Hitchcocks Forum

Hopefully photo goes on

Can anyone tell me how to remove this type breather box from top of crank case? Or how to clean out as full of the condensate "milk"

Bike has has amal carb conversion and box is connected to a pipe on side of an extended(?) oil filler tube and then just open ended pipe from top

Is it doing anything that a breather pipe from top of case wouldn't do?

Want to stop it feeding the white gunk back in

Any help really really appreciated

Ah yes, the Watsonian-Squire breather conversion, getting rid of this is as much exorcism as mechanical removal. It was their bizarre attempt at solving the problems of the original breather set up, about which much has already been written.

As far as I can tell it used crankcase pressure to circulate the oil from the tank up into that can thingy and then back into the oil tank via the side pipe on the clunky breather filler neck. I guess their thinking was that by bubbling the breather gas from the crankcase through the engine oil it would happily re-absorb the oil from said breather gases. My current Electra-X has one of these set-ups which I shall need to remove before the bike takes to the road.

Complete removal involves fitting an original filler neck to the oil tank proper in place of the clunky thing, removing the tin can (most owners manage that OK), and THIS is the bit which always seems to catch people out, you must remove the long tube that screws into the top of the oil tank from the original breather outlet, if you leave that in and run the bike, it will just pump all of the oil out of the tank! Do not ignore this.

Our hosts should have replacements for the original filler neck and the hose tail for the original breather pipe. For a replacement breather you can fit a short length of the original breather hose with the 90° bend onto the hose tail, then a simple non-return/one way valve, followed by a longer piece of hose to the back of the bike somewhere, e.g. along the rear chain guard. I shall have a look at mine and see if I can take some photos.

A.

As Adrian says, remove it and bin it.
I simple breather pipe with a duckbill is all that's required.

Adrian (& Pete)

Thanks for the response - really appreciated

Will follow your advice and install breather pipe etc

Removal of the box - is this a push fit (once unbolted arms from casing) as don't want to give it a bit of wellie and drop stuff into the case

Cheers again

Adrian / Pete

Update.....

Removed the breather box and gubbins

The main box was held on at the bottom by a 19mm nut around the bottom feed/union from the engine casing

Used socket on extension to get off

Have shown all the bits so anyone else can generally see what's involved with this set up

Anyway off to put back a more simple solution

Cheers again guys

If that photo shows everything you have removed, you seem to have ignored an important point I stressed earlier, and left part of the system in place.

Have another look at the breather union on the top of the oil tank, where the W-S tin can was screwed on.

Undo it and pull it out. It will have a long metal tube on the underside which dips into the oil. As I said before, if you run the bike with this still in place but no catch can, crankcase pressure will simply pump all your engine oil out through it. It needs to be replaced with the original type M14x1.5 breather hose-tail connection, part no. 500110. THIS:



Don't forget the M14 copper washer PART No. 144846

A.