Anyone ever seen anything like the aluminum box in the pics? The hose from the crankcase breather goes into it.

Looks like an oil breather box to me, what are the two hoses going to at the center/bottom of the box?

It's an aluminum catch can, made to control any oil and vapors eminating from the engine. Allows them to be captured and drain back into engine rather than all over the engine compartment ( and the track).

The two hose fittings on the front loop together and a fitting on the side is plugged. The car has dual carbs and the fittings on the carb for manifold vacuum are connected to each other. Should I tee into the vacuum hose from the carbs and put some sort of pcv valve & filter on the oil breather?? The reason I ask is the hose out the oil breather appears to have moisture in it and I know that cant be good for the enginge! I just bought the car about a month ago and am trying to fix all the DAPO problems.

That carb is cute.

Hmm, on a "normal" car (i.e., mine) the hose from the crankcase would go into the air box. The idea, as mentioned already, is to allow oil mist and vapors from the crankcase to be dealt with in a clean fashion. Step one is to keep it from spraying all over the engine bay, and step two, for envoironmental reasons, is to direct the hydrocarbons into the intake so they can be be burned. I don't know how this usually works for a carbed system, but I'm guessing the "right" thing to do would be to run the hoses from the breather box to an inlet on the carbs before the throttle plate.

You mentioned moisture in the hose... Keep in mind that moisture (H2O) is one of the primary products of combustion, and the main source of gas flowing out of the crankcase is combustion products blowing past the piston rings. So while operating properly there will be H2O flowing through the hose. This H2O will condense into visible water droplets when the hose is still cool. Just to be safe though, if the breather box isn't feeding back into the intake system, you probably want to put a filter on it somewhere to keep junk from getting into your crankcase, and also make sure it's not set up to collect rainwater/condensation/etc.

2 cute .... there are two of them Paul.....

I know but only one in the picture.

I can't believe you guys just won't come out and tell what it really is....











FLUX CAPACITOR





sorry, I had to do it........

here's a pic of the aftermarket unit from cb-performance that i ran on my carbed 2056 ...

Andy

As in the CB setup, the lid is not tight on the top of the box and the box has a sponge in it to trap or slow down the gases as they escape out from underneath the cover. Nice

Your box seems to be sealed which has little use unless there is an opening for the preasure to escape from it without allowing the oil to spew all over your engine during high RPMs. It needs to breath thus the name breather box.

I see you have three hoses. Are you also runing the ones from the blower and the cooling tin? I was gonna plug my holes up since they seem to blow cooling air?

nope, no blower. one for each head-vent and one from the oil-filler vent.
btw. the headvents switch between negative and positive pressure, depending on engine rpm ...

oil from the box drains back into the heads/filler neck at low rpm. and yes, the box is *not* sealed!
it's got a spuge inside to collect oil-vapors and the top lid has a small gap to allow for breathing ...

Andy

My aluminum welded box does have a drain cock on it that you might find on a radiator for venting. Should I keep it or scrap it. ??I dont think my heads have vents?? What type of heads have vents???

The drain cock is to allow you to drain oil that may collect in the breather box. Drain cocks are provided on some of the breather bottles/boxes offered by various suppliers. You can check a Summit, Jegs, Pegasus Racing, etc. catalog for the various configurations.

It must be the earlier engines that have the vents -- my '76 2.0 didn't have any. But I guess that explains why your breather box has those 2 unused hoses; and here I thought it was something silly like pollution control...