Charcoal Box

[Charger21]

Back when I was about 16 my dad removed the charcoal box (about 25 years ago) on my 73 Charger 400 and plugged the line that led to the charcoal box (in his words emissions control - we don't need no emissions control!). A while back I switched gas caps from a very loose fitting locking cap to a tighter fitting cap that I thought was vented. Well a while (days or weeks) later I noticed the car wasn't running very well and kept loosing its fuel prime from the carb.

I eventually noticed that the fuel tank was leaking one day and from what I can tell it had pressured up from the warm day. I switched back to the loose fitting cap and good to go. So I am wondering, could I just unplug the charcoal box line leaving it open with no charcoal box and put the tighter gas cap on? I am assuming an open charcoal box line isn't an issue ad that I am not going to get gas to pressure up and run out of that line. If that was the case you would think it would flood the charcoal box if there was one.

 

[ChargerM440]

You don't need the charcoal canister, but the line going to it is the fuel tank vent. It might be a good idea to run the now open tank vent to somewhere in the rear so you don't have to deal with the fumes.

 

[mopar 3 B]

At least pipe it to a safe location outside the engine compartment. Fumes are dangers. Raw fuel burns, fumes explode.

 

[GetX'd]

Dumb question #347 - what the hell is a charcoal box and where on the car is it located?

 

[ChargerM440]

Usually it's mounted in the engine bay. It's literally a box with a charcoal filter used to recycle fumes from gas tank back into the engine to be burnt. The idea is to prevent,t gas fumes from being released into the atmosphere.

 

[GetX'd]

Would a 68 440 have one of those - I don't recall anything in my engine bay that functions like that or is noticeable.

 

[ChargerM440]

No, 68 is too early. I think they started in the 70s.

 

[YY1]

The tank on my 73 was pressurizing and leaking out the weld seam!
It would blow the gas cap past me when i unscrewed it.

it turned out to be a shuttle valve in the vent manifold (a 6" mini tank with four nipples on one side and one vent to the canister on the other. It's mounted just in front of the tank between the frame rails.

I had to cut a square hole in the top, over the exit nipple, then drill out that valve.

It's a two-way valve designed to prevent overfill and back fill.
Kind of over engineered, and one year only.

No more pressure now.

Not sure how it was building that much pressure, though.

It was kind of a pain to seal it back up.

Welded a patch back on but couldn't get a good seal so ended up covering it with JB weld.

 

[moparmarks]

Started using them for the 72 model year.

 

[Charger21]

Thanks so much guys. Appreciate the help!