first year for catalytic converters?

I was always under the belief that cars (even copcars) got cats starting in 1975. Here's a 76, though. What's the deal???

this is teh 2nd 76 Nupe copcar clone that this guy has listed, and both of them have had this sticker.

Kinda funny - all the work spent to do the repaint and left the underhood area brown. That's not a fun job, but with a weekend and some alum foil and a spray can it could've been painted black.


http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/1976-CHRY...forcev4exp=true

There were some chrysler cars that did not require a converter for the 76 model year, but just some models not all. A friend back then bought a new 76 charger SE, 400 4 bbl, no cat.

To my knowledge, it's 75 when converters started being used. And it was not in all cases. There are no 1974 models with floorpan humps for converters - they all used previous years stampings, before converters were even on the radar.

Starting in 75, cars got passenger side humps - B body: cordoba, coronet, fury, etc. Pretty sure F body is the same ('76 onward). Not sure about C body, but the had no cats in '74 either.

Leanburn was clean enough in certain engines to not need converters in the late 70s. This fact is annotated and discussed in various places, including the service manuals. Option codes will say if the car is leanburn, catalyst, or leanburn + catalyst. My 400 cop car was a total dog... "high performance" 400 with single exhaust, cat converter, and leanburn

Interestingly, cars with dual exhaust and dual converters (i.e. 440) had uber-special floorpans with double humps for the converters. they have their own part number.

It's a testament to LB that they could do this, despite all the negativity surrounding the system

The catalytic converters were introduced in 1975. It seems like I read somewhere that about 75% of the 1975 mopars had the converters.

A few mopar cars managed to avoid the converters through at least 1977. I'm fairly certain by 1979 all of the cars had converters. Once the converters became mandatory, a few cars were built with 2 converters to improve performance.

My grandfather had a '76 New Yorker 4-dr hardtop with 400 LB & no-cat, when Cuyahoga County Ohio started visual emission testing in the late '80s - it was a yearly chore to convince them it had "no-cat" since new.

Wife's 76 Volare had a cat, which of course clogged up while coming back from Illinois.

Thanks everybody for the info and examples, that cleared up some misinformation I had (well, sort of ).

Truck cat convts depended on GVW. All trucks over a certain GVW were exempt. The GVW exemption was raised thru the years till all trucks used them. It was the main reason for the D150 model with it's increased GVW over a D100. Ford and Chevy also had versions of the 'heavy half ton'. 1979 had a change since a 78 D150 didn't have a cc and a 79 D150 did. In 1985, a D350 was still exempt.

Remember the 'test pipes' that were sold to find out if you cc was plugged up? Most were never removed once the 'test' was over.
The best solution was to gut the cc, run a new piece of tube thru it and weld the shell back on, it was there for appearances only.

When we had emissions testing here, I raised all the GVW of my pickup trucks to 10000lbs which exempt them from emission testing at the license bureau . Testing cost like 20 bucks and raising the GVW to 10K cost like 18 bucks extra, so it was win situation and we didn't had to go to E check!!

Quote:

---

Truck cat convts depended on GVW. All trucks over a certain GVW were exempt. The GVW exemption was raised thru the years till all trucks used them. It was the main reason for the D150 model with it's increased GVW over a D100. Ford and Chevy also had versions of the 'heavy half ton'. 1979 had a change since a 78 D150 didn't have a cc and a 79 D150 did. In 1985, a D350 was still exempt.

---

Most Mopar passenger car apps began in 1975. Trucks came in a few years later (lighter duty trucks first, heavy duty trucks phased in later). IIRC, the '78 Little Red Express was the fastest vehicle in USA, beating the '78 Corvette, in part because the Lil Red still had full dual exhaust + no cats and the Vette was more completely neutered. But I think '79 Lil Reds got cats too?