I think it's a vacuum canister, but I'm not really sure. The guy that i bought my car from said that he took it off to get to the carb. I'm pretty sure he didn't know what he was talking about, though, and my car should have a/c, but it doesn't. Btw, i have a 74 comet if that makes a dif.
It's the charcoal canister, used for collecting gasoline fumes from the gas tank, and feeding them into the air cleaner to be burnt. It's an emissions parts. The vacuum canister mounts below it, and just looks like a coffee can.
That part is called "the part that your wife will kill you for after putting it on her kitchen floor"!!! It looks like the charcoal canister that hooks up to the fuel tank to clean the vapors before they enter the atmosphere. If I remember correctly, it was mounted on passenger side sorta near the firewall, with lines running to the top of the fuel tank. Most of us have removed those. Don't need it.
So, if you don't have one of those canisters, where do the fumes go? Wouldn't it be dangerous to have fumes from the gas tank entering into the engine bay? Do you just plug up the line at the gas tank? Jim
Your right. Dont just remove it and leave the lines open. The fumes will enter the engine bay. If you dont like it go hunt the wreckers for a small plastic late model cannister. Dont plug the line off it will have no vent.
There was a thread just recently about this. The consensus was 1) you can plug the line and use a vented cap, 2) you can take out the canister, remove the lines all the way to the tank, and put a small fuel filter on a short piece of hose to act as a vent, and 3) many of us just plugged it (or it was plugged naturally from corrosion) and our cars ran fine anyway. I bet that most of our fuel systems are vented already, from poor seals at the gas cap, maybe also the filler tube.
