning. I\'ll be honest I am just trying to follow the instructions I was given, I genuinely don\'t know the tecxhnical reason behind what I am doing!
Oh and mines running a single too.