DIY PVC catchcan.

[mavisky]

We'll be making a dual inlet oil catchcan with breather and drain.

Parts needed:
1 - 6"x3" Schedule 40 pvc pipe
2 - 3" Schedule 40 pvc caps
3 - 1/8" mpt x 5/16" hb hose barb fittings - ACE Hardware #47082
1 - 1/4" mpt needle drain - ACE Hardware # 47092

Other equipment:
Drill
3/8" and 31/64" drill bits
Two-Part quick set epoxy
PVC primer and glue
hacksaw
center punch
safety goggles
breathing mask

1. First you'll want to figure out how large you want your pipe to be, I used about 5" worth of the piping. I made two at the same time with a pipe that measured in at 14" to begin with so my first step may look different than yours.

2. Center punch one of the caps and drill a 3/8" hole in it. This will be our top cap.

3. Tap this hole with a 3/8" mpt tap.

4. Take one of your barb fittings and apply a small amount of epoxy to it. The epoxy will help seal the fitting against leaks and also act as a threadlocker.

5. Center punch the other cap and drill a 31/64" hole into it. This will be the lower cap with our drain in it.

6. If you have a tap then use it here, I did not so I had to manually thread the hole using a piece from an Autometer oil pressure gauge kit that had the exact same thread pitch as our drain.

7. Once you have the threads cut into the lower cap, epoxy the drain fitting in much the same way as we did the previous fitting.

8. Now you'll need to prime and glue the upper cap to our piece of PVC piping. Doing the top first will let us put in our feed lines and still be able to clear out any goop from the drilling/tapping stage.

9. Once the cap is securely fastened to the pipe we'll center punch and drill two more 3/8" holes for our two feed lines. We'll be drilling right through the cap and pipe so that's why we can't do this before. Putting the feed lines in too low will lessen the amount of oil our catchcan will hold before it reaches the fittings.

10. Tap these holes and epoxy in the last two barb fittings in the same way we did the first fitting.

11. Now you'll want to go inside the pipe to make sure that any loose material is removed that may clog up our drain once the unit is in use.

12. Once the inside is cleaned prime and glue in the bottom cap to the pvc pipe.

13. Now that we have an enclosed unit you'll want to give it ample time to let the fittings dry so that the seal it liquid tight. You may also want to paint over the item once dry since the pvc primer will dye the pvc a fairyish purple color.

13. Attach the breather filter to the barb fitting on the top of the cap.

14. run a line from the valve cover vent to the catch can and if you want to you can also remove the pcv valve from the valve cover and replace it with a barb fitting to use the other inlet as well. If you replace the pcv valve though you'll need to make sure and cap off the barb fitting on the intake manifold or utilize it in some manner for either your mbc, bov, or a boost guage. I'll have more on this step in my next writeup on building a dual stage mbc. If you elect to leave the pcv valve in place you can simply cap off the 2nd barb fitting inlet for now.

[mavisky]

For those of you building this and looking for a place to mount it, I've found a great place if you build one just like mine. I wrapped about 2 layers of double sided tape and some masking tape around the bottom end cap and it now fits snugly where the old charcoal canister used to go.

To do this you'll need to modify the battery mount and tray and run a smaller battery or relocate it all to the rear. I also gutted the pcv valve so my catchcan is dual fed. I then used the fitting on the intake manifold for the pcv line to run my mbc on its own separate boost source.