Emissions Gubbins: Comment from Brian 
Brian Robbins had this observation:
"I'm not going to say "aaaagh, no, no, no !" on reinstating emissions gear, but why not simply duplicate the UK spec cars by blocking off the extra holes ?

I can honestly say I've never had fuel smells inside the car or even the engine bay come to that. Venting is by the filler cap and I would have thought that what comes out of the cap is nothing compared to what comes out of the exhaust pipe with no catalyst fitted ?

Random thoughts.... if it's a charcoal canister trapping vented fuel, does this have a life cycle and replacement interval ? Do they get "full up" at some point ?"

I Opined:
Our gas caps aren't vented (different part numbers for both the flip cap and the filler neck per the parts manual), hence that long canister at the front of the engine compartment ostensibly to capture raw gas (#14 on TC parts page LA) the vapors of which were to be drawn through an activated charcoal filter (LA #16...remember Lark cigarettes here in the US?) by the vacuum in the carburetor through #19 in diagram LA...and the pressure equalized by part #18, which was connected to the airbox. All very Rube Goldberg, but then, the US EPA was never known to impose regulations that were based on hard science rather than what was fashionable at the time.

Yeah, the do have a life limit; current thinking is somewhere around 100K miles, but may be wrong. The systems have gotten more and more complicated as time has gone on, and no doubt, the pollution has markedly decreased where they've been implemented, and these initial halting steps were the beginning of what we have today. (remember 5mph bumpers? What they've morphed into? How about the interstate 55 mph speed limit? 85 mph speedometers? WIN buttons?)

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