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The basic reason for setting up an oil/air separator is that
the CA18DET in the S13 Nissan Silvia's and 180SX's have a habit of giving out a
bit of an oil residue in vapour form from the breather hose at the top back of
the engine. Particularly under higher boost than stock applications, quite a bit
of oil can be found in the intake lines that can particularly build up in the
Intercooler, this is bad! Oil in the intercooler means trapped oil, less cooling
effect, less performance, and so on.. bad bad bad..
Basically, you can go spend quite a few dollars on expensive
purpose made oil/air separators, I'm sure they do the job well.. but everyone
likes to acheive the same thing for under $5.. $2.95 in fact!
What I've done, is what many others have done, so I can't claim this as an
original idea! I wondered down to my local Supercheap Auto down the road, and
bought a 'generic fuel filter' for $2.95. I then found a suitable spot roughly
in the middle of the breather hose, and cut it. Then with the help of a couple
hose clamps, put the fuel filter in between, and clamp her up! (I have seen some
fuel filters with less than desirable dimensions on their pipe connections.. ie,
they're too small for the breather hose pipe to be tightened up to correctly. To
get around this, find a more suitable size pipe and slide a 2cm bit of it over
the fuel filter ends, and then slip the breather hose over that, then clamp her
up).
And obviously, I left the breather hose go back to the intake after being
filtered through, as it would in stock form.
Here's some pics below.. try and ignore everything around it, my car's far from
stock with the way I have pipes going all over the place.. particularly with the
current location of my charcoal canister.. but anyway..
Also, if you have a considerably large problem with oil coming
through the breather hose, it is possible that you'll notice the fuel filter
clogging up quickly (say after a month).. depends on the extent of your problem,
and how much your engine is living on the edge and how much boost you're
running. As you'll see in the photo's below, my filter is quite clean, and its
been there for at least 3 months.
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