At 09:41 PM 4/18/97 -0500, you wrote:
>I just bought a 70 Midget that has the early version of the smog control
>system that uses the air pump that apparently injects "fresh" air into
>the exhaust ports. The car had a rather serious backfire problem on
>deceleration. Thinking that it took air a fuel to cause this problem I
>removed the drive belt from the air pump and all now seems well. In
>fact it runs so good now that I can't think of a reason to reconnect the
>silly thing. I have no inspection problems, yet! Am I causing any
>problems elsewhere by just removing the whole system and pluging the
>holes in the manifold and pluging the leftover vacuum line?
<del>
WAG follows:
I'm a little rusty on air pumps, but I'll give this a shot: on American
cars I've owned, there's a vacuum-operated valve that opens and closes the
air feed to the ports, to prevent backfire on overrun. See if there's a
vacuum line from the intake manifold to a unit on the output side of the
pump before the injector rail, if so, try pulling off the output line,
plugging the tube to the injector rail (so you don't get hot, loud exhaust
everywhere), and see if applying and releasing vacuum to the valve does to
the output. I'm looking at my XJ-6's factory and Heynes manuals; they also
refer to a check valve, which you may have and may be stuck.
I know this is kind of an irritant, but I figure it's there for a reason,
and having lived in Southern California, and New York City, I think it's a
small price to pay for cleaner air. And it's better than them outlawing our
cars altogether (and if you think they can't, consider: On vacation a
couple of weeks ago, we rented a brand new Cadillac deVille. Nice car,
yada-yada, but it got me to thinking how they've outlawed cars like the '69
Sedan deVille I used to drive in college in the early '80s, through
fuel-economy standards. Not that it was all that great a car, but you just
can't get a really big car like that any more -- unless it says "Suburban"
on the tailgate. And the market for those, and the Explorers, and the
Yukons, and all the rest, will disappear one hot minute after the EPA
decides to include "light trucks" in the automakers' Corporate Average Fuel
Economy requirements. Okay, digression over).
Anyway, as I've preached before, if you decide to take off the air pump, put
it, and everything else that goes with it, into a box for safekeeping, for
re-installation when the visual emissions check catches up to you there.
Mark Moburg
markmoburg@mindspring.com
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