The principle is simple and the result of what I gleaned from other web postings.
There is a bottle of baby oil with a wick in it, I used fiberglass rope which I bought years ago as a seal for the front glass of a Parkray solid fuel fire and had some left over. The wick is pushed up a suitably sized piece of antenna mast which in turn is held by a plastic cable gland. Around the wick is an element made from about 25 turns of stainless steel Mig welding wire (0.8mm). This all sits inside an old stainless and brass filter housing I rescued from some scrap many years ago, the power is fed in through a bolt with insulating washers both sides. Air is fed in on the right through a needle valve to control the flow then a pressure regulator and sticking out of the top is a pressure relief valve. No one can say that I cut any corners on safety there. The pressure relief is set to 1.2 bar and I set the pressure regulator between 0 and 1 bar. In all honesty I think the regulator is unnecessary but the pressure relief is a good idea, the last thing you want is to burst something on the car if there is no leak. The flow you need is very small just a tiny waft, not a strong blast. I only turn the needle valve on 1/2 a turn. Too much smoke and you cannot see where the leak actually is!
I originally fed it direct from a 12V battery but it proved too much for it. It looked good on test but as mentioned the flow is very low and the element then got too hot. I now feed it from a 12v transformer which is controlled via a power controller module, a domestic lamp dimmer will work to control power to the transformer. If you don’t feel competent to work with this sort of thing at mains voltages then use a bought power supply or run it from a battery, you could add more turns to the element to reduce the power.
I think a decent sized airline oiler would probably do the job as a housing, just take out the guts, fit a wick and change the oil. Add to that a needle valve of some sort to control the flow and a pressure relief and you’re away.
The universal connector system is self explanatory, or you could pay a fortune for something similar from one of those shops in Soho! I frequently connect at the MAF and have several blanking plugs as supplied with a new MAF with a hose union in the middle.
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