What is this thing in my engine?

[Mouse]

There's this tap like handle thing on the side of the engine that has confused me. After twiddling it experientially I then became concerned I'd adjusted something inside the engine or governor so to to fuel the possibility of cocking something up I removed it to see what it is.
The knob appears to be attached to a stack of thin metal discs than spin around when you turn the knob. There is also a stack of other plates that are interleaved with the ones that can rotate but these ones dont move.

What is it and what does it do?

The engine is a 1974 German Motorenwerk Cunewalde 2VD 8/8 - 2SV, 800cc V Twin.













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[TimppaX]

Filter? Faint recollection from old tractor which had same sort of thingy

[coachgeo]

There is a hard line w/banjo bolt there... Is that a fuel line or oil line that feeds into (or out of) the area this gizmo resides?

[Mouse]

The banjo tube goes to the lower half of the engine oil filler tube / breather vent.

I cant work out the direction of oil flow through that part of the engine at the moment but it is definitely engine oil not fuel oil that is in it.

[coachgeo]

hard to tell cause of optical illusion traits... in the pocket that this gizmo sits in, is that area with the dark hole.. something that protrudes out... like an arm that goes into the engine area below it.. or is it a recess that goes deeper with a hole in the back of it?

If it is a recess, does the moving of the tits on those plates change the exposure of that hole to the fluid there?

if it is an arm.... does those tits rock the arm to left or right as you rotate.

Do all the plates that have tits rotate together/in line with one another? I assume so but one should never assume.

[coachgeo]

answering part of my own question. Think its a recess. Below pic points me toward this conclusion.

[Crazymanneil]

Interesting one - you could run a competiton on this

Would it be some sort of separator to remove oil from the blow by gasses coming from the crankcase breather? Then return oil to the sump and vent the gasses?

No idea really

n

[Dan J]

>Interesting one - you could run a competiton on

Good idea - first to correctly identify the pictured part and state its function wins a pint* from Mouse at the 2010 Big Knock!

Mouse - for all I know this might be worth an entire evening's worth of drinking to you but I didn't want to take liberties with your wallet, not in the least because I haven't got a clue what it is

[Nanko]

That must be a DCF ( disk cleaning filter )
Rotate lever few turns before starting the engine.
I think some YANMARS using this kind of oilfilter

[smokyjoe]

I have a US military gas engined generator (uses a flathead Willys jeep engine) that has an oil filter like that. Works really well, every once in a while if you take it apart you will find lots of metal crud, etc caught by it. Not up to pleated paper standards, but the disk filter seems to work well. Nice thing to have ahead of a paper filter to catch the big crud