PART 3
Allright fellas: here's the story of first prototype, currently installed in my car for testing.
First the hardest part of the job: tampering the anti-tamper bolts. The clue that there was something going on first came by looking at the diagrams on RealOEM that didn't show the crankcase breather valve (from now on CCV) as a separate item for US cars; the ROW cars like the 30sd that is the base for our 35d had it as a separate item, but not ours.
Here's the two diagrams side by side: left is the US 35d, while right is a ROW 30sd:
It turns out that the bolts that are labeled 10 in the ROW (and are missing in the US) are actually some Allen bolts with a pentagon socket in the head.
Despite my fairly furnished tool box I didn't have such a socket but I wasn't going to stop: an old Allen wrench, the almighty Dremel, and a hammer and you can jam a socket in there and take them off. Other than those bolts the rest of the CCV system is precisely the same as the ROW which I confirmed comparing the p/n stamped on the parts. When putting it back together I used some Allen bolts I had there, but if you want to go ahead and used BMW bolts (which are kind of cool since they have a mechanism to trap the bolt in the sleeve so the don't fall out) the p/n is 11-12-7-803-813.
Passed this hurdle, it's pretty much as planed with next step being cutting the various stages appropriately.
First you'll need a template. To create one simply rub some of that nasty used diesel oil saturated with soot around the perimeter of the CCV and use it to stamp a template on piece of paper:
Once you got the template you're ready to cut.
I didn't go with a fully on baffle, but still added a nice stainless steel mash inside the CCV: the purpose again is to hold the filter in place and create an air gap between the filter and the outlet.
You then want to go ahead and do the same with filters. As I described in the previous post I used a staged approach, and actually went ahead with also Stage 3, which is using the media from the Mann Provent 200. Using a box cutter you can easily remove it from the assembly. You actually don't have to buy, like I did, the whole Provent, you can source the filter by itself. Here's a possible source:
[LC-5001-X]Mann-Filter European CCV Element(SI - Industrial Heavy truck and Bus/Off-Highway ).
After cutting the two stripping pads you may want to wash them with some hot water to remove any loose particles. Here's how the stacked assembly looks like:
You then go ahead and pack the wire mash and the Provent media in the CCV...
...and the other two stages in the cavity in the valve cover
Now that you got everything installed, you can put it back together.
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After putting it back together the car fired up just fine an has been running just fine: no differences whatsoever, odd noises, even checked several parameters and everything is within norm. The flow of gasses doesn't appear to be restricted in any way; if you compare the surface of the filter to the section of the passages is probably an order of magnitude different. Bottom line I don't expect this affect the performance in any way... But I guess time will be the judge.
If I have time tonight or tomorrow morning I'll remove it and check for obvious signs of problems. Otherwise I'm gone for the weekend to the race track so the X5 will do some towing and I suspect by next weekend I'll probably have a good 1,000 miles on the setup. At that point I'll go ahead and remove it and check for integrity.
Long term I think two indicators would tell me if this works or not:
1) I've noticed oiliness in the rubber hose going form the CCV duct to the intake, inside the intake itself and a little puddle of oil right in front of EGR throttle: we'll see what happens to either
2) I've gone though roughly 1 qt of oil every 7K miles: based on 1 I suspect that most if not all of it comes from the CCV so we'll see how things go over the next oil change
There is one thing I want to bring up to everyone that I'll have no way to test: I don't know if the filter could cause issue below freezing. In particular moisture from the crankcase vapors could get trapped in the filter and freeze. This could clog it resulting in high pressure and a bunch of problems. I live in San Diego, car is always parked in the garage so for me that's not a problem. I wanted to bring this up so that you consider it.
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I guess the last thing is that I'll update this thread based on my results.
Ciao!!!!