If you follow this blog at all you might remember that I’ve been leaking rear end gear fluid all year. I noticed it back in March when I did a shake down of the Javelin on Thunderhill’s skid pad. Initially I thought I had an axle seal leak. After doing some research I realized it was simply that under hard left turns gear oil was being pushed into the passenger side axle tube and up and out of the little stock breather hose. The stock setup simply has a little nipple on the top of the passenger axle tube and another one on the frame. A small hose connects the two nipples. This is fine for normal street driving but as soon as you start turning hard gear oil gets pushed to the top of the hose and dribbles down the frame rail. The result is that after every session I’d get back to the pits and a small puddle would form under the car as all the oil that dribbled out of the hose and covered the chassis dripped off onto the asphalt. The oil would also coat the inside of the passenger rear wheel…
The solution is to install a 1 qt breather / catch can. I got this one from summit. I bought the white plastic one hoping the plastic would be translucent so you could see how much fluid was in it. But, the plastic is opaque so you can’t see inside. This catch can has a ball valve and lever to open/close it. I safety wired the valve lever open. Since Laguna is my last track day this year I took a bit of a short cut and installed it right to the wheel well. This puts the catch can at an angle where ideally you would want it upright. Getting it upright would be a simple matter of creating a bracket that attaches to the wheel well and holds the can upright. But, I didn’t have time to make a nice bracket so I just did this. It means some fluid will pool in the catch can and not be able to drain back into the rear. But it shouldn’t be much fluid and the main purpose is to just keep the fluid off the underside of the car and off the asphalt in the pits. Hopefully it works.
