I'm looking at adding a universal fuel vapor canister to my '65 Coronet to reduce the fuel smell in the garage. I know the newer cars use a purge valve and route the vapor back to the engine but I don't think I'll do all of that plumbing. Just thinking of adding the canister under the car for the vent hose. Anyone do that? Did it reduce the gas smell?

I kept the one on my duster I’m not sure it helps anymore. I have the canister vent plumbed up into a tube that’s over the throttle body.

The charcoal needs to be serviced occasionally. You can buy activated charcoal at a pet store for aquariums. Same stuff.

The canister need to be purged, which is what the factory did every time you drove it. Charcoal only has so much carrying capacity.

Run some aroma additive in the fuel so you can stand the smell and still get a buzz in the shop.

I figured the charcoal was dead by now.

I didn't add one, but I did remove one for a time and had bad fume stink in the garage. I re-installed another and it reduced the garage smell to barely noticeable. This was a 73 ebody, so all the plumbing was there, I just removed the canister and ran the vent line to the air cleaner.

Somewhere in that time, my 2 port canister got lost, the one I replaced it with has 4 or 5 ports (earlier canister if I'm not mistaken). I have capped them all but the tank vent and put ported vac to the vac pot that does the purge. I checked it, at 14" it starts working.

Thanks, I'll take a look at the FSM to see how those newer ones are plumbed in. My car is a '65 so it didn't have any of that plumbing but I figure I could add it easy enough. I don't really like the gas smell anymore. I guess when I was younger I didn't notice it too much but these days it gives me a headache when I'm working in the shop.

That is a good idea. The fuel smell is too much for me also. when I walk into my little shop the first thing I do is open a door or a window and turn the ceiling fan on full blast to air it out. It'd be nice to not have to do that....

No reason you couldn't run a line to the canister from the vent. The 4 vent tube setups have a little condenser affair before the canister. I'm not sure if that was to keep liquid fuel out of the canister or not, but that could be a concern.

I hear you on the fumes. Personally, I attribute it to crappy gas. I like to think I'd love the smell if it was 100LL or some Sunoco. I'm going to stick with that...

I did receive a suggestion to just run 1/4 hose up to ported vacuum and put a 0.070 restrictor in the hose. Evidently that is how Chrysler did it until the full emission era kicked in. That seems pretty easy to do. There still might be some fuel smell in the garage on a hot day when the car sits for very long but it might help a bunch. Adding a charcoal canister to the system might kill the fuel smell completely.

Can’t use the ported/timed port meant for a vacuum advance for the purge line for a charcoal canister. The purge function is a calibrated air leak requiring even distribution in the primary bores. Most ported/timed advance vacuum ports are plumed to one bore, are designed for a closed vacuum signal only. If you are running a carb without a dedicated canister purge port (found on OEM ’73 and later carbs and some aftermarket street replacements) you can run a 4-port ’72 canister and tee the purge line into PCV line for purging as the factory did. The fourth port on the ’72 version is tee’d into the vacuum advance signal, no purge, operates a small diaphragm on the top of the ’72 canister that reduces the purge rate at idle. ’73 and later canisters are 3-nipple canisters and requires a dedicated ¼” purge port to operate as designed. Plumed to both primary bores above the throttle plates. Purging only takes place above idle.
If you do run the ’72 canister, check the diaphragm on top, common for them to develop pin holes after all these years, not able to hold a vacuum.

Maybe mine is working, the garage it sits in doesn’t really smell like gas.