Chas

I was enjoying the car on the day of the Pistonheads Sunday Service! However, the car decided that once again it would not play ball.

On hard left corners it appeared to be throwing oil out of the vent pipe of the oil separator as seen below at 3 minutes:


I thought it was the exhaust but a friend in the Audi RS4 said it was underneath the car!

Yup, I may have been the reason for why the session ended! Both of my French cars behaved better than this on track! To add insult to injury a Westfield that day running a CVH 1.6 had a stockish breather setup but the breather going from the cambelt side of the cam cover to underneath the car with no issues.

The engine bay is spotless, but the underneath of the car was covered in oil, which I promptly cleaned up. According to the dipstick the car lost 1/4 to 1/2 a litre of oil. Not good!

At the moment the vent pipe simply had a breather filter on it but clearly this will not suffice! I was debating plumbing the vent pipe back into the metering head but surely that quantity of oil loss would cause damage elsewhere!

The only thing I can think of it being is an oil surge issue!

In your experience what will stop oil surge on a ZVH?

So far it is running the following:
1.8 ZVH
KE-Jetronic
Bailey Dump valve (the pipes were clean when I temporarily removed it to put on a blanking bung).
Oil drain above the sump IIRC
Bailey oil separator (or should I say oil dumper!)
BC5 Gearbox (as a result I think it is using the earlier sump. It is a one piece affair).
The suspension is modded but nothing major for the car. It's on Leda coilovers, Nankang NS2R track tyres with it being fully polybushed.

I have considered fitting a catch can but losing that much oil within such a short space of time cannot be doing the engine any favours!

Any other suggestions? I have a nasty suspicion it could be the sump or the lack of a windage tray in the sump. Would having ARP bolts affect the latter?

FWIW it has never thrown oil out ever before even on the return journey. I whacked in an empty bottle onto the vent pipe only to see water in it when I got back home.

One day it should behave I hope!

nigel b

you can get oil surge on righthand bends but that would give you less oil in the engine getting up top
does the engine breathe heavy?
ive always used a catch can so oil cant go anywhere,sensible thing to do for track
a little bit of oil hitting the exhaust will make it look worse than what it appears to be

lacey

The two piece sump will be better for you

Roscopeco

iTrader: (1)

Was browsing on here and saw this , maybe some help to you ......

http://oddkiddcreations.co.uk/shop/#...tegory=1337066

When I enquired about one they were order only part so maybe worth sending Jano a msg

Chas

If I am honest, it does breathe a little on the heavy side but it is only chucking out water vapour by the looks of it or at least when I took it on the road. There may have been a reason for this which shall be detailed below (I found a kinked oil drain pipe which I have since changed).

A catch can may make it more track friendly and be on the cards but the engine losing 1/3 of a litre from 5-10 mins worth of driving via a breather cannot be too healthy on the engine!

I have heard the 2 piece affair is the best setup out of stock parts but will having a BC-5 gearbox complicate things? I am on a one piece sump at the moment

Already have and thanks for the link . If it is decided it is the sump and a two piece item involves too much faffing around I may well consider getting my sump baffled.

Anyway, I hope the stuff below does not put you to sleep but it will be interesting to see what you reckon and how I should go about it:

I did previously have a catch tank setup but I was advised by many that this was not a great setup for engine. It looked as the pic below where the crankcase pipe was as per factory (going from the crankcase to the nearside rocker cover breather, and then a pipe from the offside breather going into a catch tank and venting to atmosphere.



The issue with this was that:

-It breathed misty oil out of the breather at times onto the front of the engine but worse the cambelt. The latter was the biggest reason for me ditching the setup, especially when ZVH are said to breather a little heavier than a CVH (unsurprising given the extra capacity and extra blowby from the extra power of the car).
-Emptying it out was a pain. It was mostly water mayonaise solution in there mind you. The car OTOH did not handle so great when I bought it!
-Gaskets misting up. A previous owner from when the engine was rebuilt thought a crank seal was gone. IMO the breather system was not helping matters. This has stopped surprisingly with the Bailey setup. What was an oily sump is now bone dry.

TBH my Triumph Stag went the opposite way when I went from a semi PCV system (the Strombergs) to an open breather system, so much so that it would drip after being turned off. OTOH the breather systems on Stags probably is not the best anyway!

The below is how I plumbed in the breather


And here is how it is looking. You can just about make out the photo for the crankcase breather below at the bottom left of the first photo:





There were and still are a few issues which I shall go into:

-The 'drain' pipe going into the crankcase had a slight kink in the pipe, but it seemed to be draining. Some reckon this was not helping; I have since replaced this with some 'bendy' silicone hose but I have yet to drive the car much distance since doing this (it's in the bodyshop...).
-It was breathing out of the vent pipe but with a bottle put in place it only seemed to be water vapour and nothing else! It may have got better with the new drain pipe but again I don't know...
-One well known Ford garage reckons the oil drain position is not the best place on the CVHs or ZVHs with the Bailey setup, with it being above the oil level and being potentially affected by blowby. He suggested that I either put a plate beneath the crankcase breather union inside the engine to prevent oil flicking up and affecting blowby or to plumb the drain into the sump plug, thus not having the oil affected by blowby at all. He reckoned it would help my breather issues alot! What do you peeps think?
-AFAIK my Zetec sump has no baffles. It is the one piece sump from the earlier cars. Some people on here reckon it is fine for track use, while others reckon it is useless on the track as a result. If the sump is stock it looks like below:



But a CVH one is like below:



I also understand that Zetecs run a windage tray which may influence the above opinion but I am unsure as to whether I do due the engine having ARP bolts:



Any help on the matter would be appreciated. I'm beginning to wish that I stuck with my plan of going with a Stage 1 CVH but then I would not have the extra power (225BHP) and a torque curved almost as flat as a billiard table. Ho hum...

Versus_Creations

iTrader: (1)

The breather pipe under throttle body will fill with oil due to the dip in the pipe. Then will cause heavy breathing and the issues you have.

I would move the breather making it higher and change pipes.