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Tue Sep 23, 2014 6:02 am

While shopping for a replacement seal for my relatively new Scat sand seal pulley I noticed in a product decription that the seal is claimed to keep out dirt BUT will NOT keep oil in.

I had figured my seal had prematurely worn out. A steady leak had begun that runs down the front of the oil pump. It was different from before with the stock pulley where the oil would get flung outward off the pulley itself. I quit driving the car due to this and my lack of time to get it sorted out.

Well until a few minutes ago, I was going to just replace the seal and hope it went away, but now I'm kinda thinking the seal is doing what it's supposed to and was prolly not a good thing to install when I know I have some decent crankcase pressure I'm dealing with.

Shortly before the seal seemed to fail I noticed my new breather was starting to clog and get oily on it's exterior. I rinsed out it's foam but it didn't make a difference on the seal leak.

At this point I'm thinking I need to address the crankcase pressure problem better. Currently I have a vent in the fuel pump block-off and one off the oil filler. I'm thinking I need to vent the valve covers now also.

Any opinions?

Is there anyway to give that breather a better way to drain back? Will the valve cover vents do this??

Tue Sep 23, 2014 6:34 am

Yes, in fact I thought that you did have the breather box plumbed to the valve covers. I must not have been paying attention. Order up the little outlets that go with this kit, drill and mount them at the upper front corners of the valve covers. Just use your favorite kind of snot to seal them. They work I've used them. They're also cheaper than buying the nice welded ones. http://www.mooreparts.com/710-AC115552/?gclid=CI2k5f-498ACFU2Rfgod3nQAFQ

Tue Sep 23, 2014 6:41 am

Glenn has some of these nice Berg covers, this is his. They are nice for 50 60 bucks a pair. You weld though, Holmes, you could make a nice set of these and a sweet breather and be done with it.

Tue Sep 23, 2014 6:48 am

A Berg breather box. Once again, you could make a bitchin one.

Tue Sep 23, 2014 6:59 am

Ideas 8)

Tue Sep 23, 2014 3:11 pm

To bring some of that info over here so one need not read the whole other thread...

Quote: thewreckingsoul wrote:
Quote: pafree wrote:

is the dump can necessary with the krankvent system? if not, what are some other options for the return line?

With the setup shown in the Ghia, the vent box will drain back through the hose to the fuel pump blockoff plate. Pressure will vent out through the hose and oil drain back.

Where the mechanical pump is still used, I always setup the vent box to drain back through the filler neck vent hose or to the valve cover closest to the vent box. Don't route hoses so they have low spots. Low spots can and are likely to collect oil until they no longer allow venting. With a single carb, a drain box like the K&N tower type can be mounted to the right inner fender panel with the right valve cover vent hose nearly straight up and down and connected to the bottom fitting on the box.

I feel VW aircooled breather boxes should have 4 to 6 fittings depending on how many carbs and whether the mechanical pump is present.

If you use a Brillo or Chore Boy type pad as a filter media in the vent box (for instance, to replace crumblng cheap factory foam), use the stainless steel or brass type so rust is not an issue. Been there...Seen that. You don't want rusty chunks of steel wool draining back into your crankcase. I have encountered a customer's car with Scotch-brite in the vent box. Seems kinda expensive if you're buying the material, but should hold up well.

Tue Sep 23, 2014 3:19 pm

Isn't it recommended to only vent the 1/2 side?

Tue Sep 23, 2014 3:27 pm

That depends on who you're hearing it from. Opinions are like certain body parts...Everybody has one. :)

In theory, the rocker boxes in the heads should vent through the pushrod tubes into the main case. That's how it is stock. But with higher performance comes greater blow-by and crankcase pressure. So most engine builders and experienced VW folks will recommend additional crankcase venting.

I like crankcase venting to "sweep across" the engine to vent effectively. ie. in one end, out the other.

The 1/2 side only venting never made much sense to me. Care to give a try at explaining it Brian?

Tue Sep 23, 2014 4:37 pm

I have no backing on hand, I have to find the website that I saw it from. Also I think I read it from something john@acn said.

Someone did a bench test on a performance motor and majority of the oil sloshing around was filling up the 3/4 side. That would give a better chance for amounts of oil to be sucked up into the carb. What amount? probably not that much. I'll have to dig up what I read though to make more sense of it.

Tue Sep 23, 2014 11:17 pm

Alright Dusty, I come with backup! Help me interprut this to offroad use! I do not give a toot about street use, I wanna know what this says to you about hitting whoops and bouncing up and down and all around.

http://www.mufflermike.com/news2000.html

The pictures are of 3/4, the last is of 1/2.

Muffler Mike wrote:

you can clearly see there is no oil in it yet. Its weird to actually see the rockers in operation. Something you dont normally see.

I started the motor up and brought it up to around 2500 rpm and it is about a third full. At 3000 rpm it was half full.

On my way to 5000 rpm. This is why this is the easiest place to see if your motor is going away, pop this cover off and you will see any junk in the bottom of the cover that settled. its faster then pulling your filter apart. It all gets pushed over to this side.

At 5000 rpm. it is full. This when I saw my real leak on the top of the head. If you think about it, this area must hold a quart or a quart and a half of oil. No wonder you need a deep sump, otherwise you would have no oil to pick up. One of the ideas the guys at EMS gave me was to braze up the tips on the push rods so I dont send any extra oil up in the vavle cover. It definitly has enough with out it. And if you think about it, to do that would lighten up the push rod it self if there were no oil in it. Now I would say, this is not a good idea in a street car where you idle on a regular basis, but for my case where I really only race this, I am alwasy on RPM. But its not likely that I will do that yet.

Nothing like the other side, but I thought I would show it any ways. This is a picture at 5000 rpm. All it did was splash and sling oil off the rockers and on to the window. As I looked inside, all I was able to see was a small puddle develop just high enough to drain right back down the push rod tubes.

Wed Sep 24, 2014 6:41 am

I've seen those videos, pretty interesting.
Like I was saying, I've used the empi breather box kit before, it comes with two vent bugholes for the covers. Used em on my last 1776 and they worked like a charm 8)

Wed Sep 24, 2014 10:47 am

I know that the whole to be or not to be conversation about valve cover vents has been played to death almost as much as what oil is best. That's why I tried to stay away from that in my OP. I had vents brazed into my covers on my first VW engine. That engine never had any positive pressure problems - it was very worn out and died soon after I got it. So I can't say whether it was worth it or not. I was more concerned about the sand seal part of my equation.

As for the cover vents, I have bungs that came with my Bugpack breather box that I can put in, but I think I might be more inclined to braze some on. That way there's nothing to loosen up and leak. The Bugpack box only comes with three ports and not much room for too many more.

I think perhaps in my case, it might be worth a try making a overflow bottle to put inbetween my breather and engine. I'll put the barbs at the top of something like an old propane tank where the vapors can go in and the oil can drop down right away and drain back out a barb in the bottom to the filler neck(maybe) and then have a few hoses run from the top to the breather. This way the extra oil has a place to go instead of cloggin up my breather.
Question is: why is so much oil pumping up the filler and fuel pump vents? Perhaps it was a cumulative event? Another problem is picking a vent that will actually allow the oil to drain back. Perhaps instead of the filler like I mentioned, I should take a cue from the pictures above and make the 3/4 cover my drain back?

Thu Sep 25, 2014 7:52 am

Is the oil deflector plate put in the right direction? What oil are you using
stupid questions I suppose.
Oil pressure relief valve working ?

Thu Sep 25, 2014 8:08 am

I've never had a reason to have the gen stand off to look at the plate but I believe I peeked down the filler once. Never had to mess with the relief valve. You think maybe my pressure is too high?

I like to use 20w50 castrol, the higher visc helps with the leaking but I think it has more 15w40 in it now since that is what I've had on hand lately.

I started fabbing up a drain bottle last night but I might end up using the big aluminum whore I had on my old VW engine. I should have just used it to begin with since it has a filter on top but the filter had fallen apart and I didn't want to find a new one. It mounts to roll bar as well which I don't have but I can fix that at least for the time being.

Fri Sep 26, 2014 7:32 am

It couldn't hurt to check those things. I'm certain that when you run the vented covers and with what you fab up, you should be dry. If not, we'll have to throw the motor off the roof and take driveway pics after it hits . 8)

Tue Sep 30, 2014 5:41 am

well this is what I came up with for now.

stupid plate made the pic dark. It was 1am and raining though.

I relocated the breather to under/behind the license plate and on the left side mounted a black catch bottle. The bottle goes to valve cover vents, fuelpump vent, and oil filler vent. There are two lines off the top end of the bottle that vent up to the breather. The driver side valve cover is setup to be the return for the captured oil. Vent hoses EVERYWHERE!
Unfotunately, I'm still dripping oil. Not sure if it's at the same rate since It's been tested in the dark. Think I'm gonna buy a new seal and then I'm done fighting it.

Had a thought, though.
The Scat pulley comes with a circlip which they intend for you to use behind the pulley on the crankshaft to make sure it sits out away from the seal enough since there's some differences in length of cranks. I just wonder what pressing this clip against the oil slinger washer and tightening the pulley bolt down does to the oil slinger? I've never actually laid eyes on the slinger except the back side while putting the pulley on. Could this pressure deform it enough to keep it from doing it's job? Or is the pulley supposed to push up hard against the slinger?

Tue Sep 30, 2014 5:57 am

Unless you locking up your motor to torque the pully bolt, it shouldn't hurt the slinger. They are pretty heavy gauge.

Tue Sep 30, 2014 6:40 am

somethings fucking wrong, for sure. You shouldn't need IV's all over your motor like that. You should be able to at the very least, yank off that sand seal, put the pulley back on with the slinger, and running this simple setup, be leak free.

Another good thread
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=165310&start=0

Tue Sep 30, 2014 6:50 am

^ I know! WTF?

Tue Sep 30, 2014 12:46 pm

you'll get it sorted, I have faith. 8)