They are all dirty sided; pass and drivers. Only a smidge of draw from drivers side when at idle and just off idle; and in a useless area at that.
Other than long decels/throttle closed, the CC is a pressure chamber looking to vent anywhere; usually down the path of least resistance.
Plumb both dirty sides together and into the OCC. Then do what you want with those fumes.

 

That's my question I'm wanting to confirm on the pcv/passenger side does the vacuum start from behind the motor or the pcv valve side?

 

Vacuum on pass side only when engine at idle and decel only.
Its at this point the drivers side will allow air into the valve cover(where its useless really as it only dilutes the CC vapors
Vacuum/pressure is limited on both sides of VC under varying conditions
The VC has a quasi PCV valve/oil separator and 1 way valve built in
Vacuum from intake manifold turns to pressure on drivers side. Under boost it then gets shuts down by VC 1 way valve.
Its at this point the drivers side will only VENT into the turbo inlet side (very bad)
At this point there is NO "fresh" air going into CC, only pressure in the CC.
The much valued oil can is doing nothing when one needs it most.
BTW here's pics for nay sayers.....

 

Which is addressed with the dual checkvalves and utilizing the turbo inlet suction when at boost. The point I have been trying to make all along.

This always retains clean in, dirty out and never allowing pressure to ever be present in the crankcase. 16-22" at idle and deceleration, and 4-6" during boost. If more vacuum is desired during boost, then add the venturi valve system and get 12-16" at full boost.

So, the PCV system never "flows backwards and quits evacuating" like leaving it stock does. Flow remains in the same correct direction at all times and only clean in, dirty out period.

 

Where is the clean air coming from on the N14 engine's PCV system? It's not entering through the turbocharger side of the PCV system, there's a check valve in the valve cover preventing that.

 

 

There is none as I have always said. Nor does there really need to be one.
I ran air into the oil dipstick tube for kicks
Technically there is a restricted amount of air allowed in at idle and just off idle. After that there's nothing but pressure in the CC

 

okay cowboys and cowgirls,
Yes you can benefit from having a OCC...
but if you are having excessive oil in your passenger side valve cover hose going to the intake manifold you might want to perform a simple test to see if your VALVE COVER is working properly.

In the mini cooper OEM book of GODs there is a test the dealer can do to make sure your valve cover is working correctly. They give out the specs of all their engines and what the reading should be on each engine.
see below.





okay so my car is an N14 ( 07 R56 ) and it states I should have 38mbar of vacuum on my crankcase. That equals to 1.122144"hg or as we call it inches of vacuum. So with an 10 dollar autozone vacuum test gauge we should see 1.1 ish inches of vacuum.
Now the question is where to get your reading, I chose to drill and tap my oil fill cap, you can go to a junk yard and pick up one for a few bucks or take the hit and buy one from your dealer.





I'm going to check mine every 3-6 months so I'm not worried about drilling my cap. I am going to pick up a nice AN style fitting with a true cap on it next time I go by the hot rod shop or order from summit.

okay so....
I added another gauge to the hose coming from the manifold to the passengers side valve cover








with the motor running and my gauge inline with the hose going to the valve cover I had 10"hg vacuum ,
my oil fill cap was reading .75-1"hg .

now the question is why right ? Well we all have seen the chopped up valve cover pictures online right, thanks to one of our NAM guys ?
Lets look again anyway.....












okay so we have MOVING parts inside our valve cover , moving parts can fail right ???
So best I can see if the orange disk gets sucked down onto the the black plastic seat and controls the amount of vacuum that actually gets drawn out of the motor. Why do they do this ??? I think its to keep down on emissions, the less you draw back into the motor the less the ECU has to deal with and the less coking on the valves ???? As the motor comes up in rpm you lose your vacuum on the passengers side and this allows the OEM check valve to close and now the drivers side should be doing the sucking ...
below is the OEM check valve....






My car has under 60K miles, around 52K i went in for a valve cleaning and they called and said my valve cover was bad. They said they had the "new revised" valve cover in stock and if I wanted to grab my ankles they would go slow to the tune of 600.00 bucks if i remember right. Well they had me and I though I might get a kiss on the back of my neck but oh well.....
So maybe the new design cuts the vacuum back even more from the chart
( see first picture with the N14 - 38mbar spec )

I guess what I'm saying is test your valve cover if your having a bunch of oil issues, do a leak down on your engine ... Just throwing money at a system is just putting a bandaid on the problem....
If that orange diaphragm has a cut or rip it would let more vacuum into the crankcase and pull more oil out.
being its only pulling 1"hg out the valve cover you could probably get by with a harbor freight oil water separator, ebay or beer can stuffed with steet wool and get decent results IMO.... yeah yeah I know the better the design the more separating it does and I agree with that, but is it needed with only 1"hg, is it high flow,low flow,high volume,low volume.... I don't really know, no flow meter was used in the testing......

now passenger side I wanted to go to the dyno but it has gotten way to hot here now to be pushing the car but I did use an electric vacuum pump with 3-5"hg and still saw the .75-1"hg on the crankcase, now that might could change once the turbo starts sucking up some boost but I can't say that for sure.

I did some testing with the ford motorsport electric vacuum pump as well, I get some time I might post my finding with that test as well.
I might just start another forum about evac stand alone systems for the mini.

Now this is just me making suggestion so any jumping on me will only be aloud with one foot at a time ...... be nice

*this is my re-post, I thought I was posting here but was actually on a different topic on NAM so you might see this twice ...*

 

Well, what specifically did MINI change with the N18 that reduced oil consumption and coking? Is it all in the upper intake manifold?

Can they somehow be retrofitted the N14 cars?

 

good question, I don't know the difference in that department. Maybe someone who has had both can chime in.......
I know the valve cover was redesigned and the OEM setting was reduced for crankcase vacuum. I'm pretty sure the intake manifold bolt pattern is the same so if there is a difference then its possible to put an 18 on a 14.....

 

The bolt pattern being the same is interesting. However, if they could be retrofitted, you'd think someone would have already tried it or that some aftermarket house would be selling them as a performance upgrade to the N14.

I've seen intake swaps on e36 M3s before so I thought maybe someone might have tried it.

It has to be the intake. I doubt any changes were made to the head.

 

Just the head side is the same bolt pattern, the throttle body is different, not sure about sensors etc. Not sure it would be a performance gain, maybe a maintenance gain. The whole design of the mini intake sucks.

 

Indi, so does your set up, in a way, bypass everything the system setup internally in the valve cover? I have been reading about our pcv system latelt trying to understand everything at play. I am wanting to install occ or modify my pcv system due to some "oil issues" to at least test wether the deposits im having are from guides or from the passenger side pcv tube(pressure hoses look dry, including the elbow right before the throttle body) yet i can still see what looks like oil on the pistons.

 

Excellent work!! The latest Mini has the intake manifold now in front of the engine if I am not mistaken to make vale cleaning easier.

Keep us posted on what your finding.

 

I believe thats the one way valve utilized when manifold pressure goes positive.
Under idle and very light accel; this side can vent. Once in boost, it closes

 

Indi. You talking about the check/flapper or the orange disk ?

 

Well not sure as I never took one apart. The pass side vent is the side with the one way valve. This fails often and will even leak externally. The drivers side has no one way valve but is restricted. I bypassed mine with a high quality unit. No more failed VC's.

 

I'm with you on never taking one apart, all I can do is go by the pictures a fellow NAM member posted. I asked for my old VC when they replaced mine with the updated version but they threw it away...
Judging from the pictures that where posted online the drivers side has a flapper/check valve as well...

 

Upon reviewing this thread I decided to just keep it easy and go with a M7 catch can. See attached.

Haven't gotten any blow by since. Still not sure if it's baffled tho.

This below may have also been a good choice. They also make a dual catch can

http://www.saikoumichi.com/s1_oil_catch_can.html

 

SM makes a good can, twice as effective as most cans. But being a turbo, you really need dual evacuation suction sources. The M7 may be an emty can, but the SM has coalescing media and a perforated dispersion tube and a good all around design.

 

That's what I was afraid of. However I've gone back on Stage 3 AP map and haven't gotten any blow by (since Sat)

 

WrenchMonkey-
How did your trip to the dealership turn out? I'm struggling with the same issue - a vacuum leak that I can't find. My set up is very similar to yours - I have the K&N Typhoon CAI as well....although I don't that is the source of my problem. Only one of the connectors from RxSpeed fit my car, so I've had to improvise.

Update 2/26/17: I never received connectors that fit my car from the vendor. I tried several cobbled together things, but they always ended up with vac leaks. I spoke with the vendor, exchanged pictures and emails....finally, the vendor took the connectors back, but not the catch can and other parts. They're in my basement. Big waste of money and lots of time for me.

 

im going to dig up this old discussion.... all parties that were involved in the discussion please chime in. i am trying to get my oil burning problem under control as best as possible.
i have a 2009 r56 n14. i have the rx catch can installed as tunerboost has indicated it should be here. i am still getting oil in my turbo inlet pipe. it has to be coming out of the clean side separator. so let me start by asking some quaestions and making some statements to see if all agree:

the mini n14 valve cover has 2 outlets for the engine to vacuum out the fouled air in the CC...... correct? all agree?

the passenger side outlet has a check valve, and only evacuates when zero boost is present. correct? all agree?

no air ever goes into this port, only out. correct? all agree?

the drivers side outlet has a check valve/flapper as well and only evacuates when the car is under boost. correct? all agree?

no air can go into this port, only out. correct? all agree?

the n14 mini cooper needs a vacuum on one of these ports at all times to evacuate the CC. correct? all agree?

to supply a constant vacuum to one of the ports, you need 2 separate vacuum sources, one while no boost is present, one while under boost. yes?

so it would seem to me....just a @40 year mechanic with ase and mecp certs and some college, that the best way to do this is with a dual chamber baffled catch can.... yes?

2 catch cans would also work better than the factory setup..yes?

hers my possible solution:

if you were to use the passenger port to evacuate the gasses, and use the 2 current vacuum sources with check valves to provide the can vacuum at all times....and you were to plug the drivers side port......then put a baffled oil/air separator on the oil fill port with its air tube hooked to the turbo air inlet nearest to the air filter...this would be an ideal setup. i will draw a diagram of how it would work.





this is exactly like tunerboost says it needs to be with one small change.... since almost everyone agrees that the drivers side port will not let air run back into the cover....theres no reason to put the clean side separator there...just plug that port. and put the clean side separator in place of the oil fill cap.....like tons of other turbo cars out there..... thoughts?

this drawing always evacuates the crank case vapors, and it allows metered filtered air back into the crankcase, it also allows the :clean side separator to drain oil residue back into the valve cover. when the separator is on the outlet at the drivers side of the valve cover, oil pools in there unless there is positive crankcase pressure, then it gets blown into the turbo inlet.

anyone think this will work better than the previously discussed designs?

i know its not the easiest way to go about it, but its not working properly the way i have it, and switching to this setup would only need a way to put the separator on the oil fill cap and a vacuum cap to make it work.

 

It looks like you are over complicating things.

Just block off the passenger side hose to the throttle body, and put an oil catch can on the driver's side hose to the turbocharger intake. I've been running like that for seven years and don't have to add oil between 5000 mile oil changes.

 

dave,

just curious, do you spend any amount of time stuck in traffic in your car?

its nothing for my wife to spend up 2 2 hours everyday in tampa traffic.

thats why i was trying to retain the pcv at idle, its spends a ton of time there.

do i really just not need to worry about it? lol

this is my first turbo car and i really dont like foreign cars.....the wifey just "had to have it"

guess im going to re-read this entire thread and try to find that source for the plug that fits that passenger side port..... i like things tidy if at all possible.

thanks