Naaaa, I would be a punk if I even claimed it was my idea. I just remember doing a write up on it, and I think (at the time) I was the first (in the Mustang community anyway) to use that compressor moisture separator in that application. Sadly, my big write up on it from like ten years ago was lost as I said, when that Forum evaporated.
I just went and looked (took a while to log in, as I rarely, if ever went back there and forgot my old password) . That guy didn't even register on that forum until like 5 1/2 years after I had. Anyway, enough about that.
I haven't put one on the PW because as hard as I looked, I could never find any concrete proof that they do any real good. Sure, it makes you feel better to have a stain-free intake tract, and it is fun to tinker. I ran one on my N/A '01 Cobra and later swapped it to my '03 S/C Cobra. All the claims of Octane degradation, sticky stained internal bits and all of that sounded great to me... cheap easy fix, why not?
Well, unfortunately when I managed to blow torch a hole in a couple pistons by going lean under high boost in very high temps due to a weak charging / electrical system while spending an afternoon doing some insane -but very fun- high speed drifting and back to back top speed runs out on El Mirage Dry Lake, I ended up needing to tear down the motor.
In doing so, I still found some minor staining on the interior of the Plenum and upper manifold. Also, in some strange phenomenon, in both of those cars (which were daily driven and weekly raced either at the drag strip or on road courses, one N/A and the latter S/C'd) that no matter how often I cleaned the trap, it would always have a small amount of oil in it. Never more, never any less. So, if it was really sucking oil, it would fill up eventually or so I thought. Or, if it was unnecessary, it would never catch anything. But, like I said, in some strange way, it would always fill it right to the same spot, no matter how long I left it in there. I made multiple dyno pulls with both motors, with and without the can. I found no evidence of detonation or bad juju with either one. So, it just seemed a "cosmetic" issue... on the inside of the intake runners, where no one would see it anyway. AND, at the time, I was forced to stick to the extremely tough CA Smog testing. Had there been excessive oil making it's way into the combustion chamber, it would both gum up the catalytic converters AND show in both tail pipe sniffer result data and be evident in spark plug readings and exhaust system inner pipe color and visible in exhaled gasses.
End result, after the motor tear down, I came away with two conclusions; One- that an oil catch can isn't really doing anything other than making me "feel good" about it. TWO - if using any type of good, synthetic motor oils, you can run it waaay past 10k mile changes, and have no worries about sludge build up, excessive internal wear or anything. On the 4.6L 32Valve S/C'd '03, it was putting 430 to the wheels and was beat on HARD for 24k miles, and the internals were spotless, and there was no observable or measureable wear on any of the many moving parts. Mind you, this motor is tough on oil.... supercharged, high IAT temps, with more oil crunching bits than a normal motor, with four times as many Cams, chains, rocker arms dragging cams, and everything else, often under high lateral g-loads that briefly robbed bits of proper oil supplies.
There was literally NO wear on the cam lobes and the pan was spotless. So, modern oils really can triple the old rule of thumb 3k oil change routine without concern. I still stick to about 7500 mile changes on all my vehicles.
And as a side note, I've been modding, tweaking and tuning on internal combustion engines in various applications for decades. I finally have come to a point that I feel comfortable having a vehicle that needs nothing more than routine scheduled maintenance. It is under warranty, cost me a **** load of money and the pleasure of tinkering has just sort of faded away.
Long story short, I just don't believe they are necessary. A engine can live a long, happy and healthy life. All internal combustion engines have positive (and occasionally negative) internal crankcase pressure. Perfectly normal. Just allow it to "breath" and don't worry about it.
* As a matter of fact, going back to my '03 Cobra engine rebuild.... I never even put the catch can back on after I buttoned it back up just because it cluttered up the engine bay, and all the other reasons I mentioned. Now, at 75k, that little bugger is still running good and clean, putting 500hp/500ft-lbs to the wheels and I can't tell you how many road course laps, drag strip passes, WOT pulls in "roll races" as well as extended idle time in extreme heat and even 50k of stop and go daily driver / LA area commuting.
And I haven't ever thought of going back and putting one back on it.
So the PW will go without. I don't intentionally knock those that add one. I just think it is unnecessary.
Sorry for another lengthy rant. Hope that answers the question.
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