Review on FV346 Positive Crankcase Ventilation Valve by Troy Early

While I understand that plastic parts are easier and cheaper to make than metal parts, they are also less durable. PCV valves used to be all metal and could withstand a little abuse. Then they started making the plastic/nylon top half, which still worked fairly well, but could be quite brittle. Now they are all plastic and one of them turned a simple maintenance task into a 4 day expensive nightmare. The car I worked on is 17 years old so the PCV and vent rubber bushings weren't as flexible as new ones. This, combined with the heat under the hood making the PCV plastic brittle, caused the PCV to literally fall apart when I tried to pull it out, with half the pieces falling into the valve cover. Instead of pulling on the valve cover (difficult on this car), I decided to remove the bushing and pry the parts out through the hole with tweezers. The bushing had to be replaced anyway as it had hardened and the hole was big enough to pull the parts out. Then it turned out that no one had replacement seals because the part number listed in the general catalogs and parts lists was wrong. It took four days, 150 miles and a fight with the dealer to finally replace the bushing. If it was one of the old metal or metal/nylon PCVs I never would have had this problem as it wouldn't have come apart in the engine.