Date:         Mon, 11 Jul 2011 07:18:08 -0700
Reply-To:     Rocket J Squirrel <camping.elliott@GMAIL.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Rocket J Squirrel <camping.elliott@GMAIL.COM>
Subject:      Re: What the heck is this?
Comments: To: David Beierl <dbeierl@attglobal.net>
In-Reply-To:  <4e1a7d81.a44ee50a.3767.ffffc8bd@mx.google.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"

On Mon, 2011-07-11 at 00:34 -0400, David Beierl wrote:
> At 12:15 AM 7/11/2011, Rocket J Squirrel wrote:
> >So what's a responsible citizen to do if he suddenly learns he has a 27
> >year-old evap canister onboard? Ignoring it hardly seems like the right
> >thing to do.
>
> Is that worse than when you thought you had no canister?

I'm not knowledgeable enough about cars to assume that whatever VW was
doing in the '70s to meet emissions standards would not have been
surpassed by some other technique in the '80s. I was vaguely surprised
to learn that my bay window had a charcoal canister, and figured it was
some kludge.

>  Although of
> course *every* US vehicle since the '70s has a charcoal canister.

Well now, there you go -- I just learned something!

> If
> it hasn't fallen apart it's probably still doing its job perfectly well.

The received wisdom about them '70s canisters is that the responsible
thing to do was to refresh the activated charcoal. Is that unnecessary?
Stuff lasts forever?

-- RJS