This is part of my engine build but am giving it its own thread for easy reference and to get help with the R&D process.

Why do this? Two major reasons:

• Keep dirty oil and combustion products out of the turbo and intake
• Reduced emissions and oil consumption vs stock and especially vs venting to atmosphere

Basically the abrasive soot in the blown-by combustion gasses will get filtered out by the Racor before it has a chance to interact with the compressor wheel or the intake valves. How much this will help extend the longevity of these parts is unknown, but there is a theoretical basis. I think this should also extend the life of silicone boots and keep oil film from coating the charge pipes. Parker's media says it should also increase intercooler efficiency but unknown how true that is.

Since this has never been documented this is uncharted territory. @Y2KW57 has been kind enough to share some thoughts on how to mount the thing. Here's what I've got so far:

Use a wire harness bracket on some spacers and studs like so:



Attach a metal plate (green) to the bracket to mount the racor to:



The racor has a width of ~5-3/4" so shouldn't hit the hyrdoboost stuff if my dimensional analysis is correct.



Flip doghouse around, have inlet of the racor facing the cab. Have tube coming out of the doghouse, in to the right side of the Racor. Cleaned air exits the left side of the Racor and feeds in to the stock plastic ring where it normally would. Maybe also add a port to the oil filler cap and have it tee in to the inlet of the Racor. Have the Racor plumbed in to the oil filter housing to return oil to the pan (I think there's a port on there?).

Dimensions of the Racor are here: https://www.parker.com/Literature/Ra...00-CCV4501.pdf

That's all I got so far. Would welcome any comments or things I've missed.

 

You have more or less successfully described what I had in mind and explained via PM when you asked me back in April for my installation design ideas, other than the Racor will need to be a bit higher than what you have drawn in your sketch, in order to get as close as possible to the 20 inches of height that Racor recommends the drain valve of the CCV4500 be above the check valve leading to a point where the drained oil might reinter the block.

And if you are building a 400HP engine, and run it at max effort, it is conceivable that you might actually need 25 inches of height, as the air filter may be pinned at 25" of H2O restriction, and there is a correlation between air inlet restriction and the ability of the CCV unit to be able to drain. Otherwise, the suction from the intake air inlet holds the oil in the CCV, thus blocking it. The oil drain has to be the higher "manometer", so to speak.

This isn't an issue with CV filtration systems that vent to atmosphere, such as the CV-4501. The issue of filter drain height and vacuum is of concern in closed crankcase vent systems. This is one of the reasons why I havent yet built my design, as the mitigations to ameliorate the basic limitation of the Ford truck hood height involve incorporating other systems, such as a remote bypass oil filtration system, which depending on where located and how plumbed, can provide a couple of inches of extra drain height.

Another mitigating factor is intermittant duty cycle, where if enough "rest" time occurs between a full on maximum effort towing a monster trailer out of Jackson Hole up to the top of the Teton Pass, then the "rest" time will allow an oil filled 4500 to drain without the contents being pulled up by the constant vacuum of a continuous duty cycle.

So the height issue is important. Not only for allowing about 2.5" of free clearance beneath the 4500 in order to remove and replace the filter, but also to allow enough inches of clearance as you expect inches of water restriction to occur with your air filter intake system.

This is why I the fuller fleshout of my design incorporates pre filters to the CCV, using the venturi effect of expansion to drop out oil above the valve covers before the aerosol ever enters the 4500. There are so many physical clearance issues with each component, it has taken me a while (years) to get around to building what I had in mind.

You've described the gist of the main part of it... which is to mount the 4500 on the engine, rather than off the engine.

Yet there is more to consider in the plumbing leading to and away from 4500 to prevent oil damming within it, if in fact you intend to set all 400 of your planned horses loose on the hills over which you roam.

 

In terms of duty cycle and approaching the limitations of the filter my situation will probably be somewhat different because I'm using gapless 2nd rings which mean less blow-by and less oil aerosol. Will also be modifying my AIS for less restriction.

Yeah the can will have to be higher than my sketch shows. As my engine is out of the truck I don't know the distance between the top of the engine compartment and the top of the dog-house (if someone here would be able to measure that I'd appreciate it). I'll make a more accurate drawing once I get some accurate measurements.

 

I'm still worried about your remote PS pump reservoir being too high, never mind your CCV can not being high enough.

The irony is, both clearance measurements are about the same... 5.25" clear, and maybe 5.50" without as much insulation as I may have.

The dog house is measured to the underside of the cowl, at vertical plumb line that falls exactly midway between the two dog house mounting screws.

Since the underside of the cowl tapers steeper than the slope of the powertrain, with a pronounced angular change in the cowl underside occurring at the forward third of the dog house, I didn't get too detailed when I went outside at darn near 1 am in the morning to take this measurement.

Figure about 5.25", but know that I have two complete layers of OEM cowl insulation. Back in 2001 I ordered a complete set of all the cowl and firewall insulation pieces, and doubled them up.

For the power steering reservoir, also figure about 5.25" from the top surface of the outboard land on the alternator bracket upon which an alternator would rest and be bolted through... to the underside of the hood insulation. I only have one layer of under hood insulation, but it is the underhood insulation for the Excursion, which was a bit thicker than that of the Super Duty.

I'm not small enough to fit inside the engine bay with the hood closed, so I selected the highest point on my Leece Neville alternator that made a divot in my hood insulation as an indicator of available distance above the top land of the alternator bracket.

 

Subscribing. I may end up wanting to copy your setup once complete. I mean the RACOR, not the 400hp build.
You always have interesting projects.

 

Yet more good thinking on your part PriusLover. I had been consisdering a CCV catch can until I decided to use the CCV's output to lube my OBA compressor instead.

 

Also, when I described also pulling CCV from the passenger side valve cover, that would not just be from a lateral drilled hole in the OEM fill standpipe, but rather another much wider diameter expansion chamber (filled with condensate separation media) that would have a removable lid (to exchange the media when laden with soot, and to temporarily remove the media when filling with oil).

 

So figure five inches. It looks like the top of the filter extends 3-3/4" above the center of the mounting holes, so the mounting holes would have to be ~1-1/4" above the doghouse.

My power steering res is a hair under 5-1/2" proud of the top of the alternator mounting bracket. Close enough that it could work... will find out! Given what @callforfire said here I'm confident in my chances (mine is 3-3/8" for comparison).

That's definitely the better way to do it but I'm not confident in my ability to modify the valve cover to that extent. I'm assuming the best thing to do would be to use a driver side valve cover with doghouse/separator on the passenger side and weld in an oil filler tube like the van 7.3 has. I'd probably go through the effort if I wasn't using the gapless 2nd rings.

 

First mock-up:







The tricky thing with this is it can't be too far back else it'll hit the firewall edge:



​​​​​​​Can't be too far forward or too high else it'll hit the CCV ring. The mockup above shows my best attempt to get it as high, forward, and close to the valve cover as possible given the constraints.

​​​​​​​The top of the Racor is about 3-1/4" above the top of the doghouse.

​​​​​​​Probably the way to get it the highest and farthest forward would be to use the un-used threads on the driver side of the CCV ring, but I doubt they'd be able to take the weight over time.

​​​​​​​One additional note: you can switch whether the crank case gas enters from the left hand side or right hand side of the filter by unbolting the top, so either the left or right entry variants can be used.

 

Decided to go with this hose: https://ph.parker.com/us/en/multipur...p/7219-0750025

Heater hose would only last a year or two in this application so that's not an option for me. This stuff is rated to handle oils, high temperatures, and has a 1.4" bend radius so it shouldn't have a problem making the required turns.

Was originally going to go with regular hydraulic fittings as the Racor ones meant for the CCV4500 are not cheap, but on close inspection they seem to be designed with larger than normal IDs to help with flow, so bit the bullet and bought the Racor barbs n right angle fittings.

 

Was considering adding a 1/4 NPT bung below the top of the oil pan to give the CCV drain check-valve more "distance" from the filter.

Per the dipstick, looks like full oil level is about ~4" and change below the top lip of the oil pan. I'm assuming 3-1/2" from the top, to the rear of the oil filter, aught to be a safe location?

@Y2KW57 think this would be a good way to add additional height?

 

I don't know.

Drilling into the oil pan is not something I considered, for a couple of reasons.

1. I intended to install the larger CCV system with the engine in place.

Keep in mind, I was saving and using Quaker Oatmeal canisters as "models" for the CCV 4500 more than 20 years ago, when the truck only had 17,000 miles and was still under the original bumper to bumper warranty. A Quaker Oatmeal container has a girth and length that matches the CCV4500's body, head, AND the imaginary space needing to be clear in order to drop the bowl the required distance through unencumbered space in order to replace the internal filter. So every oil change I'd break out my Quaker Oatmeal container and play around with modeling different positions (within that space between the hydroboost and the tap sleeve, whose threaded bosses I had intended to use, while measuring CCV drain height above oil pan sump height.

After a few oil changes doing these "3D" modeling exercises, I arrived at the conclusion that I would have to leverage some other fluid dynamic principle in order to be assured that if the intake was sucking against 25" water column of restriction, I would not be pulling up oil out of the drain hose into the intake.

So I hit upon the idea of incorporating the drain of the CCV-4500 with a bypass oil filtration system, and worked on that for a while. In the meantime, I picked up the second version of Racor's CCV-3550-FRD-2, which has the absolute IDEAL drainback port... into the valve cover, at near the highest part of the engine, without any chance of being hydraulically dammed by oil slosh from the rotating crank assembly.

You, on the other hand, can do anything you want to the oil pan since it is out of the truck. You can drill a hole, clean the shavings, make a baffle... the options are endless with pan in hand.

2. I don't really like the stock oil pan, and if I had to remove the engine for any reason, that pan would be put on notice to look for another job. Perhaps at a metal recycling center.

Realistically, and hopefully, I will never have to pull the engine, and thus the oil pan likely has lifetime job security.

But if my motor ever does come out, then I want a cast bed plate wrap around the front and rear seals, and would consider asking Moroso to build a custom flat mount oil pan, or some other unrealistic pie in the sky fantasy pan to get the bottom end girdled and sealed while still managing to get the oil pickup tube to work correctly, if not more freely. Not sure that I'd go so far as dry sump, but sheesh, the oft reported stock oil pan corrosion issue has always "eaten away" at me, even though I haven't fallen victim to it yet in my climate.

I've already given you a lot of details of my CCV design musings in response to your inquiry a long time ago via PM, including valve cover brackets, dual head gas extraction, and the like.

However, I may not have fully explained that I have sort of moved on beyond the CCV-4500, and then moved on beyond the now discontinued Donaldson Spiracle, and then move past a few dalliances with other CCV schemes, including a rectangular shaped unit from Cummins that stands vertically beside the motor like a large dictionary or phone book, and last left this hobby project at a centrifugal stratification separator, that never needs replacement filters that get clogged with soot, and has no height above sump concerns, and has no pressure drop across the filter (there is no filter) due the crankcase gasses being actively extracted by a mini centrifuge driven by low pressure engine oil piped into the unit to drive an assembly of rotating discs. As you can see, I got deep into the weeds, and when compared to all the "must do's" and "should do's" that daily life presents, it isn't likely that I'll ever find time to come up with a way to incorporate soot and oil extraction from crankcase vapors without a filter, and without venting to atmosphere, without a compelling need to do so.

Nonetheless, I remain interested in the pursuit.

 

Now this has me wondering if welding the drain port onto the valve cover would work best. One thing I don't understand though is why the height requirement doesn't seem to apply if you're draining to the cover vs the lower part of the block?

 

This is a family-friendly forum sir!! You of all people should know that.

 

Hose loop should clear. Might also encourage oil aerosols to condense and drain back in to the doghouse.


This hose is a pain to get on and off the CCV ring, but it fits and clears the valve cover. This hose has a 1.4" bend radius so it's not being overly stressed in this position.

Adapter bracket made from 1/4 steel plate (smallest scrap piece the store had else would have went with 1/8). Still need to add another through bolt.

This is the only spot of concern where I'm worried it'll touch the firewall. That being said, I think it'll clear.