Quote:
Originally Posted by 00 Trans Ram
I guess the question becomes, are they worth it to possibly prevent some minor degradation of performance some years down the road?
|
And that's the million dollar question. Seeing the fairly clean high mileage engines is enough for me to gamble on the LT1 not only running fine, but not losing any significant enough amount of power to matter as it ages.
At the same time, as I mentioned before, I don't see a catch can possibly hurting anything. They are also easy to remove. What would be nice though, is to get more convincing data on their actual effectiveness.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DaveC113
If you haven't checked out the vid I posted on redline/Italian tuneup from EE it connects some dots for sure.
I'd also think that the engine's oil consumption and possibly related piston ring seal are other factors that may change quite a bit from engine to engine. IME, auto mfg'ers have fairly recently been able to achieve close to perfect piston ring seals with resulting engines having near zero oil consumption. It also seems this is not perfected as some engines still consume oil and others seem to have major issues with oil consumption so it's possible the rate of success for achieving a near perfect seal are not 100%.
In any case, piston ring seal may be a huge driving factor in deposit formation, as with a near perfect seal you won't have the same kind of pressure buildup in the crankcase and resultant higher levels of PCV action. And you notice this because the oil level on the dipstick never changes. The dipstick indicator is about 1 qt from top to bottom so small amounts of oil loss are noticeable. So, if the car doesn't use oil and there's no blowby, there will be less flow via the PCV system and less deposits.
Another factor is low volatility oil, and the fact that certain oil additives may change the behavior of deposit formation and also may change the temperatures that deposits form at. If the oil has low volatility and the peak temperature of oil deposit formation can be shifted out of the most common temps the intake valve sees than that would have a major effect on deposit formation.
The truth is this isn't a simple issue or it never would be a problem in the 1st place. I think auto engineers working for major manufacturers are unlikely to share their knowledge of the subject as they are in competition with each other and the ability to build GDI motors w/o deposit issues is a big competitive advantage.
I also think it's much less likely we'll see issues with the LT1 because it isn't forced induction and owners of these cars are much more likely to use the engine's peak hp levels, which may increase the temps of the intake valve to the point they actually do get cleaned as a result.
|
Interesting points. I will check out that vid.