DIY oil catch tank

After cleaning my intake manifold, I didn't want it to get dirty again so quickly knowing how much a pain in the ass it will be. So, I made a DIY oil catch tank for it. Borrowing the ideas from KHguan’s DIY, I made my own one, but without the intake side as the air is a vacuum, having no oil vapors what.so.EVERRRRRRRR!

Browsing around car accessory shops you can find oil catch tanks to be in the RM80-120 range, 60 for a cheapo one. I got my proton saga petrol filter for RM4 instead.

=D

Other misc parts to buy is a hose clip and some gas hose(usually transparent with weaving but i bought the ones in black cause they look neater.) The top hole in the petrol filter goes into the intake manifold, and the bottom one the valve cover.

Next, choose a spot in your engine bay to mount the tank. I chose this place near the firewall again, so that its not that messy and I won’t have to use cable ties or whatsoever.

Drilling a hole is easy. So, I drilled one in the hose clip to fit the nut. After that, adjust the hose clip to fit the petrol filter, tight but not too tight.

Here’s the thingy mounted in my engine bay. Hopefully the hardware store uncker didn’t con me and the pipes can withstand the heat. The connection at the valve cover was abit loose too, so I added another tiny hose clip to it to prevent it popping out. The filter can either be drained out or changed(only RM4 maaaa! =P) once it gets full. Which will take a few thousand kms I guess.

There we have a decent looking and cheap oil catch tank.

More responsive throttle pedal

My throttle cable has a very squishy feeling when pressing it lightly. Not a problem for most cars, but its very annoying on my car especially on uphill jams. Because my throttle cable is squishy, if i press down on it a lil’ bit, no response from the engine. Press a little more, the engine revs till about 3k. Either I engage clutch at 3k rpm or keep stalling. Which is very embarrassing. =/

I took pics only after i modified it, I put some ABS glue in the place highlighted in blue(can get a can at any hardware shop for around 6 ringgit, used to glue ABS pipes together, when it hardens it turns into ABS plastic.

Originally the place was hollow, so the rubber had some space to squish together. Like i said, the problem only occurred in my car, not a very common problem, this.

The red part is the firewall, green is the accelerator pedal. No screws required to remove the cable, everythign is held together by clippy clips.

This is where the cable connects from inside the engine bay,

Leaky cover gasket

A rather annoying problem with my car is the leaky valve cover gasket which seeps oil whenever the engine is running. the oil spills all over the side of the engine making it messy and yucky and stupid. Very stupid. =/

So, I went out to buy a new gasket for it, costs about RM40 a piece. The SOHC cover is much much cheaper but whatever.

Starting to work on the car…. it is not necessary to remove the air filter, but i was working on another project at the same time. Labeled each sparkplug the opened the cover. The cover is quite easy to remove, as all the screws can be seen from the top of the car, except for the 2 screws at the side of the head where the timing belt cover is. Once everything is off, just replace the gasket with a new one, add silicon and put back the same way that you took it out.

I got itchy fingered and wanted to wash my gasket head as it was frikken dirty. Washed with some engine degreaser, available at Pasar road.

I got even more itchy fingered and decided I should freshen up the engine’s outlook. So i sprayed the proton words silver and used a file to grind off the top of the DOHC wording. Gaya tuh! =D
  
So now, the top of the engine is not leaking anymore. Which is good.