You're right, as in they named it a breather, in my opinion it's an orifice in line, and i can't tell you what the function of those is.....

Normally a breather on an engine is just like the word says, a little air filter on top of the valve cover, the crankcase gasses due the pressure build up in the engine are flowing through this filter directly in the open air.

 

That breather might actually have a filter in it. It may also be responsible for the TB getting gunked up. My breather filters wont be here till next week so no change on mine.

Considering getting an HO or '04 intake manifold down the road... I like how the motor has woken up with the 2 intake mods (TB & MIT). And I am also happy to be back with the DTCM... the 300 rpms on the hills matters.

 

In my case, when i bougt the Dodge it did had some sludge, mine is having the old style oil fil cap ( 2000 ), and i don't have the plastic lid ? inside, like you guys have ( you & Dodgevity )

I made the change to the newer style PCV setup, i told you before, so i took out the PCV valve at the oilfil tube and plugged the hole, bought a new type PCV valve and mounted this one on the left cilinderhead, with the line going to the back of the Inlet Manifold.
The orifice, which is only meant for an mounting option from the line to the cilinderhead, from the right Cilinderhead goes to the airfilter or in my case the CAI.

I think we have about the same weather conditions over here, and i can tell for sure i don't have any sludge anymore.

Before i changed the PCV valve system i had the valve covers off and changed out my lifters, so i know there was a little sludge inside the valve covers.

2 months ago when i changed the oil, i went a little further and took off the right side valve cover to investigate if there was any sluge.
It appears to be very clean and found no sludge at all.

Hope this helps you, if you wan't i can take some pictures right now of the oil fil cap and tube, i've got about 3.500 Miles on this oil and temps are just below freezing and in the afternoon a little warmer, i drive 26 miles to work and back, mainly highway at 63 mph.

So this is a little less than you guys.

When weather suits me i'm gonna change the oil and filter, like you guys i'm always on top of service intervalls, only thing is i don't run synthetic just yet, will be in the future, i'm a little hesitated because the previous owner as i suspect didnt maintain it as well and i think they have run mineral oil before me.

 

On the TB i can say the following, when i bought it it was a little dirty, not very much, like some black residu, mainly on the edges of the valve.

I took the TB off, cleaned it and with the last oil change i had the CAI off to investigate and it was still nice and clean.
Mine has 122.000 mIles on it now and doesn't take any oil between changes.

 

In this instance, the breathers are air intakes. Keeping them clean IS a good idea, as a restriction there reduces the efficiency of the PCV system as a whole. PCV servers two purposes, one is to evacuate combustion byproducts from the crankcase, and recycle them. (an emissions thing.) The other is to provide a bit of a vacuum in the crankcase, which aids in ring seal. It doesn't cost any power to run it, and in fact, it will actually HELP. Need really good instrumentation to tell the difference with or without though.

 

air box study/discussion...

ijaerv12n12_54.pdf (ripublication.com)

 

Huh... pics of the airbox air flow in that last doc had an idea come to mind, may experiment with this in the next week or so... why not create a thin baffle to sit in front of the air filter on the dirty side to clean up the airflow into it? It would cause a small restriction but the laminar flow of the air thru the filter might allow for better flow thru it.

 

Hmm they wan't $ 2000 for 2013 used top end, wich are heads, complete with in-and outlet manifolds and coils for sparkplugs ?

 

Ouch...

 

Yep, said this was a little steep and asked if i could buy the cams and the intake seperate.

He told me name you're price.....what do you think is a fair price ?