breathing system on cars

[steve_rt]

well, what does this do exactly?!

 

[philip]

you are probably referring to the crankcase breather system, which is used to evacuate any residual combustion + oil vapour gases from the cranckase and usually feeds those vapours back into the inlet manifold for them to get burned in the combustion chambers and avoid polluting the atmosphere. Also, feeding into the inlet manifold uses some of the negative pressure created by the engine to draw such gases from the crankcase. Some breather systems are closed loop, some are open and feed into an oil catch tank which itself can feed any oil back into the engine sump. A delicate and complex arrangement on the Clio F4R as I have recently found out..

 

[steve_rt]

thats exactly what i was after, cheers.