livininharrow
Senior Member
wow that looks like a real clusterfuck. why was all of that necessary?71
what is this tube in the trunk? 70 Fury3 on ebay
- Thread starter fury fan
- Start date
CanCritter
Senior Member
California?...hard to say..mine was one of 34 to hit Canada...Wolfens 71 also has and his is a us car...believe it had to do to California emission's...may be they were like this across the board for 71 and if a car ended up in cali it would meet emission's standards there ...imagine cali was the toughest State & standard to meet re emmisions at that time
livininharrow
Senior Member
so I guess that was the precursor to modern emissions technology.
commando1
Old Man with a Hat
Clamps will bankrupt ya.
I need to look in my trunk as I just can't remember. That tube my, indeed, be inside, unlike what I previously wrote.
ceebuddy
Well-Known Member
Yes, in 1970... yes, it was standard nationwide in 1971, but looked different.
Yes. The Cleaner Air System was standard in 1971. Here is the MTSC Booklet from 1971 explaining the evolution of the system (in case you cared). Compression ratio was also reduced slightly for 1971 to reduce tailpipe emissions.
65Fury440
Senior Member
71
Yikes!!! Lotta hosing going on.
70bigblockdodge
Old Man with a Hat
Same purpose as "charcoal" canister on 72 up cars. It eliminates the gas drip that someone was mentioning a week or two ago. Vapor goes into the big tube you see in trunk any that precipitates falls to bottom and drains back to tank vapor is routed to air cleaner and sucked into carburetor upon restart.
rags
Senior Member
emissions car. sealed tank. not vented. hey sinbin!
Last edited:
commando1
Old Man with a Hat
When they put the rubber flaps on the nozzles of the gas pump trying to prevent vapors, while fueling, getting into the air,
I thought that was the silliest thing I ever saw.
I thought that was the silliest thing I ever saw.
Actually, the vapor that didn't condense in the big pipe in the trunk went forward into the crankcase, thereby diluting the oil over time. The evaporative emissions from the carburetor on a hot soak, for example, also went into the crankcase. When the oil got hot, those gasoline vapors in the crankcase now went into the PCV system to get sucked into the engine and burned.
Charcoal canisters couldn't come too soon. There are stories that even on the assembly line, that some California cars blew the oil pans off on startup before even getting out of the plant. Lousy system. California didn't regulate how you contained evaporative emissions, they just set the standards for limits on evaporative emissions.
The Chrysler engineers at the time were behind the curve with those early systems. There were some boneheads in the emission department at Chrysler at the time. Their attitude was "who cares about California - the land of the fruits and nuts" and likewise they designed some cheap crap for meeting the California emission standards. While GM had figured out how to utilize the catalysts to improve driveability and lower emissions, the Chrysler engineers didn't take advantage of them because they really didn't understand how to do that. GM helped in inventing the catalysts, while Chrysler did not and just put them on their cars to help meet emission standards, yet designed their cars with lean burn carburetor systems that ran like crap, retarded the timing, and increased exhaust gas recirculation, while GM richened their carburetor calibrations, increased spark advance and used lesser amounts of exhaust gas recirculation. GM cars in the 70s ran comparatively great, but the California calibrations ran so bad the California Air Resources Board made Chrysler recall some of them in 1977 because they ran so badly and stalled multiple times on cold starts during California's own confirmatory testing, thus failing the tests. I was there at the time shaking my head at the junk Chrysler was releasing not only for California, but nationwide too. Lean Burn was a joke, and the guy pushing those systems had no connection to reality, yet he was in charge. They didn't get smarter until the late 70s, but by 1980 they went into bankruptcy - it was no surprise.
commando1
Old Man with a Hat
Steve. I'd be interested in seeing the Corporate tree on the Engineering side. Who reported to who and what not. Sounds like the chain of command was too splintered. If not broken.
Ah-ha! Look what's to the right of my spare tire! Uh, I have one too. Ha! I knew I had these pictures at my home.
Not sure, Stan, how to find an old copy of the org chart. But you are correct, responsibilities were fragmented in the fuel systems lab. That lab developed emission reduction calibrations for carburetors to work in conjunction with evolving emission controls such as exhaust gas recirculation, various forms of spark retard and advance delay mechanisms and a whole lot more. They had to interface with the engine development group who had responsibility for engine output and did a lot of dynamometer development. Then there were some engineers in the lab that had the ear of the manager of the lab, such as one guy (who I will leave nameless even though I will never forget him), who was the lead proponent of the lean burn systems. And the final say in the calibrations, believe it or not, was the proving grounds where they had final vehicle calibration responsibility. It was a real mess and few engineers cared that much about emissions controls back then and saw the standards as something they had to meet, but didn't seem to have a lot of enthusiasm in making cars that performed well or even had commercial levels of driveability. They just kind of blamed the poor performance of Chrysler vehicles in the 70s primarily on the government standards, and crazy California that was the real driver of emission standards nationwide. The California Air Resources Board set the technology forcing standards, and then the Fed EPA usually adopted the same standards a few years later. That pattern has persisted for 3 decades, and only recently are the emission standards now pretty much aligned between CA and the feds, but then tail pipe emissions that cause smog are near zero on most new cars today. But the engineers back then were also hampered by the strong unions that made their jobs very hard, because doing almost anything like lifting an air cleaner just to look at a carburetor number on a test car would land you in the managers office because a "grievance" had been filed by the UAW against the engineer for doing the work of a union technician. But the technicians would make the engineers wait until their extra long breaks were over to even help with checking the carb number, and they knew they were making it difficult and loved it. This happened to me a couple times because I hated their attitude and lifted the air cleaners myself because I was the kind of guy that wanted to get things done and actually develop good driving cars that also emitted cleanly. The really cold, gloomy weather of Detroit coupled with the union control of the company caused me to leave Detroit and return to California shortly after my 2 years stint in the Chrysler Institute of Engineering where the company sent me to U of Michigan to get my masters degree in Mech. Engineering. I also had to attend Institute training classes and they rotated me through 8 different assignments over the 2 year Institute program. I went permanent in the fuel systems lab when I got out of the Institute program.
When I decided to leave, I told my boss of my plans, but I also told him I really wanted to stay with Chrysler somehow, and I did want to develop emisson control systems that were really good and gave good driveability and performance. By some miracle there was an opening at the California Emission Test Facility in Santa Fe Springs, CA, near my former home where I could do such work - specifically developing emission control systems for the CA vehicles. In the first years when I was there, starting in 1972, I had to develop running changes to help Chrysler's CA vehicles pass emisson standards when our facility's quality audit testing showed compliance problems. But I ran into a lot of problems trying to work with Detroit from a distance, and detested the Proving Ground's lousy calibration efforts in releasing CA vehicle calibrations. They were awful - the cars drove terrible, were gutless and guzzled gas. I went out on my own and rented some GM cars that were clearly well developed and calibrated based on driving a lot of competitive makes. Fords were almost as bad as the Chrysler products. I tore down the emission controls on the GM cars and analyzed what they were doing, and sent a lot of carburetors and other parts back to Carter and Holley as well as Chrysler central engineering to have them flow tested and otherwise evaluated. I soon figured out what the GM engineers were doing to make their cars run so well. I had one of my staff that worked for me in Highland Park put together a car there to give to the head of engineering to drive home one night without telling the Chief Engineer what it was - just drive it and comment. That car embodied all the elements of the GM calibrations. The Chief Engineer came back the next morning and demanded to know what that car was because he never drove such a smooth, responsive calibration in recent memory including all the federal cars. When he was told it was a California calibration that passsed all their standards, he didn't believe it. To make a long story short, I was given responsibility for emission package development for the CA vehicles from that point on but by then it was late in 1977 when that happened, and then the proving ground hated us in California because we made them look bad and we had a lot of trouble with them cooperating with calibration releases going forward. But we did get some real improvements in production for the 1978 and later models. Unfortunately, the company went bankrupt in 1980, and due to inadequate company resources, the California Emission Lab was shut down. But at least some progress had been made in improving future calibrations and the introduction of electronic fuel injection. I really hated to leave Chrysler after 10 years with them, but I hated Detroit more. I was the last guy to shut off the lights at the CA Emission facility, and cried that night when I knew I would never be working for Chrysler again. But after searching for a new job for a year, I got one that I would have never guessed I would be doing. I jumped to the other side of the fence and that job lasted 31 years. But that is another story.
70bigblockdodge
Old Man with a Hat
Your right Steve the vapor to engine goes through breather so I see what you are talking about in crankcase. Wow problems with the mail it in type people, I guess the same people that did not want to put a big block in a A body, no they are not terrible handling cars their just stupid people that believe non thinking sheep, but that is a different complaint.
ceebuddy
Well-Known Member
Steve, thank you so much for sharing your memories, personal thoughts and first-hand experience!! What an interesting (yet somewhat shocking) story.
commando1
Old Man with a Hat
I always enjoy your personalized accounts of the corporate bullshit.
GM used to have an advertising campaign where they emphasized "We sweat the small stuff" (the campaign was very short lived).
And they did. But the "small stuff" wasn't sexy to the buying public. The public could care less how GM had baffles in the fuel tanks and the Japanese cars didn't.
GM used to have an advertising campaign where they emphasized "We sweat the small stuff" (the campaign was very short lived).
And they did. But the "small stuff" wasn't sexy to the buying public. The public could care less how GM had baffles in the fuel tanks and the Japanese cars didn't.
Similar threads
