Restoring a Volkswagen Beetle

This is kind of an out of place question on this forum, but I’m not a member of any others at the moment. I have a 1971 VW super beetle that I’m restoring. I want to ditch the stock oil bath air filter; however, I’m not sure what is to be done with the crankcase oil breather hose that is connected to the oil filter unit. Where does this get re-routed? Can I just aim it at the ground? Will it blow oil all over the place? Can I cap it off? I have no idea what to do with it.

If it’s just a dead end system, ie. the oil is not returned to the crank case with the rest of it, then it should be fine to just cap it off. If the oil returns in some way, just re connect the hose to the return path and leave the air filter out of the system… Think of it as taking the heater core out of your car, and just joining the coolant hoses. Other than that, cap that shit.

The system is designed for emission reasons, specifically to vent the crank case oil fumes back into the intake so they can be burned. The oil vapor can also have the effect of lowering the octane rating of the fuel if enough is drawn into the engine. So venting the crankcase is not great for performance, but it is still necessary that it is vented somewhere.

You can remove the tube and replace it with a small breather filter and let the fumes dissapate in the engine compartment, but after a while, the filter will collect oil and will eventually become a mess.

The long term solution is to run a hose below the vehicle or into to a catch bottle mounted somewhere out of the way.

So I was totally wrong. Oh well, it still made sense in a way.

Put a 3.8V6 turbo buick engine in it…

same prinicpal as a old harley. just let it blow in the ground(behind the rear wheels).

Thanks for the replys guys. Duckshot, you seem to speak with the most authority, so I’ll try to utilize your advice. There must be a conventional solution because theres so many bugs rolling around with duel carbs and paper filters. The engine is kinda on the backburner for right now because the body needs allot of attention comparatively. Thanks again.