383 LS1 Stroker Epilogue - My First Stroker: Epilogue

So what's the problem with doing this, oil-coated engine compartments notwithstanding? Some quick background information on what a PCV (Positive Crankcase Ventilation) system does is in order. One of the first emissions controls introduced in the U.S., the PCV system started showing up on production cars in the 1960s. Its function is to circulate fresh air (the source of which is typically located between the air filter and throttle body) through the crankcase of the engine. This clean air picks up nasty stuff like blow-by gases and their constituents (unburned fuel, water vapor, etc.) as it goes. Now contaminated, the air is then sucked by manifold vacuum through our friend the PCV valve, into the intake manifold, and finally into the cylinders to be burned during combustion. Now imagine not having such a system on a street-going car. Some of those blow-by gases wisp their way out of your valve-cover-mounted breather, but without intake manifold vacuum to suck new air through, lots of contaminated air festers inside the crankcase. Therefore, a lot of that unburned fuel and water vapor deposits itself into your engine oil. The result? Engine longevity and internal cleanliness suffers, no matter how often you change your oil.

In hindsight, I should have thought a bit harder about how to keep an operational PCV system on this engine. Heck, had I spoken to some experts or even just perused the message boards, I would have known the valley cover-mounted LS6 PCV system would have been an easy fix for my baffle-less valve cover conundrum. But let's let bygones be bygones-time to correct past wrongdoings. Since I am not about to pull my FAST intake to get at the valley cover (I'm not sure that would even be physically possible at this point, as I routed the entire nitrous system and wiring harness with the engine out of the car), I would still need to use the LS1 PCV system in some form. This left me stuck with the valve covers as the only route to access crankcase air; but with no baffles, I couldn't keep prodigious quantities of oil from getting in the PCV system's lines. My solution is not to prevent this from happening, but rather to remove the excess oil from the contaminated air before it reaches the intake manifold by using a so-called catch can. A catch can is a great thing to have on any modded high-performance engine, as excess oil vapor entering into the combustion process is said to sometimes cause detonation and even harmful buildup inside the cylinder. In this case, there is a lot more oil vapor involved than usual, so it's even more critical.

We picked up a Gen2 PCV Catch Can from Norris Motorsports; check out the photos for the install. While this catch can is meant to be a plug-and-play design into a factory PCV system, I had to do a bit of homemade engineering thanks to the previously gutted nature of my particular system. Despite my best attempts, I could not reach where I had originally snipped and blocked off the contaminated air source at the "balance pipe" connecting the rears of the LS1's valve covers (I've since discovered, by the way, that this is part of a "dual draw" system designed to suck air from one or the other valve cover under extremely hard cornering; good thing I'm not headed to Road America anytime soon with this bad boy.) In order to create a new source, I bought a cheapo PCV valve at Pep Boys along with an equally cheap oil cap to go where my breather formerly was. I drilled a hole in the top of the cap and stuck the valve in with a grommet. Combined with the factory oil cap "riser," I figured this would lift the PCV valve far enough away from the fast-moving, pressure-fed rockers to suck in at least a little less pulverized oil mist. (As it turns out, my system seems to have worked flawlessly since installation, so I must have done something right!)