First ones I ever saw were early Maserati hemi 6 cylinders from the late 50's early 60's (Aluminum alloy block and head, integrated lower engine case/oil pan, 2 spark plugs per cylinder, etc.) very advanced for the time. In road racing they knew that the oil caused detonation....no one understood the rest of the contaminates at that time, but Maserati had a very effective unit back then that used a road draft tube for steady evacuation at speed. It did have to be emptied, and was crude, but it was real innovation from just the road draft tubes using the Venturi effect for suction.
We have always used belt driven vacuum pumps on all our drag engines (app 1000 HP NA running Methanol), but app 15 years ago when we were pushing 700-800 plus hp forced induction, we were always battling detonation and we started using the air compressor units thinking that would catch it, and we still had detonation, so we added 2 in series, later one caught as much as the first. Then we went to the larger ones (company call conceptual polymer sells them as catchcans) and still were not catching it. So we bought the cans on the market, and they were not any better. That lead us to start our own designs, and there have been dozen or so revisions since as we learned what does, and what does not work....(and some help from some science heads on flow dynamics and all the principals of separating liquids, etc.) to end up with what you see today.
Thanks for the kind words....we also post the competitors that do a good job also, but most other can companies/vendors don't care for us to explain all that is involved and what works and what doesn't.
