Oil Catch Cans

mcbutler

Veteran
 Plymouth
Hi all,

After selling my 23i and buying my 35i I started to look into the direct injection, its issues and benefits.
One thing that quickly became apparent is that practically everyone in the tuning game recommends fitting an oil catch can to pretty much any direct injection petrol engine as a way to help prevent inlet valve coking and a way to assess engine health, bore wear, blow by etc.
So, I researched the market and decided on Mishimotos offering as the best. This can comes with sintered metal filters and a complete hose kit.
I fitted the kit at 27000 miles, I am now on 31000.
Yesterday I decided to drain the can while hot and see how much oil vapour had been caught, picture below (finger for scale :D )

Does anyone else have a can fitted? be interesting to compare volumes across a range of mileages.
 

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I might be wrong but not exactly the Exxon Valdez is it.

How much was the kit and how long to fit it ?

Stuart
 
Stuartt said:
I might be wrong but not exactly the Exxon Valdez is it.

How much was the kit and how long to fit it ?

Stuart
Nope not a lot but imagine that burned onto your valves! My engine is a beaut, no oil usage and low miles, obviously older engines will produce more.
You can find the N54 kit on the mishimoto website.
 
mcbutler, I think you have made a good call fitting this, yes it does not look much but better in the can than burnt into the valves.
 
Thats after 4000 miles. My last car made it to 160,000 miles, so there would have been 40 times this amount burnt onto the inlet and valves by then! :o
 
In my opinion a catch can on the high pressure side is a waste of time unless you are going to do the low side too. You'll still need to clean your intake valves with this catch can as your engine spends most of its time off-boost so you'll still have a load of crap hitting the intake.

There's a guy on spoolstreet with dual catch cans fitted: https://bmw.spoolstreet.com/threads/dual-catch-can-why-you-want-to-do-it.3136/
This will actually prevent the need for walnut blasting.
 
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