Re-Route Breather Vent Kama 554

[3RRL]

Hi guys,
Almost a year ago I was asking about excessive blow by on my Kama 554 in this old thread.
Excessive Blow-By Kama 554

As it turned out, the blow by is not too excessive after all. In fact, other owners said it was pretty standard. Someday I'll do an engine overhaul if it becomes necessary, but for now the engine is still running great.

There were some interesting alternatives discussed. Of particular interest to me was to re-route the breather vent so that some of the oil gasses would be sucked up into the intake manifold instead of blowing out onto the valve cover and engine block...making a mess.
Sort of like recirculating what little smoke there is.

After re-reading the old thread, I wanted to accomplish a couple things with this mod:
-I wanted to make sure the air intake would not "suck" the oil directly out of the valve cover.
-It was important that the intake on the air filter get fresh air as well as suck in some of the smoke.
-I wanted the air and smoke to go through my filter rather than straight into my manifold so I could monitor it.
-I have a filter minder to tell me when the air filter starts to get clogged up.
Here's what I came up with.
The stock Breather is on the left and the re-routed one is on the right.

 

[3RRL]

I started out by boring out the OEM breather cap and making a brass bushing that fit inside and plugged up the vent holes. The bored hole fits the tubing and is sealed with an "O" ring. I can still unscrew the breather cap because it rotates around the tube. The wire meshing is still inside the OEM cap. There is another fat "O" ring that seals the threads to the cap, so no smoke or oil escapes when the cap is screwed on.

 

[3RRL]

I routed the tubing over to the front of the engine.
I had to find the right place to get to the air filter intake hole so the hood would close. These photos show the route I took. I made a couple brackets to hold the tubing in position. In the last photo, you can see the relationship between the end of the breather tube and the intake hole on the air filter.



I tried that out for a couple days and noticed that once in a while I could see a little smoke from under the hood when at idle. It was not too much but I wanted to make the breather tube a little closer to the air filter. The radiator fan was sucking some of it in before the air filter got to it.
So I put in a longer tube to get it closer.



Now there is still plenty of fresh air to suck in, but any smoke that comes out of the breather tube is collected and sucked up by the air filter opening. I've had this on for a week now and it seems there are no problems doing this. The smoke that used to come out of the OEM breather cap has been totally eliminated and so has the mess on the side of the engine.
If it works out I'll leave it like this.
Rob-

 

[Diamondpilot]

The only question I have is will this oily air contaminate your filter element over time? Did you consider taping in the breather pipe into the intake pipe after the filter?

Chris

 

[3RRL]

The only question I have is will this oily air contaminate your filter element over time? Did you consider taping in the breather pipe into the intake pipe after the filter?

Chris

Chris,
I'm sure it will affect the filter element but like I said, I have the Filtermider installed which will tell me when the filter "starts" to clog up a little. I can check it periodically at various stages to determine if I need to clean or replace it. I really wanted to go directly into the intake manifold but was afraid for two reasons.
One is the suction is so great that it might suck oil through there and the second is that the filter minder would not work correctly anymore since there would be another source of air getting to the intake manifold after the filter. I wanted this re-routing to only take the small amount of smoke in when (if) it is made by the breather.

 

[Diamondpilot]

Got ya Rob. Its a cool mod. I was just curious why you did it the way you did. You have now answered my questions.

Chris

 

[tommu56]

Rob looks great as usual does Loretta know you took the last pipe from her dish washer drain?

Tom

 

[3RRL]

Ha Tom, she is going to kill me!

 

[3RRL]

You saw in my "Steel Wool Filter" thread where I re-routed the breather tube again so the oily smoke would not clog up my paper air filters. After deciding not to use the Steel Wool filter after all, this connection kept the paper air filters from getting wiped out.



Well, as it turns out, that little hose was just not enough to take the oily smoke into the intake manifold like the large tube from the first mod. In that other thread, Larry made a great suggestion to ad a larger tube into the intake but install a shut-off valve to it. That way I could open the valve up until the just the oily smoke was being sucked into the intake. It would be a perfect way to "fine tune adjust" the amount coming from the breather into the intake. If there is smoke coming out the breather holes, open the valve a little more ... just enough until it disappears.
So that's what I did this weekend.

 

[3RRL]

I started with the little housing that holds the OEM metal filtering material.
It had a flange on it that wouldn't fit inside the "T" I was using. I ground the flange down in diameter so that it fit the 1-1/4 "T". I made the flange the same size as the largest pipe thread so I could screw it down inside the "T".



I then drilled several "breather holes" into the top plug.
The metal filtering material fits back inside that now. You can see the "breather holes in the plug. I will remove the plug and filtering material when changing or adding oil.
Rob-