I've been complaining for some time that supercharger oil sprays from the breather bolt in the Vortech unit when it gets hot. Prior to hood vents, it was a nuisance that just gunked up the engine bay. However, after hood vents were installed, the problem became a bigger issue because the fluid was spraying onto the windshield right in the driver's line of sight. Obviously, there is no ready-to-go fix out there for this---well, at least on the BMW platform there isn't. (Someone made a fix for the Corvette world.) So, the hunt was on to try to find a way to fix it. The question was: could we put the pieces together to capture the spraying oil?
Steve at EAS found a couple parts on Ebay---a vented bolt that had a hose connection that matched the thread pitch of the Vortech bolt, and a 90º-bending tube to route the oil to a line. I bought the pieces and they looked viable. However, I was concerned that the venting hole in the bolt I had purchased was much larger than the hole in the Vortech breather bolt. So, I had the bolt brazed/sealed with stainless steel on both ends. Now that it was sealed, I could drill a vent hole in whatever size I wanted. I drilled a 1/16" hole.
When I went to Minicorsa for daily tech work, I handed them the pieces. First issue: the hex on the bolt was too large to fit in the bolt hole on the Vortech, so we needed to grind the sides of the hex down to fit. Once they did that, the pieces came together quickly. We used a 4 foot long fluid hose to route the oil to a catch can.
I'm happy to report that the fix worked GREAT at Spring Mountain. No oil on the windshield.
Now I'm just waiting on Bimmerworld to get their powersteering reservoir back in stock and maybe---just maybe---I can have an engine bay that isn't constantly leaking fluids everywhere......
Some pix:
Finished product:
Original bolt:
New bolt:
New bolt with overly large vent:
New bolt brazed:
New bolt vent drilled to 1/16":
