How to Test and Replace PCV Valve on your Vehicle

And of course here's our PCV valve and the hose running to the valve. And PCV stands for positive crankcase ventilation. Essentially what it does is it takes gas from the crankcase and brings it to the intake manifold. I mean this is a simple explanation I can give you guys. But regardless I'll show you how you can test this valve and see if you do indeed need another one or maybe if you have a leak in the hose. One thing to note if you do have a leak somewhere you do have a hose here and if you follow this metal tubing which goes around let me zoom out here for a sec here's your tube your PCV valve you have a metal tube that runs runs to a bracket and then you have another hose right here another rubber hose. Really I should probably replace these because they're a little hard but regardless if you have a leak somewhere and again I'll show you in a second how to do this check both hoses. Now real quick if you're curious what kind of tool I was just using this tool is really just made to remove hose clamps. As you can see it's extremely long and you can pick up a set of these from Harbor Freight that's where I got these. They're inexpensive and they just make jobs like these a lot easier because you can really get down and grab clamps that are difficult to reach if you only had a needle nose pliers for example. So that's what these are if you want to grab a pair go ahead and do so. Now of course here's our PCV valve right here and the hose. What I'm going to do just because this car is 16 years old and I want to make sure everything is in good running shape these hoses I can just feel they're very hard and I think that they're going to fail pretty soon so I'm going to replace this hose right here and again this hose right here. Now as you can see leads into this metal tubing which is held on by this bracket this bracket is held on by two bolts so what I'm going to do is I'm going to loosen up the bracket and also loosen up this hose back here replace both hoses and again I'll show you how you can test this PCV valve. And now as you can see everything is very loose and we can just simply pull this up and there's your hose so I'm going to replace this hose and of course this other hose back here. You can use a screwdriver on the bottom just being gentle with it there we go. So now we want to test the PCV valve so what I'm going to do just temporarily place this hose back on and then on the other side go ahead and reinstall the PCV valve like so. So again this is the hose that runs directly to the valve so now what we're going to do start the car and run it in idle. What we we want to check for two things number one that we hear a hissing sound that's the first thing and then the second thing is we'll check the vacuum in other words put your finger over the valve and you should feel very strong vacuum. Don't do this with any gloves on because the glove can actually rip off and clog the valve so let's go ahead and test this valve. Now I'm not sure if you guys can hear it on camera but it is making a hissing sound so let's just check the vacuum here and you hear that there's a very strong vacuum so this valve is working it's in good shape but regardless I'm going to change those rubber hoses and we'll be in good shape.