Xe Breather Modification

[lepo5]

As the title states, I have a few of these available as I recently had an enquiry about one, I did these a while back and I have a few available if anyone is interested.

Each Breather Modification will come with full fitting instructions

The price delivered is £15.00 and will be first class recorded delivery and will require a signature upon delivery

Picture and write up below.

Vauxhall’s legendary 2.0 16-valve power plant has one well- known handicap. No not the infamously porous cylinder head-that’s a failing of inferior GM castings, and not the engine’s fault- we’re talking about the XE’s oil surge and breathing difficulties.

Have you ever watched a GTE 16-valve on a track day? Braking hard, then powering through a series of bends, you’ll notice a puff of smoke from its exhaust pipe- a result of oil surging down the breathers in the top of its cylinder head and sploshing into its inlet manifold.

Now with years of abuse and high mileage under their belts most XE’s are breathing a fair bit, the oil vapours clogging their cam covers with thick, black sludge.

The chance of their breather pipes being clear enough to work properly is pretty remote. In turn these problems can lead to many more- eg poor running and oil starvation.

Thanks to this engine’s motorsport pedigree, these problems were identified and cured over a decade ago. But because these mods only made it on to race engines and were never available from the factory, the solution is a DIY one.

There are two alterations you can make, both of which were developed for touring cars and are still used in highly tuned XE’s to this day. The first involves removing your cylinder head and inserting a couple of longer tubes above oil level. This leaves the engine permanently free to breathe, even under heavy cornering. The standard holes were designed to perform a dual-role of breathing and draining; this is changed to allow the rears to do the breathing while the fronts remain as drains.

This is a pretty big job, but there’s an easy modification you can do which involves fitting a splash guard to the inside of your cam cover. Using its “Uâ€shaped sides as a barrier, this little piece of metal stops oil that’s being splashed around by the cams from being chucked into the rear two breather holes. Again, the fronts are left alone.

This simple modification makes for a significant improvement on most road cars.

On fast cornering you won’t have to worry about oil surge, and the breathers will be much freer to do their jobs. By fitting the Breather modification and following the instructions provided with the Modification you’ll thoroughly clean your cam cover and breathers, improving your engine’s health. OK, so it won’t make your car go any faster but it will help it to live longer and is a worthwhile Modification to do for a RWD application.     

Edited January 19, 2015 by lepo5

[lepo5]

still available.