Breathers

Turbo Camaro’s valve cover - breather & PCV Valve installed

Rear of both breathers packaging

The stock inline 6 has an oil fill cap and a breather at the front of the valve cover, with a PCV valve at the rear. Both are originally filtered through the factory air cleaner. This is a fine system for maintaining clean neutral pressure inside a naturally aspirated engine.

As the site title says, a turbocharger is in play and that changes everything. The circular carburetor air cleaner is replaced with a Spectre cone air filter in front of the turbocharger. While running hoses to the new filter is possible, it’s not the direction we took for this phase.

Spectre chrome PCV valve installed

The front side hole for the breather hose was closed with a 1-1/8” oil-resistant rubber plug. The oil filler cap was replaced with a Spectre 4273 twist-in chrome breather. The rear PCV valve was replaced with a Spectre 4290 PCV valve breather.

Note: the twist-in breather fit the stock valve cover hole perfectly, but the provided PCV valve grommet was too big for the stock 1” hole. Since the PCV valve snout is only 3/4”, a new 1” O.D. with 3/4” I.D. rubber grommet was used. Depending on your local environmental laws, you may need to vent these differently rather than letting them vent to the atmosphere.

Spectre chrome oil breather cap installed

One other thing to consider: these breathers are about 2.5” tall. Be sure to account for hood clearance, as it’s possible your hood may not close with these installed on a high-sitting valve cover.

As much as we liked the look, these have since been removed. The front was reverted to the original oil cap and the rear PCV was replaced by an Oil Catch Can assembly to better comply with emissions and assist in troubleshooting.