engine and drivetrain "De-Smogging"

[bills2002]

Jamric asked a good question:

"Now, what is "de-smogging" I've seen reference to it before but don't know what it means or does."

in response to my post on a shredded Guibo.

Here's my definition...others may want to chime in.

Well, the first thing anybody did with these cars to improve performance was to remove the "air pump" which was a power suck off the front crank. You see reference to removal of the "reactor" which was a huge component to the emission system under the intake mani. Those two mods result in some kind of plug in the front end of the exhaust mani and another plug on the driver side of the intake mani. Trouble is that there were all kinds of vacuum lines and solenoids left in the system. These things tend to introduce vacuum leaks making a smooth idle impossible to obtain. Since I finally (and irrevocably) eliminated the Solex carb and it's associated vacuum ports, I felt comfortable removing all of the emission connections. After ripping off all of the lines I was left with two ports in the intake mani that had to be plugged and two in use. I plugged the ports by using a short piece of vacuum line with a plug (bolt) in the end. I placed a copper BB on top of the vacuum port and slid the blocked tube over that. Sealed! I used one vacuum port from the intake to the air breather ( I used a Jam Engineering adapter to keep the original breather so I still had a place to route the crankcase breather hose.) and another vacuum port from the Weber carb base to the vacuum advance on my dizzy. Like I said it was running sooo good until that flex-disc decided to give up. Maybe it was all of that torque from the Weber carb;-)