S2 Oil Catch Tank

[CharlieCroker]

Hi Guys,

I have been advised to add a catch tank to my S2 Esprit and would like to know how to install this correctly so that I breath the system whilst maintaining the vacuum. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Charlie;)

[Mike6]

Take my advice and dont fit one unless you are prepared to pay a lot of money. I purchased one for my car and ended up blowing the dipstick out of its housing. A fair amount of pressure can come out of the crankcase in certain circumstances and unless the catch tank is fitted with a pressure valve you will have problems. You only need to look at the size of the pipe into most tanks to appreciate this.

There are plenty of threads on the forum about these tanks (and on Esprit world) . You are much better just blanking the hole on the filter box and then dangling the pipe under the car with perhaps a filter on the end or a mechanism to catch any oil coming out.

Why were you advised to fit one. As it turned out the gundge coming out of my breather pipe was the result of excess crankcase pressure caused by knackered liners and rings.

[CharlieCroker]

Take my advice and dont fit one unless you are prepared to pay a lot of money. I purchased one for my car and ended up blowing the dipstick out of its housing. A fair amount of pressure can come out of the crankcase in certain circumstances and unless the catch tank is fitted with a pressure valve you will have problems. You only need to look at the size of the pipe into most tanks to appreciate this.

There are plenty of threads on the forum about these tanks (and on Esprit world) . You are much better just blanking the hole on the filter box and then dangling the pipe under the car with perhaps a filter on the end or a mechanism to catch any oil coming out.

Why were you advised to fit one. As it turned out the gundge coming out of my breather pipe was the result of excess crankcase pressure caused by knackered liners and rings.

Thanks for your reply. Yeah I was advised to fit one as the car (only just bought it) came with two ramflow air filters of which the cam case breather pipe ran into the back of the filter this in turn was creating a build up of oil in the filter, not good. I simply did what you already said and ran the pipe to the floor, a respected lotus dealer told me to run it to a breather tank of which would be a good solution, so bought the tank fitted it and had the oil come up out of the dipstick as you experienced so I put this question to the forum as I thought it was not installed properly. I've already run the pipe back down through to the floor, think this will be the best bet until I find a better solution, any other ideas? Thanks.