Crankcase breathers and pod filters – Honda CX500, GL500, CX650, GL650

For those bikes with pod filters – or Murray’s carbs – and a bottle breather over the timing inspection port, what are your options regarding piping the breather if you don’t want to pipe it into the pods?

What do you do with the crankcase breather when you have pod filters or Murray's Mikuni carburetors on your Honda CX500, GL500, CX650 or GL650? Here are some ideas if you have the bottle style breather.

One short length of pipe, looped up as high as possible under the tank then back down with a filter on the end. The height is to encourage oil that is splashed up the tube to fall back down into the engine, and the loop/downward facing end is to prevent water or debris from running down the tube into the engine. The filter on the end prevents ingress of anything unwanted, whether it’s debris or little critters…

On this particular bike the filter sits through one of the holes in the rear engine hanger:

What do you do with the crankcase breather when you have pod filters or Murray's Mikuni carburetors on your Honda CX500, GL500, CX650 or GL650? Here are some ideas if you have the bottle style breather.

It’s a cheap crankcase breather filter from eBay (eBay AU or eBay US) with a short length of silicone pipe and a barb between the two:

What do you do with the crankcase breather when you have pod filters or Murray's Mikuni carburetors on your Honda CX500, GL500, CX650 or GL650? Here are some ideas if you have the bottle style breather.

It’s a pretty inexpensive setup but it works. As a side note, this sort of setup likely contravenes environmental legislation in your part of the world as there are unburned hydrocarbons being pushed out of the engine through the crankcase breather, which are normally pulled back into the intake and burned rather than being released.

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