VWR Oil Management System

 

Perhaps the most important and unique aspect of the VWR Oil Management System is that it offers a proper solution to oil starvation under high-G braking. Thanks to our extensive motorsport experience, we have found (to our cost) that the MQB EA888 Gen3 2.0T engines have a tendency to collect a large volume of oil within the cylinder head during combined heavy braking and cornering under track conditions. You'd be very unlikely to experience this on a standard car on road.  But push your car hard on-track, with track-tyres and uprated brakes and this is something that you need to be aware of.  

 

Under braking, the oil is forced to escape through the rocker cover breather ports filling the catch tank in a matter of seconds. The overflowing, overwhelmed tank then spits the surplus oil straight through into the intake, causing this smoke. And that's not all.  With no oil returning to the sump, this starves the oil pick up (inside the sump, where it shuold collect oil to lubricate the engine) and the engine can momentarily “run dry” - enough to cause devastating consequences to your engine internals.  Not good, to say the least.

 

Where our clever system differs is by diverting this trapped oil via our integral baffle design straight back down into the main camshaft area of the cylinder head.engine rather than allowing it to escape out through breather ports. It's no surprise that this was achieved by adopting technology similar to that found in the SEATSport/Volkswagen TCR EA888 touring cars. All this add ups to the VWR Oil Management System being essential for reliability, engine safety and performance if you're planning to be pulling high-G forces anytime.

 

 

What does the VWR Catch Tank and Oil Management System do?  By extracting the “blow by” gasses in a positive crankcase ventilation (PCV) engine such as the EA888, particularly when running higher boost pressures, it collects and condenses the oil and moisture vapours in the catch can.  Otherwise, this mist enters the intercooler piping and inlet tract, condenses, so gradually fills it with oil residue.  As well as keeping the whole intake path clean, this also means that these oil vapours don't get fed back into the combustion chamber, ensuring a much purer, uncontaminated air/fuel mixture entering the cylinder - oil vapor is not an ideal substance to have entering your combustion chamber.  The result – clean intercooler, intake track and charge piping, and a higher efficiency engine for many years.

 

But the VWR Catch Tank and Oil Management System delivers more than just this important function.  The EA888 Gen3 engine, when used on track with track-spec tyres, can suffer from oil-starvation under very heavy braking G forces.  The oil pools at the top front of the engine during this high-G occurrence, which has ultimately led to engine failures on our circuit cars.  Most breather systems will simply swallow up this pooled oil, adding to the risk of oil-starve.  The VWR Catch Tank and Oil Management System is different in that it replaces the entire PCV block, and uses the same solution to avoid this as the factory TCR/Seat Sport EA888-engined race cars do.  A large header volume in the Engine Breather Plate on top of the engine contains a carefully-angled baffle which instantly diverts this excess oil straight back into the engine’s oil return, greatly reducing the chance of surge.  To our amazement, some catch can systems on the market simply retain the standard PCV block connected to a catch can, rather than replace the Engine Breather Plate - to us, that is only half of a system.