Tuning Advice

[Regs120]

I would use one... I have gotten about a quarter cup of oil out of the PCV side in about 5k miles. Has anyone looked at the internals of the PCV to see what is going on in there? The Focus RS guys add a plate to increase the surface area of the baffles to filter out more blowby and add the ability to use an OCC. An OCC may not be required for a tune but coming from the Optima, you most certainly want one.

Yeah, but how much, if any, of that oil would had actually been collected off your valves? Most of the time the hoses are slacked or bent down enough that makes the perfect environment to condense vapors. Catch cans do not come with stock cars for a reason.

 

[Handsomej81]

@Regs120 - I agree with you, Im personally struggling with the fact of an oil catch can. For someone that just wants a performance boost & wants to keep their 100k warranty; a catch can is a huge red flag to me. 1st you cant just remove it and pretend I never modified the car. Let's say I blew up the transmission? I remove the tune and claim warranty. If they investigate, the only thing they will find that wasnt installed from the factory will be different spark plugs, which I believe you can argue. If I had an oil catch can installed, I cant just remove it & claim that im a good boy & its a manufacture defect if the trans or motor goes? It will give Kia a good reason to tell me to go f**k myself. For those that say go to a another dealership, suppose your 300 miles from home and something goes wrong? That's what scares me about a catch can. Hey, (for most of us), why did we get a Stinger? It's a blast & the warranty is pretty groovy! How I look at it; the tune is undetectable, i dont plan on doing anything that would risk a warranty issue (besides the tune), If the car cant handle 4-6psi increase & no additional mods, ill drive the shit out of it and it something fails, remove the tune, tow it to the dealer and jump up and down how disappointing I am that a new car failed like this. The last thing I want is to give them ammo with catch can. Guys - 100k mile warranty! For those of you who are doing downpipes, midpipes, etc and wants to break 12's, yes-catch can makes sense but for people like me, I've concluded its not worth the risk, Plug and play and no holds bar!

 

[terrelltechsup]

Yeah, but how much, if any, of that oil would had actually been collected off your valves? Most of the time the hoses are slacked or bent down enough that makes the perfect environment to condense vapors. Catch cans do not come with stock cars for a reason.

Actually the do, they just aren't always in the form of a can... an example being the Focus RS which uses baffles in the EGR plate to help "catch/condensate" blow-by. Even in that instance, people are replacing the plate with a better design that allows the addition of an external catch can.

 

[Oryan]

@Regs120 - I agree with you, Im personally struggling with the fact of an oil catch can. For someone that just wants a performance boost & wants to keep their 100k warranty; a catch can is a huge red flag to me. 1st you cant just remove it and pretend I never modified the car. Let's say I blew up the transmission? I remove the tune and claim warranty. If they investigate, the only thing they will find that wasnt installed from the factory will be different spark plugs, which I believe you can argue. If I had an oil catch can installed, I cant just remove it & claim that im a good boy & its a manufacture defect if the trans or motor goes? It will give Kia a good reason to tell me to go f**k myself. For those that say go to a another dealership, suppose your 300 miles from home and something goes wrong? That's what scares me about a catch can. Hey, (for most of us), why did we get a Stinger? It's a blast & the warranty is pretty groovy! How I look at it; the tune is undetectable, i dont plan on doing anything that would risk a warranty issue (besides the tune), If the car cant handle 4-6psi increase & no additional mods, ill drive the shit out of it and it something fails, remove the tune, tow it to the dealer and jump up and down how disappointing I am that a new car failed like this. The last thing I want is to give them ammo with catch can. Guys - 100k mile warranty! For those of you who are doing downpipes, midpipes, etc and wants to break 12's, yes-catch can makes sense but for people like me, I've concluded its not worth the risk, Plug and play and no holds bar!

How does a catch can affect your warranty..? You're putting a can or some void with filters and baffles inline with your PCV system. If you installed it correctly, and emptied it when needed, the engine won't notice and the trans certainly won't, and any sane dealer would either not care, or not blindly pin something going south on the engine due to a baffled can. That's not going to make a motor throw rods.

Now a tune...Whoever told you it's undetectable lied to you. NO tune is completely untraceable, even physical removal of the ECU. You can unplug a piggyback and swap ECU's for a tune, and say, bring your car in for service or unrelated warranty work. They won't notice. But if you blow something along the engine or driveline, or if a dealer sees reason to dig deeper into how the car behaved, that data is almost certainly held on other computers. I'm not going to say either way if you should or should not buy a catch can; it's your perogative. But to not do so on the basis of warranty...while wanting a tune..Seems ass-backwards.

 

[Handsomej81]

I suppose it my lack of understand for the catch can and I reached out to two dealers locally to me in addition to the one I go to and all said dont install the catch can. My experiences are with BMW and the tuning software I have personally used are the M one and Dinan which BMW honors, which is why I created this thread to educate myself. I apologize if anyone took offence in my previous post. I lack the education and hand's on experience. Im used to dropping my previous car off and picking them up without any concerns & everything covered. BMW screwed me twice & every since the Stinger came out, I finally got it two month ago & with every car I purchased in the past 8 years, the first month I own it, its tinted, put K&N filters or intake, floor mats and tuned. Thus far, I tinted the car and put K&N filters. I ordered the front and rear swar bars and waiting for them to come off of back order, So that's not keeping my mind occupied & all I think about it the TUNE!! I can alittle impatience....
That so many of you keep on mentioning the catch can, im concerned & disappointed that I cant just get the tune and move on, but that's life! im just looking for the easiest & most reliable option (not caring as much on the power increase, I would take 40hp gain with assurance that I wont have any issues compared to a 80hp gain with a bunch of maybe's). And the discussion of not tuning the car is just unacceptable. Just like buying the car, my wife says "dont they have a four cylinder?" I said, that's ridiculous, no one would make a GT car in a 4cyl . LOL!!

 

[Oryan]

I suppose it my lack of understand for the catch can and I reached out to two dealers locally to me in addition to the one I go to and all said dont install the catch can. My experiences are with BMW and the tuning software I have personally used are the M one and Dinan which BMW honors, which is why I created this thread to educate myself. I apologize if anyone took offence in my previous post. I lack the education and hand's on experience. Im used to dropping my previous car off and picking them up without any concerns & everything covered. BMW screwed me twice & every since the Stinger came out, I finally got it two month ago & with every car I purchased in the past 8 years, the first month I own it, its tinted, put K&N filters or intake, floor mats and tuned. Thus far, I tinted the car and put K&N filters. I ordered the front and rear swar bars and waiting for them to come off of back order, So that's not keeping my mind occupied & all I think about it the TUNE!! I can alittle impatience....
That so many of you keep on mentioning the catch can, im concerned & disappointed that I cant just get the tune and move on, but that's life! im just looking for the easiest & most reliable option (not caring as much on the power increase, I would take 40hp gain with assurance that I wont have any issues compared to a 80hp gain with a bunch of maybe's). And the discussion of not tuning the car is just unacceptable. Just like buying the car, my wife says "dont they have a four cylinder?" I said, that's ridiculous, no one would make a GT car in a 4cyl . LOL!!

Offense, no. None at all. More curiosity than anything as to how you're fine tuning a car but are wary of a catch can. Haven't seen anyone knock simply not knowing, either, and if my previous replies were taken as such, that wasn't the intention. As for the dealers telling you don't install a catch can.. I'd suggest asking why. If they say things along the lines of your warranty on the engine, again ask how a catch can can harm an engine. If they feed you something that seems like crap, try posting about it here. I'm no certified mechanic or anything but a few people on this forum are and plenty can tell when a dealer or some tech is just pulling crap out of their asses. Of course you could just not install catch cans and save all the trouble. The engine won't die due to lack of one and if it did, you know for sure they won't fuss about fixing it. Assuming they don't go digging for signs of tuning.

 

[Regs120]

How does a catch can affect your warranty..? You're putting a can or some void with filters and baffles inline with your PCV system. If you installed it correctly, and emptied it when needed, the engine won't notice and the trans certainly won't, and any sane dealer would either not care, or not blindly pin something going south on the engine due to a baffled can. That's not going to make a motor throw rods.

Now a tune...Whoever told you it's undetectable lied to you. NO tune is completely untraceable, even physical removal of the ECU. You can unplug a piggyback and swap ECU's for a tune, and say, bring your car in for service or unrelated warranty work. They won't notice. But if you blow something along the engine or driveline, or if a dealer sees reason to dig deeper into how the car behaved, that data is almost certainly held on other computers. I'm not going to say either way if you should or should not buy a catch can; it's your perogative. But to not do so on the basis of warranty...while wanting a tune..Seems ass-backwards.

The data could be sent to HQ overseas for further investigation or could be requested by KIA from the dealership. The car has multiple computers that can store information long enough to see if something has been altered. It's just a question of how much they want to investigate. A dealership knows how to write up a report for warranty work without flagging something suspicious on the other end or you could be just the unlucky one where KIA wants to know whats causing a catastrophic failure in one of their cars. Dealerships do not know how to investigate a tune, but if there is hint of one, the engineers at HQ can if they want to take it that far.


To me, catch cans have always caused more harm than good. They increase the maintenance by having to clean them out constantly (and can damage your car if you forget), they can cause mechanical issues if used improperly or installed wrong, and there was never enough science to prove its worth unless you are pushing a bigger turbo on the engine with outrageous PSI. Catch Cans were always "band aids", or a cheap mans fix, to pushing the outer limits of a car.

 

[Oryan]

The data could be sent to HQ overseas for further investigation or could be requested by KIA from the dealership. The car has multiple computers that can store information long enough to see if something has been altered. It's just a question of how much they want to investigate. A dealership knows how to write up a report for warranty work without flagging something suspicious on the other end or you could be just the unlucky one where KIA wants to know whats causing a catastrophic failure in one of their cars. Dealerships do not know how to investigate a tune, but if there is hint of one, the engineers at HQ can if they want to take it that far.


To me, catch cans have always caused more harm than good. They increase the maintenance by having to clean them out constantly (and can damage your car if you forget), they can cause mechanical issues if used improperly or installed wrong, and there was never enough science to prove its worth unless you are pushing a bigger turbo on the engine with outrageous PSI. Catch Cans were always "band aids", or a cheap mans fix, to pushing the outer limits of a car.

That was my point with the tune. You can remove physical evidence of the car being tuned and you'll get away with it until someone decides they want to pull the strings and dig deeper.

I'm not sure what your point is here about catch cans. Yes, if you let them overfill or improperly install them, they can cause issues but I covered that when I said they won't do harm if installed and emptied properly, and the same can be said about pretty much any other mod. This car in particular isn't letting as much oil and junk blow by into the intake as other cars, but from personal observation plenty of turbo cars, particularly KDM cars, can and do fill catch cans pretty quickly and that oil ends up lining the intercooler and piping and getting into and onto valves and cylinders. You also call them a "band-aid" to getting more out of the car...which to me implies there's a more effective way to address the issue?