Hi everyone, my father and I are the new owners of a '73 Dart with the omnipresent/potent slant. It needs a few things fixed up--one being oil in the air cleaner. The only thing I can think of is that the valve cover breather, which reroutes crankcase emissions back into the air cleaner, is puking oil. The thing I don't know, is if there's supposed to be a check valve on the hose going from the breather to the air cleaner. There's no PCV valve because this is the engine with the carbon canister.

Will anyone offer any feedback?

On an unrelated topic, it's a '73 (in-pump fuel filter), but there's also an inline fuel filter grafted into the main feed line near the carburator (Holley 1920). Weird... I wonder if it's a '73 engine. It was previously owned by the legendary little old lady so I don't think she could have blown the original engine.

Thanks for any advice.

Hi everyone, my father and I are the new owners of a '73 Dart with the omnipresent/potent slant.

-Good father and son project and easy to work on, and cheap to maintain. Good purchase.

It needs a few things fixed up--one being oil in the air cleaner. The only thing I can think of is that the valve cover breather, which reroutes crankcase emissions back into the air cleaner, is puking oil. The thing I don't know, is if there's supposed to be a check valve on the hose going from the breather to the air cleaner. There's no PCV valve because this is the engine with the carbon canister.

*Bzzztt*...You should have a PCV toward the front of the valve cover inline with the 'breather', and has a 3/8" hose connecting it to the base of the carb. The charcoal cannister is just there to pick up 'purged' fuel/vapors from the carburator & bowl and re-vent it back to the gas tank preventing loss of fuel to the atmosphere (supposedly), and making it more 'environmentally compatible'. It has nothing to do with PCV or breather.

If the PCV isn't present you may have some oil purge problems, you also should clean out or replace the breather too. If those items don't cure your air filter problem, then you'll have to replace the balloon seals on the valve stems since they may be cracked, worn or missing. At worst your piston rings are just plain wornout and letting oil bypass (re-ring/rebuild/compression check).

You should have two filters on a stock slant six. One is on the pickup tube in the gas tank called a 'sock' it's just a little nylon capped tube that fits over the 5/16" tube on the sending unit at the bottom of the tank. You should also have one after the fuel pump, but before the carburator inlet.
The tank filter is just to keep rust and dirt and 'crud' from plugging up your feed lines to the fuel pump,etc... the other one is to take care of anything that was 'smaller' that got past the sock before it gums up the carb.

Keep asking questions, we are here to help...if you keep at it you'll know more about your car in the next 6 months than most regular mechanics would in 10 years....

welcome to the board,

-DusterIdiot


p.s. if in doubt about your engine, you can look for a 'pad' machined into the block above the #1 spark plug hole, right below the valve cover (just behine the alternator). It'll be 'gunked up' from old oil and crud, so clean it with a rag. There should be some numbers stamped on that which can tell us about your engine.