Is an OCC recommended?

Have you seen this thread?

Oil Catch Can, Eliminate that knock! | PriusChat

I had maybe 1/8" pool of oil at the bottom of the intake manifold, whenever I looked, and that's just the remainder: who knows how much was just "passing through". I suspect the passing through portion is responsible for some of the carbon build-up in the EGR circuit.

I put in a Moroso Can about a year back, mounted on the lower engine bay cross-beam, directly below the intake. Lifted off the throttle body recently and there was only a "sheen" of oil. That sheen could be be coming from the intake ports: when removing the intake manifold soon after a previous cleaning I noticed an oil tear at each port, seems like a bit spits out.

 

Occ is necessary

 

If you’re rich then no. You can always sell you car troubles to someone else.

If you’re in CA then no. You’ll fail biannual inspection.

If you plan to drive yours to the ground then it’s required.

 

There's a couple of things you can do with that:

1. Install the OCC under the intake manifold. The stock engin bay components, hoses and wiring are so dense it's very hard to see an OCC down below. Doubly so if it's matt black.

2. To be really sure, remove OCC at inspection time, restore the system to stock.

FWIW, a properly installed, non-vented OCC with tight connections does not mess anything up, which is a bit of a sand-pounder.

 

Cool man, it’s rich to have a car that will last awhile while saving up. Plan to drive mine 25,000 mi this year excluding non-work commute, was putting it off. Raytheeagle and I currently coordinating a schedule to install a OCC in my Prius, a bit excited to say.

 

Everything is legal if no one sees

 

Casual inspection:



A little close, with some help from a pit lamp:



See it? It IS shiny chrome finish. If I had to submit to an inspection maybe I'd maybe spray it with some mat-black plastic-dip.

 

Yeah it's a little weird, I do next to nothing. I do have pieces of foam tubing (the 1.5" OD pipe insulation) pushed onto the seams at the inside top edges of the fenders, which closes up the gap between fender and hood. And the engine underpanel is intact.

What cleaning I do is to occasionally go over what I can reach with an old paint brush, and also have a hand-me-down duster boa from the house, which I'll push through all the gaps possible. And a shop vac, which I'll use either on suction or blowing. And then there's the leaf blower...

But seriously though, not much cleaning is needed. One thing, it's garage stored, so doesn't have dew condensing on it every morning. And there's only 79K kms on the odo. And rarely if ever driving on unpaved roads.

 

Don’t drive it.

Us high mileage guys just have to deal with a little seasoning under the hood.

A little dirt never hurts anything.