78 GS750E Airbox Question

[Guest]

Hey folks, I've been cleaning up my airbox and wasn't quite able to find all the answers I was hoping for in former threads. I've got a few questions regarding the airbox:

What do most people use to seal around the rubber gaskets/metal caps on each end and the intake hoses that run to the carbs?

I made a pretty neato silicone gasket for the air filter to airbox interface, but I've seen a few posts where people mentioned that silicone will fall apart due to the heat and gas vapor in the airbox. Is this from experience? I can't imagine there would be so much fuel vapor that it would damage silicone that much faster than foam weatherstripping. I'm having fitment issues, so I'll just switch to the weatherstripping if it's really the be-all, end-all way to go, but I'd love to keep rolling with the fallacy of sunken costs on my gee-whiz silicone gasket if folks think it'll work out alright.

My biggest concern, and the only real reason I'm posting a new thread on this: the crankcase breather oil/water catch basin in my airbox has started rusting through, and I don't really want the condensation and oil vapor to go straight to the carb inlet. Has anyone else run into this problem, and what did you do to solve it short of just running the breather to atmosphere? Because it's integral to the airbox, there's no easy swap, and I don't really want to leave the breather disconnected if I don't have to. Could a small piece of felt or something else act as a filter element to keep stuff from flying straight into the intake? Or should I coat the top of the airbox with something? Regardless of the solution, there's definitely evidence inside the top chamber of the airbox that a lot of rust particles, and some chunks have been flying around in the intake. I'm a bit concerned about how much of the rust and debris has been sucked into the intake, and would love some advice on the best way forward. I'm expecting it to mostly be "Just disconnect it" but it'd be great if there's a good solution floating around here somewhere.

Thanks in advance for any input!

[Gravity]

Adding some pictures to illustrate my issues:







In the middle picture you can see holes in the bottom of that little catch basin that is directly below the rusty inlet tube. The last picture shows that rust has clearly been getting sucked out into the intake. This is in the top chamber of the airbox AFTER the air filter, so none of the stuff coming out of that bit is getting filtered out. I'm really at a loss as to what a good approach would be to mitigate all the debris that will fall out. I'd love some suggestions here.

I scrapped the silicone gasket thing and just got some nice buna-n (nitrile) rubber foam since it's highly chemical resistant. As long as the airbox doesn't go over 200 degrees, it should be okay. Time will tell, I suppose.