remove emission controls?

[donm]

Although I replaced the original rotted out cat with a new one my '80 carbed Spider, I'd like to remove the gulp valve,egr valve and all those associated hoses from the engine bay. As long as I take care to plug any vacuum lines, is this likely to cause any performance problems? (You know, the law of unintended consequences.)

And what the heck are those coiled lines that are attached to "thermovalves" mounted to the end of the manifold? Can I remove those too? We don't do emission testing on cars this old in MA and I'd like to neaten up my engine compartment.

Don

[MNspiderman]

When i was running a single carb. I removed everything except the vacuum line for the distributor. You can plug everything up for the most part. I went to autozone and bought that variety pack of vacuum plugs. Unfortunately they come in rainbow colors, not black. Oh well. Pull it, yank it, remove it. There could be variables with different carb set ups, but for the one i had, it worked out just fine.

[gchocevar]

Hi,

i recently did the same. Found nice metric plugs at the "The Parker Store". These are used to plug hydraulic manifolds. They come with an O-rings and a test pressure of 1000psi or more for about $4.50 each. You may have to discard the O-rings on the head ports because of the heat.

Let me know how you make out because I have not started my project car up yet (79-2000 spyder).

Greg

[donm]

I left the EGR thing in place because I didn't want to deal with the big hole it would leave in the intake manifold but removed and plugged the vacuum port on it, and I pulled out the gulp valve and all those coiled lines going to the thermovalves on the other end of the intake manifold. The coiled lines were were brittle plastic and they fell apart in my hand as I pulled them off the thermovalves, which I left in place.

The car runs great without all that stuff, maybe better cause there's less weight to haul around.