Purge Canister Air Filter Solenoid

It's not your grandpa's car anymore. Since the 70s, they introduced a most puzzling concept followed by a number of devices. PCV. It stands for Positive Crankcase Ventilation.

It does pretty much what it says. Releases pressure from the engine. Engine runs, pistons open easier especially on admission cycle if there is no pressure on the other side of combustion chamber. Here's an illustration showing how this occurs. A small percentage of the energized gas during combustion cycle pass the piston's rings and pressurizes the main engine compartment or the area beyond pistons.

Up until 70s they had this relief opening on top of the engine that was ending with a small pipe under. Blowby gas is a mixture of unburnt fuel, raw exhaust (not passed through catalytic converter), water vapor and oil vapor.  Due to pollution complaints, that was not acceptable anymore and they came with this idea. Returning those gases in the intake manifold, mix them with air and gas and burn them again. It was called PCV system.

It was working and nobody complained about for a long time. However, if uncontrolled through design, it may produce a variety of problems, including corrosion and mainly condensation of oil on the cold intake runners' walls and pouring in the engine, affecting valves, spark plugs and creating carbon deposits on the top of the cylinder, etc..

The biggest problem of course is carbon deposit on valves which start to interfere with their functioning. Valves become "sticky" that is they can't open anymore at certain engine stages (low RPM, cold engine) by they hydraulic lifters wichi are designed to fill with engine oil to eliminate any play. Oil gets squished out of the lifters and starts foaming, which is a bad condition for the bearings that are lubricated with that oil.

At non GDI (Gasoline Direct Injection engines) has injectors spraying fuel in the intake runners, or before the valves. This help with cleaning of the valves. However, there are new generation high efficiency engines that use little gasoline at cruise speeds and that is not enough to clean those.

Many gas sellers advertise their gas as having cleaning features. This is what they're talking about and it's a real problem.

There are ways to minimize this phenomenon however not used by any manufacturer i know about. You can install an empty can on the return PCV line and have the oil condensate and fall in it. However, it may not work if the pipe before the can is close to the engine and gets hot. Blowby will still pass and condensates inside the intake. Last version of the catch can i installed on the Hyundai uses a corrugated copper pipe that is passed through an larger pipe (empty can) that allow air to flow and prevent heat from engine to reach for it and indeed it minimized the sticky valves phenomenon, becoming marginal and intermittent.

However, there is another problem. Fuel pump filter is not or hardly serviceable at this car, being in the tank and in time fuel pressure start do decrease. This is aggravated by a bad battery and connectors at the battery, lowering the voltage for the fuel pump, bad gasoline or gasoline without alcohol which usually cleans and especially dissolves water.

Last time i filled the car with gasoline at Spirit Mountain Shell i noticed the noise condition improved dramatically. For the first gallon of fuel used or that 50 miles trip back home. The next day it came back to "normal". I figured, maybe it has something to do with vacuum being created inside the tank by the purging system. Another newer anti-pollution feature of cars which insure that the fuel tank does not have and/or releases fuel vapors in the air, with a charcoal canister and a system of valves that allow the computer to "purge" or literally scuk back in the again intake the extra vapors. However, if too much vacuum is being applied to the fuel tank, it starts to interfere with the fuel pump and ultimately the fuel pressure at the injectors. (Some of) the injectors start to drip and can't clean the valves anymore. On this car computer has the possibility to allow atmospheric air to go into the tank to release the vacuum however through a, you guessed, title of the post, a small air filter. Which is on the service list of 30k and is located under the car next to the charcoal canister.

So i opened and closed the tank cap every time when i noticed the noise and mostly at the beginning of every trip and voia! Noise was gone last night for most of the 150 mile round trip to the beaches.

The ironic part is, i had the filter since 2 years ago when i almost figured the problem. But finding oil and manually purging it from the intake and fiddling with the catch can made me forget about it. Also three years ago i almost went for an appointment to replace fuel filter, which doesn't make much sense to replace at this car without the fuel pump.

So today i went and jacked the car and removed the small air filter. I was expecting to find it clogged (and or the air pipe) with pine needles that were built in that area up to half inch when i got the car (from the road she was doing daily probably). That was not the case. But what i found was a solenoid next to filter again used by computer, that could have been intermittently stuck. I poured some 91% isopropyl alcohol in it and it came dirty. I tested it with a meter and a battery and it works and on the bench it doesn't get stuck. I put it back together with the new filter.

In the image representing the whole purge system, solenoid is nr.6, filter is 7.

I figured it would have been useless to go to a dealer and have it done at service interval, if they didn't check the solenoid as well.

Too many times i noticed all these optimizing devices interfere with the function of the vehicle, in the end making the pollution worse because the conditions they create are hard to diagnose, unsignaled by "check engine light" and sometimes expensive to fix not because of parts involved but because of high quality labor and time needed for diagnose. Most mechanics ignore them anyways.

T okey oh!

"Cuckoo calls it's own name" (Romanian saying)

I was intrigued when i saw the doodle of the day. You don't pay much for google (or its Android), sometimes i even wonder where it gets its money from, cause i don't see or follow many commercials when i do my searches (though i certainly abused it with the number of those).

But sometimes you pay by candidly swallowing the share of subversion through its doodles.

A torii gate (yeah, i know the title of the movie). Now everybody knows, there is a torii at the entrance of each Shinto temple in Japan. Even its definition on Wikipedia says "symbolically marks the transition from the mundane to the sacred".

I looked. Because i wanted to settle once for all, what is the link with the Greek and Roman and contemporary European arches.

All that i found out is they appeared both in Middle East and India in about the same period, early first millennium BC.

In India are associated with Buddhism though in Japan they have been transferred to Shinto.

I had one thousand things (yeah, after i wrote this they were playing on Klean Gone FM this non-singer no talent screaming frustrated empty head hard to look at Phil Collins, "i must have dreamed a thousand dreams") to write down this morning, didn't know where to start, but never thought i will find more while searching and adding links. Cause you will never know what else you will find during a search.

Now this alone wouldn't mean much, but when you think the architect who designed  those panels is Japanese and the thing turned into one giant Metsubushi when hit in the right spot...,

(Yeah i know, the stupa in the background, also present as symbol on some masonic aprons where it is called a beehive seem to be the prototype for Capitol buildings)

Pearl Harbor, Fake News?

Last night i was thinking. My theory with tunnels under Pacific is not credible. There is Pearl Harbor, Internment Camps and 4 Asian wars where countless Americans have died, fighting what they thought was the Soviets. But at least i can try to debunk some of those.

Internment camp are easy to dismiss because there was no proof, either way. A few pictures in media.

Pearl Harbor. It would have been much easier to fake something like this back then because source of news was scarce, few communications with a remote island in the middle of Pacific.

They were caught by surprise. They had a radar that caught the Japanese incoming fleet of several hundred planes but they did not believe it. Not enough to raise planes to rendezvous with it. Not enough to watch the horizon with a scope or at least with binoculars, seeing those at 50 or 100 miles would have given them some time to raise planes.

The (few) pictures available widely on the net deserve a bit of emotionless analysis. Look at this one. There was a huge explosion at about 1000 ft from where that guy stands and watches. Shrapnel would have flown around, however the man is contemplating like watching a sunset on the beach, showing at least total lack of training. Other people seem to walk undisturbed. (Are those soldiers?). The pictures seem to be composed, with subjects far and near, rule of thirds being applied, photographer seemed to be ready for the explosion.

Another one with rule of thirds, soldiers seem to watch the explosions like a movie.

These guy and gals look like actors to me. Tall one with no face could be white. Rest, Asians. They look relaxed, almost smiling.

Why would have done this? Reverse psychology. Why the Japanese would be interned in camps if they controlled the country? Why would the Japanese attack if they controlled the country?

Then, based on it, they started a war that decimated Americans in Pacific, that ended abruptly when about to invade Japan with a demonstration as credible as the rest of it.

You can do this with a 250 ton concrete bomb carried by the Spruce Goose, biggest wooden plane "that never flew" and still in the Museum in McMinnville, OR, where UFOs once flew though.

Reason? Rally the Japanese people to take revenge of such barbaric act, while keeping them in check, for the next hundred years.

Questions. Is this wooden plane and the concrete shell invisible or has low radar signature? Why build a museum around it and keep it there 20 out of a total of 70 years, to this day, next to an airport? Just in case they need another demonstration? From what i know wood in time changes shape could it be it's not the prototype anymore? 

Yeap. The museum looks more like a hangar. It wouldn't take long to take those windows out or maybe they can act like doors, i think the whole building would still stand if they removed the first row of two pillars that seem to block the wings. I can't believe in 26 years i didn't go to see the thing, especially that in the last 5 years i passed by dozens of times. I guess i wouldn't have known what to look for.

By looking at this image especially at the roof it seems to me the whole front of the building may be detachable, within hours. Yeah i know it doesn't have a landing gear. How it got there in the first place?

McMinnville Municipal across the street from museum has a one mile long runway. Could easily take off if empty, leave the detachable landing gear, then "land" and load it somewhere else, at sea (40 miles away), or close to a demo target. 

I was staring at the picture of the empty behemoth thinking how the huge load could be rolled out through that narrow hole in the floor. It doesn't need to roll out the load. It doesn't need to come back. Pilots can jump 10  minutes before the target. Don't have to manually load it also. You can get close to a ship and simply fill it with bulk granules, then pour some diesel fuel in it, like Timothy McVeigh did. But he only used two tons to blow that building.

Within about a month when museum is closed for reparations, another one will be assembled.

You probably wouldn't need much imagination to figure they can fly several of these in close formation.

However, the Spruce Goose was in McMinnville only stlarting with 1990. Before that, it was in a different place. 

Pictures From Casinos

The Cleaning Lady

Last night. Should check with google maps, can't remember where i stopped at a gas station and went at the convenience store. It was right across a Love's truck stop (every time i see that logo on the side of a freeway can't stop asking myself about choosing of that name. Where, are they totally out of their minds?) so i crossed back on the other side of the freeway where there was a McDonalds and a gas station i think Chevron and a convenience store. I was dead tired, from drinking and playing all night (got a net plus of 100 dollars) went and when i opened the door at that convenience store, an Asian woman popped from behind the door, kinda scaring me so i didn't look at her face. Then after that awkward moment i asked her if i could use the bathroom. I think noticed another woman mopping the floor at some distance. When i got back out i went and took 3 glazeless donuts (i asked her, but she said, self service), that BTW, were undercooked, which is actually good for my diabetes and the woman with the mop which now i think it was her came at the counter (couldn't figure if she washed her hands) and touched by bag with donuts, not believing me when i said they were three. (No i didn't touch any donut but the bags where kinda stuck together, pretty much like the paper cups at the casinos). I washed my hands in the bathroom however i'm afraid to use soap pumps that aren't automatic, after, about a year ago, got to wash my hands at Ilani with something i think was s...m.

Right after i got back on the freeway a Police SUV, speeding without flashing lights or siren came from behind, wiped my rear end and passed me with like 100 mph exactly when i was ready to switch lanes or even merge (can't remember exactly).

I could probably spend all day telling stories about last night. So i will stop at the last major one (maybe i will come with more of the really scary ones). A few minutes before getting back home, there was this Mercedes pushing me from behind (enough to seay, all other drivers and cars i saw during my 300 miles trip where not the normal people you would expect in traffic, but extras in self driving cars with all kinda symbolic LPN, brands, colors, Tule coffins, bicycles, and stunt drivers).

I didn't wanna go over 65 and went from left to middle lane. One more minute after and/or one minute before i exited, at the apex of my exhaustion i saw the guy with the Mercedes doing a wide and quick maneuver, going on shoulder to avoid an aluminum frame window, the type we have at the apartment that was laying on the right side of his lane.

She was here at the complex in 2019 around the launching of her bid on. Post is hard to read, i reckon, i was high and beyond all the time. Wait a minute, just figured something out, COVID started right after.

Last night when i got on I5 from 510 there was this Police SUV doing 100 without flashing lights or siren that wiped my rear when i was about to merge or change to middle lane. I saw it in the last second and avoided an accident.

Last night lots of people passed me speeding on the right, when i was doing only 10 about speed limit. Again lots of people blinding with broken headlights, high beam, matching speed to blind me on the left mirror, etc.. Minutes before i got home there was a white Mercedes tailgating for some time that didn't want to pass me on the right. I finally decided to get out of his way, at first attempt an SUV came speeding into the next lane so i couldn't, and seconds later after i went in the middle lane and he passed me i saw him doing a wide, quick and quite professional maneuver, going on the shoulder to avoid this this aluminum framed window sitting on the right side of the left lane, the kind we have at the apartment. That was on the last minute of my 300 miles trip, at  the peak of my exhaustion.