My brother has a 76 242 with a later short block from a 82-84 B230. The engine was build approximately 50K miles ago. It has always used a bit of oil, but recently has begun using significant amounts. Commercial shops have replaced the valve cover gasket and the O ring under the distributor. There are obvious signs of oil on the shock towers and firewall.

Based on my experience with my 89 245 and the knowlege gained from reading this board, I immediatly asked if he had serviced the flame trap recently. His response was a blank stare. OK, I thought, I'll show him what I am talking about. First thing we did was the rattle test on the oil filler cap. It danced around like mad, obvously due to pressure in the crankcase.

I then looked and looked but could not find a flame trap on the darn thing. Thinking it was lost among the spagetti that is part of the early fuel injection system, I finally pulled the intake manifold in frustration. I found that the oil separator was connected directly to the air filter box through a fitting on the lower left corner. No flame trap, only one line to what appears to be a weak vacumn source and is about 2 1/2 feet long. The Hanyes manual as well as sources from this site show the small line from the trap to be attached to the top of the manifold and the large line to be attached to the air intake below the injector system.

The car was originally vented through the valve cover. There is no provision to hook the large line from the flame trap anywhere into the air intake near the injection system. The receipts and notes from the rebuild make reference to the flame trap relocate kit from IDP, but it is not installed on the car.

Now that you have been patient enough to read this far, a couple of questions.

1. How would you recommend that we vent this motor? There are two larger vacumn lines attached to the top of the manifold. One serves the brake booster. The other provides vacumn to the heater controls. According to pictures of the car before the engine was rebuilt, the valve cover vent was connected through a T fitting to the same line that serves the controls.

2. Should the small line feeding the cold start injector have a clamp on it where it connects to the injector system below the manifold? If doesn't now, I am always leery of unclamped lines on a fuel system.

There are other dried out hoses that we will replace as we put this thing back together, but our major concern is getting the thing to vent properly. If that is accomplished, ideally the seals will. Whether there are any more bad gaskets remains to be seen.

Thanks

Zimm