This week's repair work

[Dave G]

I've had a slow brake fluid leak in the blue car for some time. Today I swept the garage, put it in there, and pressed real hard on the pedal for a while... found it - the left rear line. At first I was just going to splice in a section to repair the bad spot, but I couldn't find my flaring tool, so I opted to replace the whole thing. I did *not* follow the original route - looked to me like that would have involved dropping the transmission or something equally annoying. It will be just fine :-).

And in the continuing saga of dealing with the blow-by & oil in the intake problem(s) of the yellow car, Tuesday I ran a piece of hose from the top of the valve cover to *outside*. I'm talking about that ~1/2" hose that runs from the valve cover to the side of the plastic air intake duct. I sealed up the hole in the duct and just ran a hose from the valve cover down to the ground, just behind the firewall. I figure this gives the crankcase all the venting it could possibly desire and makes it impossible for oil to get in the intake anymore. So far so good, a couple hundred miles into it.

[CharlieZ]

Before Positive Crankcase Ventilation, the crankcase vent pipe was usually about 3/4 inch or so in diameter with bottom end cut like a baloney slice, parallel to the ground, to assure airflow across the end would create a vacuum in the crankcase much like a stove chimney creates a draft. Hanging a hose down probably won't do much good. Be sure the PVC valve is removed too.