SECTION 34 - BREATHER SYSTEM – FITTING INSTRUCTIONS

Again, another good system, with rubbish instructions. Maybe it’s just me but I expect better instructions when I buy things. This should make fitting a Bailey breather system a bit easier. On with the show!

Firstly you should remove you old Ford breather system, as you won’t be using it anymore, except for one hose that goes back to the block itself and a bit of hose for one small breather pipe. This might be old and worn, so check it before fitting the new breather, and replace with new hose if need be.

What you should find on the Bailey item is that you need 4 hoses to fit it correctly. They are as follows.

Left hand of rocker cover to breather
Right hand of rocker cover to breather
Bottom, back, of breather to block (oil return)
Bottom, front, of breather to air box (oil vapour)

The actual breather unit itself is connected to the cylinder head, you remove the blanking plate at the rear right hand side and fit it there. You should also use 2 x spring washers as well, to take up any vibrations from the engine, as I found that after a while the nuts worked themselves loose. Again, not supplied in the kit from Bailey.

Here is how I fitted mine.

I cut the short hose for the right hand rocker cover and added that to the rocker cover, then I connected the breather to that hose, then lined it up and joined the breather to the back of the block and then tightened the nuts up. I then added the hose from the left hand side of the rocker cover to the breather. So far so good.

The next bit is a bit tricky, so what I did was to work underneath the car, makes it much easier. You have the hose that is at the bottom front of the breather, and this joins to a hose going to the air box via a metal pipe. It can be a bit of a pain with all the boost hoses and what not in the way, so jack the car up and work from underneath the car. A point worth bearing in mind is to use jubilee clips to join the air box hose to the metal pipe as well.

The final hose is the bottom rear one, and this really annoyed me. I removed my Ford hose as it was cracked, and it was a pain to get the hose back on and to tighten the jubilee clip up. I guess small hands are needed.

When all the hoses are on you should tighten up all the clips as tight as possible and check they all connect to the spouts as far as possible.

Then you should start the car up and adjust the idling if need be.

One thing worth bearing in mind is that the breather now vents oil vapour into the air box, which according to Bailey’s own advertising is a daft idea. You don’t want oil being mixed with air before it goes into the engine!

So what you can do is to block the hose off that runs from the air box, and re route the hose from the breather to an oil catch tank. The oil tank must then be vented to atmosphere.

This idea was suggested to me by Karl Norris from Norris Motorsport, so the full credit must go to Karl for sorting this out and for answering my questions on the matter. Very helpful and knowledgeable guy!

All you then have to do is to empty the oil catch tank every now and again and the problem is cured. It’s just a pity Bailey didn’t implement this idea from the start.