This is a 1967 Buick Electra 225. It appears to be substantially original in all but three respects—two of which are obvious, and the third is interesting. The wheels look to me like some kind of aftermarket item; perhaps someone here can peg ’em.
Hydramatic, power locks, power windows…
…and power brocade that reminds me of similar upholstery in grandma’s ’71 Calais . All this looks very much as built.
One-two-three-four Ventiports! From corner angles like this, the reflection makes the car appear to have three headlamps on the far side.
Tailfins and fender skirts and a full-width tail light, baybay.
Was this one of the cars with the fuel fillpipe hidden behind the low-mounted licence plate, so you had to stoop down to fill it up? I guess it must be; I don’t see a cap or flap anywhere else. An enduring childhood memory: gasoline geysers gushing from ’60s-’70s GM cars. Let the fuel cap be missing or faulty, and gasoline cascaded out every time the driver accelerated. I don’t even want to think about the crashworthiness of this design. It was a dumb location even without a bum or absent cap (or a crash); who the hell wants to get down on the ground just to fill up the goddamn tank? Maybe it was an embodiment of Who cares? Self-serve is for losers, but gas station attendants are people with knees, too. Stylists sometimes need a NO! and a whack upside the snout with a rolled-up newspaper.
Undented, undinged, unrusted. That downswooping side trim goes well with the upswooping beltline, to my eye. Ordinarily I don’t like upswept beltlines—’70s Fords were particularly grotesque in that respect, amongst others—but this one’s okeh by me.
Hot diggity details!
I have a hard time with this car’s drastic lowering. It’s not my car, so my vote doesn’t count and my opinion doesn’t matter. On the other hand, oof. I slammed my car’s suspension so it works less! Much worse functionality and if I’m being charitable, it doesn’t look better. It’s hosey.
And now I’ve got the get-the-hell-offa-my-lawn part out the way, let’s move on to the third deviation. It’s not at all obvious. The only hints are this little decal on the rear bumper…
…and this one on the probably-original windshield:
California’s air was severely toxic in the early 1970s, largely on account of dirty-running cars + sunshine + temperature inversions, so that was the first jurisdiction in the world to begin controlling how much filth automobiles could put out. They took a first whack at hydrocarbon emissions by requiring positive crankcase ventilation on new cars starting in 1961, then in ’66 began enforcing tailpipe emission limits on unburnt hydrocarbons (HC) and carbon monoxide (CO). Automakers met these limits with leaner mixtures and hotter thermostats, but these measures increased the output of nitrogen oxides (NOx)—another direct precursor of photochemical smog—so starting in 1973 they began requiring 1966-’70 models to be retrofitted with a state-approved NOx emission control device, and ’55-’65 models with devices to reduce HC and NOx.
The idea behind the law wasn’t bad, necessarily, but the implementation was a trainwreck. There were a few different kinds of devices put on the market, generally in two categories: exhaust gas recirculation, and vacuum spark advance modification. Both of these are valid strategies for reducing NOx, but even the automakers, with their massive resources, had to hike steep learning curves to figure out how to make them work without demolishing driveability and fuel economy.
California’s law didn’t say anything about fuel economy or driveability, it just said the cars had to have a device installed. To avoid creating a monopoly, the law was designed not to go into effect until a certain number of different retrofit devices from different makers were accredited. So instead of a monopoly, they wound up creating a mad-dash race to the bottom. A company (if we can call it that; maybe just a guy with a warehouse, desk, and post box) called “Air Quality Products” fielded what wound up being the cheapest and most commonly installed device, called the Kar-Kit.
The Kar-Kit kontained two rubber vakuum nipple kaps, a few dekals, and an owner’s information booklet. There was also a vakuum kap specifikation chart informing that the Kar-Kit kame with kaps made of EPDM kompound (shore 60 hardness). Kind of the kompany to kough up this krucial information for konsumers.
Installation konsisted of removing the vakuum advance hose, krushing the karburetor and distributor nipples with pliers (some installers skipped that), installing the kaps on the nipples, retarding the basik ignition timing, and applying dekals under the hood and on the dashboard.
The dashboard dekal—sorry, this is the best I kould find, and I’m not spending $25 for the eBay kit just to get a virgin dekal—warned against driving the kar over 60 mph for prolonged periods.
The underhood dekals advised new ignition timing settings.
The law did not get into piddling trivialities of makes, models, or motors. Neither did the Kar-Kit (except “Do not install on Volkswagen or Porsche”). AQP were able to kome up with universal ignition timing specifikations for all kars in just three lines like this using the simple yet powerful tekhnique of pulling them out of –thin air– thick smog. The same tekhnique was employed in devising that 60-mph figure on the dashboard.
Needless to say, the Kit made the kar run like krap. Kredit where it’s due; some amount of the NOx and HC reduktion was a direkt konsequence of installing the kit. But it’s a fairly sturdy bet a large chunk of the effekt was more of an indirect konsequence; a kar that kouldn’t stay running didn’t pollute so much! Bogus claims (“…without adverse driveability effects…”) in bogus patents aren’t a new phenomenon.
The California Highway Patrol randomly pulled people over to check the NOx device was in place and untampered-with, and to see if the driver had registered the car in an adjoining state despite really living in California. It didn’t take a lot of years for the state to reallocate funds away from the roadside checks and stop requiring new retrofits, but it took many years for them to allow existing retrofits to be retro-unfitted. For quite awhile, California owners of ’66-’70 models grew adept at a yearly ritual of installing the widget, getting the car smogged (that’s Californian for “passing the emissions test”) and then removing the widget for another 364-day period.
I couldn’t tell whether it was a Kar-Kit or some other device this Buick was retrofitted with, nor whether whatever which widget is stil present—this regulatory spasm isn’t well remembered in California, and was always little-known elsewhere, so it’s entirely possible a low-miles California car bought away might still have its hobble installed.
Here (PDF) is more detailed information on the nuts and bolts of the retrofit program.
It’s tempting, from the luxurious position of breathing today’s remarkably clean air, to roll our eyes (which don’t sting) and sigh (which we can do because it doesn’t feel like there’s a belt around our lungs) and bleat about burdensome nanny-state big-government overreach ruining people’s cars and otherwise like that. But California’s air, or what passed for it back then, really was that bad. They had to do something, and they were working from the same substantial ignorance as everyone else in those early days of the science. The solution they came up with was far from optimal, but it was a start; it bought a sliver of reprieve—and every last sliver was desperately needed.
My father had a gas station in Oakland, California, in the 1960’s and 1970’s. I worked there after school and weekends. I can remember installing a lot of these kits so his customers could get their cars to pass the California smog inspections, and then later removing the same stupid kits when the California EPA realized they simply didn’t work to reduce emissions. All this kit did was retard the engine timing and make the cars run hotter. A lot of new radiator caps, thermostats, and in some cases new radiators, were sold as a result of those kits.
The height of that Buick is just dumb
I guess this explains the vacuum retard installed on the last Series III Land Rovers sold in the US. It also explains the two different timing specs for my 1978 BMW motorcycle since the EPA started on bikes by then. I’m glad fuel injection started to become common on imports in the 70s. whatever other issues they may have had, water cooled VWs with Bosch K-Jetronic were much simpler to get through emissions testing and to work on.
Those Land Rovers you mention would have been equipped and configured to comply with 49-state and California new-vehicle emissions regulations. California began regulating NOx emissions from new vehicles starting with the ’71 models; Federal NOx regs started with the ’73s. The devices described in this post, by contrast, are to do with California’s NOx control retrofit mandate applicable to pre-’71 cars.
Was this one of the cars with the fuel fillpipe hidden behind the low-mounted license plate, so you had to stoop down to fill it up?
Yes, but it wasn’t difficult on a regular height car. On Grandma’s ’68 Skylark, it was hinged on the top, and that was tricky because of visibility. You had to use the hose to hold up the plate while you groped for the cap. On our ’68 Electra, if you filled past the auto cutoff (or had junk in the trunk), it would spill out when you drove away.
Ours had a totally different dash, door panels, and seats from the ’67. Very little chrome, more modern, and more safety padding, but cumbersome thumb-wheel switches.
We lived in Los Alamitos, just east of Long Beach, in ’68-9. Some days the smog was so thick, they put red flairs in the main residential intersections. I never knew what they did on the main arteries because my school was across the street.
I had long forgotten about these … as soon as I saw that blue sticker lots of not-so-good memories came flooding back. But I seem to recall that there was also an EGR retrofit as part of the setup. Or at least some port that had to be drilled and tapped into an exhaust manifold. Of course some one convinced the DMV (or CARB??) that vehicles with factory tube headers didn’t need that feature, as the installation fee was predicated on a thick-wall casting rather than thin wall tubing which would need a bung welded on. So I avoided having to use this “kit” for my sister’s base model Cortina by swapping in a used set of the OEM headers that came on the GT version. She had bought the car out of state and it didn’t have an air pump either; used headers and air pump to pass smog testing were cheaper than getting the air pump only and having the NoX kit installed. The junkyard told me there was high demand for the headers … second-hand Cortina’s were still pretty popular at the time as sporty small sedans, cheaper than used Alfa Berlina’s or BMW 2002’s and even 510’s.
There were multiple retrofit devices accredited. Some used EGR, some used spark retard with or without a vehicle speed or engine temperature tie-in, and some used both strategies.
Thanks, I was pretty sure about the EGR, but I couldn’t find much about it online now. But one 1970’s State document I found did refer to an exemption list, though I couldn’t find the list itself, which makes me think that the Cortina GT was exempt … as I seem to recall were my and my parents’ Volvo 122Ses with their dual SU’s.
I’ve added a link to a PDF describing the devices and the program’s administrative deliberations in more detail; find it just above the final paragraph of the post. Cars factory-equipped with multiple carburetors or with fuel injection were exempt.
The link wasn’t working for me.
Ah, crud. Yup, it was broken. I’ve fixed it now.
Somehow the multiple carb exemption was ignored in the case of my 110hp Corvair.
I was living in the Santa Clara Valley in those years and I couldnt get past the requirement to install the dreadful Kar Kit before I could renew my registration.
The kit for that engine included a cap for the distributor vacuum advance pot and one for each carburetor, a plug for the vac advance hose, some green silicone and two “do not remove” stickers.
I had to retard the timing, plug the vac advance and set the idle mixture to a setting where it would barely idle, then goop over the idle screws with the silicone, then apply the stickers over the goop.
It turned a peppy, responsive engine into a hot running, preigniting, gutless slug.
I put a Nox Box on my VW Beetle, that with retarded ignition and leaned fuel mixture made it run terrible. I took the box off, put the mechanical advance distributor back in and tuned it up and it ran great again. Well as great as 40 hp can be.
Ford pioneered the placement of the fuel filler pipe behind the license plate on its 1952 models. With this placement, it didn’t matter which way the car approached the gasoline pumps. The driver didn’t have to worry about whether the the fuel filler pipe was on the same side as the gasoline pump.
The 1952 Ford was considerably taller than this Buick, so gas station attendants didn’t have to bend too far to fill the tank.
Concealing the fuel filler pipe behind the license plate was an idea borrowed from Harley Earl’s book of tricks. He had concealed the fuel filler pipe of the 1941 Cadillac under a tail light.
A friend had a ’47 Caddy for a while and it was in the same place, under the taillight. Under a Glass taillight I might add.
That interior brings back memories. The upholstery and vinyl in that color was virtually impossible to keep clean.
Fact is that the regulators made things worse because they didn’t consult science just went after what they could see (CO) and smell (HC), instead of looking at the total picture. That is why the NOx kits were mandated, to “fix” the problem that they had created by the prior mandate. By allowing anyone to build a “kit” w/o actually determining if it would work it was again worthless as it just created the annual dance of teaching to the test and then fixing it once it passed.
Regarding the car itself, it is possible that it is riding on air now. Even if it isn’t I’d still drive it as is since it would be for going out for a Sundae on Sunday, not a commuter or road tripper, even though this was an ultimate road trip machine in its day.
The original owner certainly wouldn’t have been bending over to fill this at a self serve pump when new. If they existed at all when it was new, they certainly weren’t common as that didn’t happen until after the first energy crisis. Even once they started to be common I’m betting if the original owner still owned it in 1974 they wouldn’t bee stooping to fill their car themselves no matter where the fill was located.
As Geeber mentioned it was a desirable feature as it allowed the car to be filled from either side. It also kept the attendants grubby paws and spills away from the paint.
No, it isn’t; it’s the typical tantrum of many a self-righteously uninformed auto hobbyist. Just about nothing you say here about the NOx retrofit program is anywhere near an accurate description or characterisation of what happened, nor how, nor why. Pet screeds, tape loops, guesses, conspiracy theories, and ghost stories about the big ol’, bad ol’, stupid ol’, incompetent ol’ government don’t become true just because you say fact is and like to shore up your political views (and now-deleted extend-o rants) with them; this is not the place for it, which you know from being told many times before. NOx it off, please and thank you.
I’ve seen the car driving around, and it doesn’t appear to have air suspension.
Fascinating story! A little Googling shows that the maker of the KarKit didn’t go down without a fight (he probably figured that he was going to send his kids to kollege collecting all that kool snakeoil kash).
https://law.justia.com/cases/california/court-of-appeal/3d/96/340.html
Looks like Air Quality Products (the makers of KarKit) tried to sue the state of CA for damages after they certified GM-produced emissions solutions instead of supporting the various solutions (like KarKit) that didn’t work. Imagine that.
As to the Buick, YES! all of the full-sized Buicks of that age had that behind-the-plate fuel filler. I had one, and recall driving out of gas stations sloshing (or is that sloshed? probably both) at least once. It was even worse getting behind someone on the road who had driven off without replacing the filler cap. It kind of boggles the mind that it took car manufacturers until the 21st century to figure out how to tether gas caps with a 5 cent piece of plastic.
I also had a friend who had an Electra a couple of years newer than the one in your story but with that same upholstery. It always reminded me of the inside of a funeral home.
At least two of the American automakers—probably three, maybe even all four—put out used vehicle emission control kits. Here’s a newspaper article from the Sault Ste Marie Evening News for March 19, 1970, along with the instruction sheet from Chrysler’s Used Car Clean Air Package.
Five cents?! Whoah, Mr. Moneybags! People got (and get) promotions and fat bonuses for shaving half a penny off the build cost of a car! I don’t know about their K-car forebears, but the AA-bodies (Spirit/Acclaim/etc) came out in ’89, last century, and each of mine had a tethered cap from the factory. Seems to me there was also a much older car described in a recent CC post—maybe an English one? I don’t recall—with a tethered cap. But here again: you’re an automaker, in business to make money. Not just by selling cars, but also by selling replacement parts. Such as fuel caps. Install tether y/N _>
Tethered fuel caps may have been seen as unnecessary when rear-mounted fuel fillers behind the license plate were common.
On some GM cars where the license plate bracket/fuel filler door was bottom hinged, things were designed such that you could wedge the fuel cap at the point where the spring-loaded hinge joined the bracket to the car. That way, you (or at that time, more likely the gas station attendant) weren’t/wasn’t fighting the pressure of bracket trying to close as the car was being fueled.
Right. Also the open spring-loaded tag-door made a convenient horizontal shelf to place the car, in plain sight and just inches from where the cap was removed.
Of course the door objected to being with the fuel cap resting on it. Another reminder to replace the cap.
With a body-panel located there was fumbling looking for a place to rest the cap away from delicate paint, which usually meant out of sight atop the fuel dispenser; where it was easier to forget.
The interior of this Electra 225 from 1967 looks remarkably interchangeable in materials, quality and design with that from a Caprice of 1969 (which I can confirm from the pictures I got of a really nice 69 Caprice last weekend.) The Sloan ladder had all but collapsed by then.
I was not familiar with these one-size-fits-all emissions systems. Although “system” might be a little strong.
Even a Cadillac interior from that era doesn’t look more luxurious or better crafted than the interior of this Buick.
This is the flagship Limited model, whose sumptuous trim gave little, if anything, away to Cadillac’s Fleetwood Brougham. The car looks to have been well-cared for in its long life, but nonetheless the condition of the interior after 54 years is testament to the qualities of material and craftsmanship employed by Buick in the Sixties.
I totally misunderstood the title of this post when I first glanced at it.
I thought to myself, ‘Why would anyone put a NOS on an Electra 225 and also lower it?’
These cars were niether Fast, nor Furious. ;o)
Great piece, Daniel… and I’m glad I read the whole thing and the comments.
I knew California restrictions were strict back in the day, but I had no idea they forced changes to cars going all the way back to the 1955 MY cars. It kinda makes sense though, as a ’55 Chevy back then would have just been another old used car.
I didn’t know this about retrofitting either; it kind of boggles my mind that CA required this dating back to the 1955 model year. Then again, it makes perfect sense as the smog was so bad decades ago in the southern part of the state.
You learn something new almost every day at CC!
They weren’t kidding about “do not install on VW”. Blocking the vakuum advance on a Skuarebak with fuel injection was instant death. I left the advance hose off accidentally, after a hurried tuneup, then made a long trip and popped the valves through the pistons. No more NoX from that engine! Perfekt pollution kontrol.
You might say it was a…Variant of concern. (drumroll) I’m here all week, folks! Try the chicken!
How did you get that VW to accelerate at all without any spark advance above idle? You must have know something was desperately wrong.
“How did you get that VW to accelerate at all without any spark advance above idle? You must have know something was desperately wrong.”
Those years of fuel injected VW Typ III’s all came with combination mechanical and vacuum advance distributors .
Nevertheless, lack of timing advance meant it ran *very* hot and under powered .
One of the simplest things to do to wake up any older engine , especially air cooled, is to properly set the spark timing at full advance when the engine is running at road speed .
-Nate
There was never any problem with crashworthiness of GM cars with rear mounted fillers. GM built hundreds of millions of cars from the 60s to the 90s with them and there was no epidemic of fuel fires. At times 1/2 to 3/4 of the cars on the road had similar fuel systems. Full sized cars from 65 to 96. Midsized cars from 64 to 88, Nova based cars 68 to 79, F cars 66-81. Plus other makes including Chrysler, Ford and AMC built millions of cars with them too (Hornets, Torinos, Mustangs, Furys, and more). In fact the only place where gas tanks immediately explode in a deadly fireball when hit is in TV/Movie shows, in faked News reports (the NBC faking of the GM Pickup risk), or in modern electric cars without gas tanks. Another advantage is that most people never worried about which side of the fuel pump to pull up to.
In North America there is an enormous difference in fuel system crashworthiness between cars made before versus after the 1977 effective date of Federal/Canada Motor Vehicle Safety Standard № 301 (Fuel System Integrity). So you can’t really count ’77-up cars along with the ’76-down ones. One didn’t have to stoop to reach the filler behind the licence plate on the ’77-up GM B-bodies or the ’73-’77 A-bodies, for example, up above the bumper as they were—and not just above any ol’ bumper, but one built to meet performance requirements that didn’t exist on the earlier cars like this ’67 with the filler down below the functionally useless bumper, or right smack in the middle of it.
The uncrashworthiness of the earlier cars’ fuel systems was a primary impetus behind that safety standard’s adoption, so claiming “there was never any problem” is not accurate.
I only know this because my mother had one: The 1973 Chevy Monte Carlo (A-Special body, first year of the Colannade generation) had the fuel filler behind the 2.5 mph rear bumper. One time when I was filling the tank, fuel sloshed out, but I was able to dodge it. Not the best design, that’s for sure!
You are absolutely correct about the 1977 upgrade in the fuel system safety standard!
I had to put one of those driveability killers on one of my first cars, a 66 Bel Air with a 250. It ran rather poorly, I guess that one can clean the air by burning a lot more fuel to do the same amount of work. Dan mentioned other kits for older cars to reduce Hc, saw one on a 54 Chev 6400 truck last week. It usually consisted of adding a fresh air source to the crankcase from the air filter necessitating adding holes and plumbing to it and the valve cover. A pcv valve was added and the road draft tube sealed closed. To this day it is hard to find a Chev 235 valve cover or air cleaner that hasn’t been butchered but pcv is a good invention both for the engine and the air. I remember trying to smog my ’66 Studebaker and the smog guy not being impressed by the dual carb setup. That little 194 ran like a bomb though. HEI ignition with the Mr. Gasket recurve kit helped.
You’re describing yet a third, different retrofit program in California. The ones I describe in this post dealt with tailpipe emissions. The one you have in mind dealt with crankcase emissions. Pre-’61 vehicles with road draft tubes got retrofitted with positive crankcase ventilation with the crankcase air inlet ducted from the carburetor air cleaner. ’61-’63 vehicles in California were already equipped with PCV since new, but with crankcase air inlet open to the atmosphere; these were retrofitted with a ducted air inlet.
There is a particular piece that was used in a great many of these crankcase retrofits: a dingus made of potmetal with a 5/8″ hose nipple angling off a rectangular flange with two screw holes, one on either side of the nipple. This item was installed, often crudely and carelessly, on the air cleaner. It was meant to be installed on the dirty side (outside the filter) but some people didn’t grasp the concept and installed it on the clean side (inside the filter). Over the years I saw many examples of the butchery you describe—always a disappointment on a particular one-year-only Slant-6 air cleaner.
I had no idea it was mandated for pre-61 cars to have PCV retrofitted—I know I’d seen pre-61 cars in CA with that and it raised questions but wow.
Closed PCV was a rare factory option, at least on Chevy, in the 1950’s. It deleted the road draft tube system for operation in dusty conditions. I had a ’57 Chevy and it was described in the service manual. Fortunately, whoever did the retrofit on the 283 used factory parts for a 1960’s California 283, so the install was clean, not a butcher job.
GMO could be a vanity plate for this type of modified car.
Fun! But this plate doesn’t say GMO, it says GM0. It’s a regular BC series plate, AB1 23C format.
The alterations explain the special ‘GMO’ license plate. 🙂
Not normally my taste but this giant Buick looks kind of cool riding down low. I don’t think it would be too hard to put it back to the stock ride height if desired.
Love your writing Daniel. Always makes me laugh.
Thanks kindly, BP!
I agree with you; this car could probably be returned to more of a stock ride height without too much difficulty.
That car’s got air bags front and rear.
And a giant compressor in the trunk.
When that Electra’s pilot’s ready to fly, he fires up his sled, hits the compressor switch, and those air bags lift the sled up to standard ride height.
When he reaches his destination, he drops his sled back down into the weeds.
Seems it’s what the ‘kool kids’ do nowadays.
And those wheels?
Polished retro five spoke mags. They look to be American Racing Custom Torq-Thrusts. They’re pretty kool…
No, the car doesn’t have airbag suspension. I’ve seen it driving around; it’s on springs made out of metal, and stays that low.
Well, then it’s got dropped spindles in the front and shortened springs in the back.
That’s the only other way it could possibly get that low.
I was looking around concerning the 1966-70 model years since neither my 68 Cougar, 68 Mustang, or 67 Parklane had a NOx retrofit being in CA in 1973. The Mustang came into the state from Texas in 1970. All three cars are PCV fiited. The Cougar was registered in So Cal through 1972 before shifting to Nor Cal. Mustang for most of the 70s and the Parklane always Nor Cal. Then my 73 Dodge has PVC, EGR, and a smog pump.
https://ww3.arb.ca.gov/board/mi/mi041873.htm
https://ww3.arb.ca.gov/board/mi/mi121973.htm
PCV was standard equipment. I think your cars didn’t get NOx retrofits because the installations were done upon transfer of ownership or upon
initial registration of out-of-state vehicles. Your Mustang was first registered a few years before the retrofit program began, which explains why it didn’t get a kit at that time. Why it (and the other cars) didn’t get NOx kits at some point is a question of its own.
Good thing you didn’t have a ’72 Dodge instead of a ’73; the California ’72 Mopars had a very primitive EGR system with no valve—just a “floor jet”, literally a hole connecting the exhaust tract to the intake tract so there was constant exhaust gas entry into the intake. During cranking, during warmup, during cold-engine operation, at idle…always. Those cars ran very poorly. The EGR valve that came in for ’73 was a giant improvement.
Ok, changing hands. Cougar in same family still. Parklane with same owner till late 80s. Mustang with same owner till 1985 before selling to me.
Oh, as you may know my Polara has the filler door in the back as does the Cougar and Mustang. Only the filler for the Dodge has its top level with the top of the gas tank while the other two don’t. Park with the rear slightly lower than the front and a full tank of gas on a warm day and watch the gas drip as it expands.
I don’t think I could get behind and suspension modification that makes a car ride harsher. I know big Buicks of this era felt a bit like driving a huge waveless waterbed, but I like that. The road is to be seen, not felt. This bias probably comes from my main driver being a vehicle that turns every road irregularity into a bang, crash, or thud, and makes sure that your tailbone registers them all.
That Kar Kit is krap! I never knew that California mandated retrofitting earlier cars with additional emissions equipment, and the approach of this particular retrofit almost feels like two steps forward and two steps back. You do net a reduction in NOx, but it’s at the expense of increasing fuel consumption and decreasing drivability. While you’re burning more fuel to reject more heat into the cooling system, you’re also creating more CO, HC, and CO2 (though I can’t remember the exact proportions of each in relation to retarded spark timing). Since those are registered as a percentage of exhaust flow instead of total quantity emitted, it wouldn’t register the net increase on an emissions test.
Thanks Daniel for another fantastic and enlightening read! Very interesting to see a snapshot of our motoring history from another point in time. I sometimes kurse at the primitive emissions equipment on my 1986 Chevy K10 (the aforementioned kidney krusher), but this helps outline how many advancements manufacturers made in a decade, even if they were dragging their heels. And now I’m going to have a hard time not substituting K’s for C’s until I stop laughing at the funny looking words that produces. In the meantime, kan I have a few extra pakets of catsup with my french flies?
Another vote of thanks from me, and you’ve solved a mystery for me. My CA built ’69 Skylark had the remains of a similar sticker on the windscreen. I’ve never been able to figure out what it was for. Now I know.
No trace of the kit, but since the car was 40 years old, that wasn’t a surprise.
I don’t even want to think about the crashworthiness of this design.
Mercedes-Benz had the fuel filler in the rear next to the numberplates until 1981 when Großer Mercedes ended its production or 1976 when W114/W115 were replaced by W123. Ditto for BMW, too, with its E12 5-Series (prior to its 1976 facelift).
I guess the Germans saw what happened to Ford Pinto and had a very explosive enlightenment that the rear fuel filler wasn’t such a good idea.
Weren’t Ford Pinto troubles caused by fuel tank location ? Fuel filler was on the left fender, not in the rear.
Yes, it was the fuel tank location behind the rear axle. As I recall, in not too severe of a rear-end crash, the tank would be driven forward against the axle differential. There was a bolt (I would surmise the filler bolt) on the differential that would then puncture the tank.
Great article! Good catch on the smog controls and really interesting story about California’s early emission regulation adventures.
Like you, I am no fan of the lowering, but it is a fine looking specimen otherwise.
I have no experience with the low mounted rear gas filler. I have owned later 70’s – 80’s GM cars with rear filler and I loved that location. This includes a 75 LeSabre, 76 LeMans and multiple 77-96 B-bodies. They were mounted higher up and never had any issues with spilling gas, though I don’t know if I ever lost my gas cap. The nice thing about that location, besides clean styling and no discolored paint below the filler, was that you never had to think about what gas pump to use, just find an open one and don’t worry about left or right.
Wheels look to be the Cragar Series 390 Street Pro, but without the decorative spinner cap over the lugs.
https://www.cragarwheel.com/wheels/product-detail/series-390c-street-pro/
I’m old enough to remember air pollution. I clearly remember flying into LA and feeling my neck thicken, my lungs to tighten, and my eyes to burn. I thought I caught a virus until all the symptoms left immediately flying out of LA. That had been the case for me in California for years.
As a Chicago South Sider, we used to drive through colorful road clouds hugging the ground around industrial sites. Each had their own different nasty chemical smell. Some of the men in my neighborhood had to deal with enlarged breasts due to a chemical solvent used in the production down the road at the paint plant. The streams were filled with soap suds that would blow across the road like tumbleweeds. Pollution was very real and it was a nasty problem for us. Cars often had lost their rotting exhaust systems, burned oil and smelled.
So “doing something” was a higher priority than “making my car run better”. Nixon started the EPA and Republicans were always on the front of environmental issues, so it was a bipartisan solution to a bipartisan problem. It wasn’t about politics or political theories – our air and water was poisoned and something had to be done.
I’m certain that JP could tell you how bad pollution was in the St. Louis area. Although he isn’t old enough for “black coal” days – he can still clearly remember the severe pollution thundering out of the smoke stacks along the Mississippi and hanging in the lower train corridors that run east/west along the river. There was a reason folks built residences on the hills and ridges above the toxic air that filled the air.
This “fix” wasn’t great – but something had to be done.
We had heavily industrialized Neville Island on the Ohio River just downstream from downtown Pittsburgh. We lived nearby close to the top of a hill.
I remember the cacophony of nasty smells as we drove on the main road on the island. Sometimes on summer nights, when the air was very still and our house windows were open (no a/c back then!), one of these smells would waft into our house. Talk about pollution!
I grew up in the steel region near Youngstown, Ohio. We had family and friends all around the surrounding areas, including the greater Pittsburgh, PA, and the greater Cleveland, OH areas. As a young boy in the 1970’s, I can remember driving into different towns and them each having a distinctive odor; Akron was the worst due to the tire factories there.
I can relate to the Neville Island comment. My family’s home was about 1.5 miles from a specialty steel mill, we were on the side with the blast furnaces. We would get such a thick layer of soot on everything, houses, cars, etc. While we were close to the mill, other houses even closer had permanent staining on the siding of the houses. I can remember washing my car and 30 minutes later the car was covered with a fine layer of soot…
This is so weird to me, as back in ‘96 I was able to tune my 66 Galaxie with a 390 and PCV to a higher standard than my 89 BMW gets from CA smog (we had a sniffer in auto shop). Why didn’t the state simply mandate tuning, instead of crap devices like this?
Yeah, I could tune to get real low nice numbers out of my ’65 Valiant, too. No, this does not mean my ’65 (or your ’66) put out cleaner exhaust than an ’89 Bimmer (or an ’89 anything else)—in fact it’s the other way around, by an enormous margin.
And even though properly-done tune-ups of the cars on the road at that time would surely reduce HC and CO, the specific problem addressed by these specific retrofits was NOx, which tends to vary inversely to CO and HC by state of tune: an engine running too rich and misfiring puts out a ton of CO and HC, but very little NOx. Tune up the engine to minimise CO and HC, and it puts out a lot more NOx. This is why the 3-way catalytic converter was such a boon; it resolved that either/or conflict and controlled all three pollutants at the same time.
That I didn’t realize. What’s interesting about my particular (particulate) situation is that my smog guy said my cat is likely not functional anymore, based on the numbers, yet it still passed smog. I’m going to recheck the NOx numbers. Thank you for this!!
Fer sher! What numbers did your ’89 blow? Often it’s possible to glean hints and pointers by looking more closely than just pass/fail.
The aftermarket anti pollution device that I recall adding to my old cars back in the 70’s consisted of a bright green plastic pipe that was inserted in the upper radiator hose. It had a temperature sensor that modulated vacuum going to the distributor advance. The distributor was adjusted to retard the spark most of the time, I think that it allowed vacuum advance once the coolant reached a certain high temperature, probably to prevent overheating. The carb was adjusted for the leanest mixture and plastic caps were glued over the adjusting screws. I had that installed on several cars back then, they seemed to run well enough, and I didn’t really monitor fuel economy. I never saw any any warning about not driving over 60 mph. Freeway speeds, pre double nickle were a bit lower than they are today, 65-75 on urban freeways.
I used to refer to these devices as the “green meanies” kind of a reference to the “blue meanies” of the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine. Try as I might, I haven’t been able to locate a photo of these things on the WEB.
I’m a fan of lowered cars, within reason. My ’66 Riv was lowered so it only had a couple of inches of spring travel before it hit the rebound bump stops. It actually handled much better than stock on smooth freeways. It did look the bomb! I’d lower my Mustang but that thing rides too rough as it is.
I’ve heard that device you describe referred to as a “Green Weenie”. You’re exactly right about how it worked: no vacuum spark advance unless the engine was about to overheat.
I remember the LA smog in the early 70s when my folks would go visit relatives in relatively unsmoggy Santa Barbara from our home in slightly less unsmoggy Sunnymeade by the air base. You could see, smell and taste the air in LA no matter which route you took. My eyes watered and my parents who both smoked would comment on how bad the air was, so that odor even managed to register on their nicotine scorched sinuses. I much preferred visiting other relatives in San Francisco, the air there was much better. That long drive up I-5 tho…each way.
Thank goodness for emissions controls we have now, and yet the programs like this one and all the others were the first steps towards them.
I well remember the horrible smog in 1970 ~ I was working a scant 12 miles as the crow flies from the Mount Wilson Observatory and most days you couldn’t see it or the San Gabriel Mountains because of the choking yellow cloud .
I was a mechanic at that time and couldn’t take a deep breath because it’s feel like an ice pick inside your lungs if you did .
The dual carby exemption was ignored my almost every smog test station ~ they were supposed to give you a little red sticker that said EXEMPT but flat refused on every muti carby car I had smogged .
back then my hearing was still good so I could easily adjust multi carby setups to idle perfectly and run very clean .
The dual vacuum distributors were to reduce NO2 emissions on trailing throttle by retarding the timing the instant you let off the throttle .
In 1976 I was at Wall Chevrolet in Pasadena picking up ’46 Chevy truck parts and lamented to the partsman ‘I miss the road draft tubes on the 1962 Chevy II’s ‘~ he said ‘oh I can still get those ‘ so I paid about $10 and bought one, I still have it with the dealer tag on it .
Not many good memories about this time .
-Nate
RE: 1960’s & 1970’s air pollution –
You had to be there are you’d never grasp hoe awful it really was .
Driving to Niagra Falls meants passing through Buffalo, New York where they had paper mills, I thought I was going to pass out from the stink .
Worse than pig farms if such a thing is possible .
-Nate
Ugh, paper mills. I remember that sickening stench from when I lived in Oregon. Locals used to go “Smells like money!”.
Lincoln, Maine was the home of Lincoln Pulp and Paper Mill. The town was nicknamed “Stinkin Lincoln”.
Except for being slammed, this could have been my aunt’s car: same year and model, same colors inside and out, same interior fabrics, same vinyl top. I loved riding in that thing.
I got the EGR system for the VW and it added plumbing but did not degrade power or economy because it was well engineered. Installed at the VW dealer. Occasional backfire was the only negative.
’66 Dodge A-100 with 273 already had a factory vacuum advance delay system, with cute green plastic control module, to meet California CO and HC emissions, so NOx reduction was an unintended consequence and I had a smog station inspect it and give me the sticker.
That wasn’t a vacuum advance delay system on your Dodge—in fact, it was kind of the opposite. That “control module” was a spring-loaded valve that sent either ported vacuum or manifold vacuum to the distributor: ported vacuum under normal driving conditions, but under closed-throttle coasting and deceleration it sent manifold vacuum to advance the spark, to handle the slow-burning, overly-rich mixture caused by the closed throttle plate. Its purpose was to reduce HC and CO, and it did a very good job of that for the time. By itself it had no effect on NOx, but other aspects of Chrysler’s Clean Air Package, which is what you’re describing, did address NOx to some degree. There’ll be an article eventually.
When I made the mistake of moving back to daa PROK (Peepullz Reepublik of Kali4kneeaah) in 1976 my ’56 Chevy 150 with its ’66 Chev 327 “needed” such a NOX device.
It was “installed” at a Service Shop @ 4-5 miles from our house in Upland, CA. By the time I got home-never reached 60 mph-my temp. gauge was almost pegged! After letting my engine cool down, the o.e. lil vacuum hose line was reinstalled and my ’56 ran happily ever after. Even more so when we LEFT CA permanently in 1978 and returned to the MidWest!! 🙂 🙂 DFO
Eeek!! Those wheels!!
One result of federal government emissions standards was that the 1973-1974 American cars had the worst performance and fuel economy to date. The auto industry simply didn’t have the technology at that time to efficiently reduce emissions. That eventually changed with catalytic converters for 1975 and then of course fuel injection by the late 70’s into the 1980’s. Today’s vehicles are so clean that I wonder why the push to electrics? I’ve seen that the EPA will introduce new emissions standards in the years to come that are dramatically stricter, I wonder how that will turn out? We might only be offered featherweight micro cars that are too expensive and have no market appeal.
I would call it driveability rather than performance. Horsepower per cubic inch continued to decline until the mid 80’s, though a lot of that was detuning for better mpg. I didn’t realize until yesterday that the ’80 Cadillac 368 had 35 fewer horses than the ’79 Olds 350 in the Eldorado, 145 vs. 180, both with FI.
If they could figure out how to heat up the cat converter in a couple of seconds, there would be even less emissions. I think it was Volvo who experimented with containing the first dirty exhaust gases in a big plastic bag and cycling it through later.
Certainly they did. To grab just one example, the 1972 Volvo 164 factory service manual says the appropriate CO level in the exhaust of the carbureted model was 2.5%; in the fuel-injected model it was 1.5%, which is 40% cleaner. It’s just that the American auto industry refused to put any serious money or engineering and development resources toward emisisons control, for they regarded auto regulation as a passing fad, as documented in some detail here.
Do you really? I can’t tell if you’re serious. In case you are, the simple answer is the same as it’s always been: more and more people driving more and more cars more and more miles means every individual car has to be cleaner just to maintain any given level of air pollution. And since polluted air is worse and worse for us the closer we look at it and the more we learn, just maintaining the current level isn’t good enough; the air has to be cleaned up. Moreover, local pollution (carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides, particulates…) aren’t the only thing we focus on any more. Now we know we also have to cut way down, very fast, on global pollution (carbon dioxide) if the planet is to remain habitable. So that’s why the push to electrics.
Yeah, people have been chicken-littling with that claim since the very first auto safety and emissions regulations took force…over half a century ago. Go out in the street and look around you; how did those predictions turn out?
The push to EVs comes from excess CO2, not the normal suspects (CO, HC and NOx), so it’s actually an entirely different problem.
Absolutely perfect combustion will produce only CO2 and H2O, and that ideal state has been the goal of emissions controls on cars since the 60s. But the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere is still a problem. And the ONLY way to reduce CO2 coming out is to reduce the amount of C and O2 going in. Or, simply eliminate both by fuelling the car with something else, like electrons.
(Yes, yes, I know, I know…the “cleanliness” of those electrons is dependent on the means of local generation. That’s a different discussion.)
My comment was addressing that sometimes the heavy hand of government does more harm than good. The government can do a lot towards progress by encouraging development of new technology such as saying how can we help? Strict mandates can sometimes backfire, such as the terrible 1973 and 74 model years. I did see that the EPA says that today’s cars are 98-99% cleaner than the cars from the 1960’s. There can be diminishing returns, if new vehicle become too expensive and people keep their older vehicles for much longer periods of time, that prevents the newer cleaner vehicle fleet from appearing. One more situation that we all can see, since large heavy passenger cars were regulated out people simply switched to large heavy trucks! Notice all the 4 door trucks with dinky cargo beds? The new passenger car.
The push to EVs arises from CO2 emissions, not the normal suspects (CO, HC and NOx), so it’s actually a response to an entirely different problem.
Absolutely perfect combustion will produce only CO2 and H2O, and achieving that ideal state has been the goal of emissions controls on cars since the 60s. But the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere is still a problem. And the ONLY way to reduce CO2 coming out is to reduce the amount of C and O2 going in. Or, simply eliminate both by fuelling the car with something else, like electrons.
(Yes, yes, I know, I know…the “cleanliness” of those electrons is dependent on the means of local generation. That’s a different discussion.)
“If they could figure out how to heat up the cat converter in a couple of seconds, there would be even less emissions.”
Several manufacturers tried that ~ remember the mini cats right at the exhaust manifold dumps ? .
They worked fine but cooked everything under the hood….
-Nate
Was an example the thermal reactors in
BMWs in the 80s?
Probably ~ I avoided Bimmers like the plague .
They’ll be mounted just below the exhaust manifold’s dump .
Worked well because they heated up quickly .
-Nate
C02 was at much higher concentrations in earth’s history. At the time that life flourished. C02 is essential for life on earth, saying that “Excess C02 is a problem” doesn’t follow the science.
Your question, which prompted that comment, was to ask “Today’s vehicles are so clean that I wonder why the push to electrics?” I gave you an accurate answer, in the context of both combustion chemistry and current international market and regulatory forces.
Perhaps your question was a straw man. You might wish to debate the legitimacy of those forces, and you are certainly entitled to do so. I would take a different position, but I’m going to respect the norms of this site and decline that particular discussion here.
Thank you. Debating a subject that has been repeatedly verified by science is not something we want to waste our time on here.