Thread: Opening up Valve Cover Air/Oil Separator

Well, I've started taking one apart to show you!

Also because I'll be powdercoating it and want to be able to clean it thoroughly and not have any leftover sandblasting debris cause engine damage.

I'm taking apart an Infiniti G20 valve cover that I pulled from the salvage yard, although the design exactly matches the SR20DE that came in my B13 Sentra.

This is what we're starting with. You can see all the little parts that hold this sheet to the valve cover. They're aluminum that seems to have been lightly bradded to the main piece.



Getting drilled out



Removed and flipped over! You can see the accumulation of carbon that failed to drain down and out of the baffled channels.



Closeup1



Closeup2



All of the deposits scraped free so that you can see how much collected as well as the detail of the baffles themselves.
That drain midway up seems particularly interesting.



MX-5s seem to have similar separators in their valve covers, and I've seen a couple examples of modification to make them more efficient, but I haven't decided if I want to go that route or not.

Cool pictures! I've always wanted to see what was under there.
Do you plan to remove the other baffle too?

Assuming we find a good way to re-secure the first one, we'll definitely remove the other one before we powdercoat it.

If it's not too painful, we'll do the same to the other VC (the one that came with the car)

Lots more photos here, including removing the second cover on the 1st VC (a junkyard G20 one,) both covers of my Nissan VC, and cleaning both inside and out.

re-uploading them to a different host is too much work, so...

Valve Cover Project combined

Those are some great images vorin!

I took one of them and drew out the passages to make them easier to see. Great work!
I've added this thread to The Manifesto.