How to remove charcoal canister on 96 Camaro?

[JL8Jeff]

I'm still troubleshooting my SES light and it seems to be coming on when the purge kicks in. Since I have an extra charcoal canister from my last Camaro i figured I would swap it out. I can't figure out how to get that plastic strap undone that holds the canister in place. I don't want to break or crack the plastic strap so what is the trick to removing it?

[Jeff_in_Atl]

Hold up a second on that. I think I remember a couple of posts about the purge valve going bad. See if Someone chimes in about it.

What was that code you are getting again?

[JL8Jeff]

I'm getting the P0300 random misfires but I'm pretty sure it's due to a lean condition and not ignition related. I definitely get a nice gas odor from the car too. It looks like someone prior to me replaced the purge solenoid because that looks new and I found the hose from the canister to the purge line was disconnected and very loose last night. I tried to secure it tightly but the hose is kind of hard and dried out. I plan on testing the purge valve tonight but since I have an extra canister with much lower mileage I might as well throw it in if I can get the strap undone.

[Injuneer]

Check that the line from the canister, through the flow detector, to the purge solenoid, and from the purge solenoid to the throttle body are both connected in the right place.... screws things up if they are swapped. Might not be purging at all. But you should get a code for "no flow during purge", or get another code for "flow during non-purge", but there is nothing that checks the cannister itself.



The canister is mounted in a channel, and its hard to get it out of the channel. Since I was removing mine completely, I just yanked until it popped out of the channel. I can't remember if there is enough room at the end of the metal channel to allow you to slide the canister to the side to get it out. Mark the hoses before you pull them off, or you might never figure out which goes where.

If you have a lot of fuel odor at the back of the car, it might be that the hoses on top of the fuel tank are rotted away. I had that problem after the stroker rebuild/fuel tank modifications, and the fumes were terrible when you stopped for a traffic light.

[JL8Jeff]

Well, I ended up forcing it off the bracket to get it out. At least I didn't break anything. I checked up at the intake by sucking on the purge line and there was almost no resistance and a bunch of tasty bits of charcoal material! A couple of the short purge line rubber hoses were dry rotted and loose so I replaced them. The canister itself must be shot because you can shake it and hear the charcoal bits moving around. I put in my slightly used canister and hooked all the lines back up and tested again at the intake and there's much more resistance so that's a good sign. I think the bad purge line/canister situation was allowing too much unmetered air into the engine causing the lean condition which resulted in the P0300 code. I'll take the car to work tomorrow to see if the code comes back. I'm hoping that's the only issue but I'm worried the purge solenoid at the intake is contaminated from the charcoal bits so I'll probably be replacing that as well.

[Injuneer]

Jeff:

Don't know if you saw my post on the "off topic" forum. Cliff's dad passed away last week. George went to the wake on Friday night.

[JL8Jeff]

No, I didn't see it. That's too bad, he had some great old time racing stories.