I ordered some of this Duocel stuff. It's sheets of 'foamed' 6101-T6 aluminum. I'm going to form a brick that will slip into the stock oil filler tower and hopefully provide significant oil vapor separation from the crankcase ventilation air. Ideally, by slipping this into the stock tower, I can run the breather tube to a carb or FI intake and not have to stress/dealwith large quantities of oil collecting in the intake or fouling the carbs.

Why not a traditional foam? This stuff won't break down over time.

Not cheap though. Each 4" x 4" x 0.5" sheet is $30.

Oh and if this works it'll appear Original while being Custom.

Interesting.
I like the V-bar project better
If this foam had bits fall off over time, is there any way those aluminum foam crumbs would get into the flow of the oiling system? Bits would be caught by the oil filter before reaching delicate internals?

On my bug with a CB tower I used a copper sponge like thing I found at my hardware store. Worked great! Damn sponge would eventually get saturated and not breathe as well. This was an 7500 RPM / 2275 / Type I motor.

Seems like it's perfect for this application. See below:

Liquid/Gas Separators - The three-dimensional continuous ligament structure of Duocel foam promotes complete removal of entrained liquids. Aluminum foam alone or with standard surface treatments ensures long life and low maintenance. With up to 97% void volume, extremely small pressure drops can be achieved. The continuously connected aluminum structure prevents particle generation from within the liquid/gas separator.

It's certainly possible, but I'm satisfied that it's improbable. I'll plan on cutting open the first couple oil filters and straining the used oil to see if anything is generated.

This is absolutely an experiment.

Nice find, that's cool stuff.

Now the question is if its weldable...that would probably make great fuel tank baffles.

Wow, what a strange material. It certainly looks cool!

The fuel cell foam I've had in my race car breather can shows no sign of breakdown yet, after 12 years and more than 100 races.
Cost of foam in a Tangerine Racing breather can - less than $1, and it looks an awful lot like that picture of Duocel.

But it's not ALUMINUM.

I'm going to get this stuff electropolished so that it's so shiny it glows in the dark. BLING BLING! Just kidding.

You could probably backlight it with a LED strip so when one opens the cap to refill the oil at night, you don't need a flashlight.

A little OT but, who made those aluminum tower oil filler assemblies?

And, for Andy's idea, a normally closed NC relay would allow the cap to act as a switch to turn on said LED, if the cap was conductive with matching contacts on the tower.

Mine was made by "spunone" on this forum. Veeeerrry niiiice.

/6 oil tank screen

Under what conditions would fuel cell foam break down? My friend, driving a birkin 7, running regular old 92-93 from the pump, had the foam in his cell break down after 3-4 seasons. He stored the car winters with a full tank of fuel. Last season he had fuel delivery issues, I told him to check the fuel cell, the foam had come apart into little chunks, was blocking the fuel line, and the fuel filter was clogged. He had to take a bunch of the car apart to remove and clean the fuel cell out, and now takes the foam out over the winters and plans to replace it every couple yrs.

Maybe he had different foam from what you are using? Are there different brands or grades of foam?

vibrtaion will be the enemy here, so make sure teh metal foam you use will not vibrate aginst the supports adn that could cuase wear inducing particles to get into the motor. maybe some sort of silicone (oil proof) seal around the foam to were you attach it to the motor would be good.

I have used a copper foam before, used it in a helium 3 isotope, zero gravity refridgeration unit for use on cooling space based sensors. neat stuff. the copper foam had the corect pore size to help seperate the Helium 3 from Helium (liquid), this is what drove the refridgeration cycle.

Unleaded fuel stored in the fuel cell for an extended period of time.
Your friend would be better off completely draining the tank for winter storage if he's using pump gas.

Pretty cool, i've seen our waterjet guy cutting that stuff out before. We have some special metal foam thats about 1,000 per gram !

what the $1000/gram stuff called, alumicaine?

Gives you a buzz and Alzheimers in one shot !

Actually contains BE/CU/and gold.