Pipe next to the wing mounted expansion tank
Discussion
Yup, carbon canister fuel tank vent IIRC. I pulled mine out back into the engine bay and cable tied it down under the nose so it vents to air under around where the splitter should go, then pulled out and binned the carbon canister and plugged the hose connection in the plenum to finish. No petrol smells at all and lost a bit of dead weight and a pipe from the engine bay.. Lovely 
Edited by thenick on Wednesday 20th August 19:04
Normally connects by the PAS reservoir. Dave may have disconnected it in the set up process to eliminate air leakage into the plenum, depending on whether you had the carbon cannister wired into the new loom.
As Paul did your loom like mine he should have done, and therefore you can re-connect and check which pin he has put it into the ECU on and then I may be able to help you to ge tthe purge working.
Probably explained above, but didn't read so . . . Cannister is there to filter fule vapour from the tank released by a purge fuel mounted on top of it. The control of this valve can be done with the Emerald, although he may have just disconnected it and blocked off the inlet to the plenum if you had not spoken to him about it.
I'd double check it isn't connected and then check with Dave at Emerald. Paul should be able to tell you which pin it went to and then we should be able to get it working again for you.
Without it you'll need to organise another way to vent the tank. It can go to atmosphere, but there is the perenial debate of where to send fuel vapours. I didn't want to do this hence why Paul/Dave helped me to get it working. I no longer get the tank creaking and flexing back to shape i used to get with the old ECU either in fact, it would appear to be doing a better job, but need to test it with an in line tell tale probably to check it is working to it's conditions.
The valve actually activates to allow the cannister to be purged by allowing the vacuum from the plenum to draw frrsh air through the pipe that sits down by the rad, the tank to cannister side is permantly open. This can cause issues (I know, been there, had that issue) if the fresh air pipe is situated wrongly in the engine bay as it actually is a vacuum rather than release and in heavy rain if placed wrong will suck up water, and then your car run's like s
te until it dries out . .
I was not happy for mine to vent straight to atmosphere due to the possibility of vapour generation during track work or Hoon work. High up an alpine pass hair pin after hairpin and it chucks even a little fuel out and bingo I have a BBQ I don't want, there is also some legal debate on the whether it has to vent to a cannister etc probably by manufacturing date, I know nothing, just that the system works very well so why get rid of less than a kilo of weight and risk the car ?
As Paul did your loom like mine he should have done, and therefore you can re-connect and check which pin he has put it into the ECU on and then I may be able to help you to ge tthe purge working.
Probably explained above, but didn't read so . . . Cannister is there to filter fule vapour from the tank released by a purge fuel mounted on top of it. The control of this valve can be done with the Emerald, although he may have just disconnected it and blocked off the inlet to the plenum if you had not spoken to him about it.
I'd double check it isn't connected and then check with Dave at Emerald. Paul should be able to tell you which pin it went to and then we should be able to get it working again for you.
Without it you'll need to organise another way to vent the tank. It can go to atmosphere, but there is the perenial debate of where to send fuel vapours. I didn't want to do this hence why Paul/Dave helped me to get it working. I no longer get the tank creaking and flexing back to shape i used to get with the old ECU either in fact, it would appear to be doing a better job, but need to test it with an in line tell tale probably to check it is working to it's conditions.
The valve actually activates to allow the cannister to be purged by allowing the vacuum from the plenum to draw frrsh air through the pipe that sits down by the rad, the tank to cannister side is permantly open. This can cause issues (I know, been there, had that issue) if the fresh air pipe is situated wrongly in the engine bay as it actually is a vacuum rather than release and in heavy rain if placed wrong will suck up water, and then your car run's like s
te until it dries out . .I was not happy for mine to vent straight to atmosphere due to the possibility of vapour generation during track work or Hoon work. High up an alpine pass hair pin after hairpin and it chucks even a little fuel out and bingo I have a BBQ I don't want, there is also some legal debate on the whether it has to vent to a cannister etc probably by manufacturing date, I know nothing, just that the system works very well so why get rid of less than a kilo of weight and risk the car ?
Edited by Johno on Wednesday 20th August 23:29
You can choose which way you want to go but I think Johno is being a little over-cautious. Dave doesn't know where this canister is, but after speaking to him about the same part on a Lotus he said 'oh we always just pull them out and chuck them in the bin'. The reason for this is that they are not required for an MOT (it is like the pre-cats which are only requried for manufacture to pass SVA) and are renound for blocking and causing the tank to make popping noises as the vacuum steadily forms. None of the pre-cat cars had this feature, instead having a vented fuel filler cap which caused the boot to smell a bit of fuel.
If your pipe has been blocked off (mine was also and after speaking to a TVR specialist, he reckoned that 90% of cars had their CC's blocked off as well), then it will have been doing nothing anyway. If its blocked off, it will have a bolt stuck in the pipe with a jubilee clip on the pipe which goes up the wing and ends up going into the plenum base at the offside front of the plenum (the smaller one that goes off into the offside wing). If this is the case as it was on mine, there is no problem with pulling this pipe out completely and removing the hose connector from the plenum and replacing it with a bung. This means that the rest of the canister simply has a fuel tank vent pipe attached to it. You can therefore simply disconnect the fuel vent pipe and re-locate it anywhere you like and remove the canister completely. My fuel tank vent is now located under the nose of the car (as it is in the Tuscan's) and I've had no problems at all with fuel smell or the like. There is a non-return valve already in the system in the form of the roll-over valve which sits next to the tank. This will stop anything foreign getting into the tank (which would be unlikely as it would first have to travel the length of the car in a pipe with a very low vacuum pressure). As for fuel escaping, this is unlikely - if it were to have happened then my carbon canister would have been full of fuel when I removed it. As it happens there was nothing but a feint smell of fuel.
Anyway it's up to you, you can fairly easily wire it into the Emerald as Johno has done and retain the canister and its function (which you currently don't have and probably never have). or you can just bin it and vent the pipe in the same way TVR did for the later cars. If you're worried about fuel pouring out and somehow finding a manifold, just cut the pipe back to the rear of the car and vent it into the rear wheel well as done in some other cars
Edit: If you're really worried about losing fuel, slap one of these on as well http://www.demon-tweeks.co.uk/products/ProductDeta...
If your pipe has been blocked off (mine was also and after speaking to a TVR specialist, he reckoned that 90% of cars had their CC's blocked off as well), then it will have been doing nothing anyway. If its blocked off, it will have a bolt stuck in the pipe with a jubilee clip on the pipe which goes up the wing and ends up going into the plenum base at the offside front of the plenum (the smaller one that goes off into the offside wing). If this is the case as it was on mine, there is no problem with pulling this pipe out completely and removing the hose connector from the plenum and replacing it with a bung. This means that the rest of the canister simply has a fuel tank vent pipe attached to it. You can therefore simply disconnect the fuel vent pipe and re-locate it anywhere you like and remove the canister completely. My fuel tank vent is now located under the nose of the car (as it is in the Tuscan's) and I've had no problems at all with fuel smell or the like. There is a non-return valve already in the system in the form of the roll-over valve which sits next to the tank. This will stop anything foreign getting into the tank (which would be unlikely as it would first have to travel the length of the car in a pipe with a very low vacuum pressure). As for fuel escaping, this is unlikely - if it were to have happened then my carbon canister would have been full of fuel when I removed it. As it happens there was nothing but a feint smell of fuel.
Anyway it's up to you, you can fairly easily wire it into the Emerald as Johno has done and retain the canister and its function (which you currently don't have and probably never have). or you can just bin it and vent the pipe in the same way TVR did for the later cars. If you're worried about fuel pouring out and somehow finding a manifold, just cut the pipe back to the rear of the car and vent it into the rear wheel well as done in some other cars
Edit: If you're really worried about losing fuel, slap one of these on as well http://www.demon-tweeks.co.uk/products/ProductDeta...
Edited by thenick on Thursday 21st August 09:49
Not got pictures, but how many pipes do you have entering the offside wing in the engine bay? There should be throttle cable, brake vac feed and the carbon canister purge (this is the smaller of the two rubber pipes and is labelled as fuel pipe).
Then the canister its self is mounted beneath and behind the offside headlight. If you have the Cerbera front end, look through the hole under the offside front indicator and you should see it. Its a black cylinder around 15cm wide and 20cm tall with the hose connections on the top. It is mounted via a very large jubilee clip with a threaded bar welded to the rear. This bar goes through the wheel arch and is attached with a nut in the wheel arch under the inspection hatch. To get at it you need to undo this nut and remove the radiator. Griffs have an inspection hatch down by the radiator which can be unscrewed to gain access I belive but Chims do not.
Then the canister its self is mounted beneath and behind the offside headlight. If you have the Cerbera front end, look through the hole under the offside front indicator and you should see it. Its a black cylinder around 15cm wide and 20cm tall with the hose connections on the top. It is mounted via a very large jubilee clip with a threaded bar welded to the rear. This bar goes through the wheel arch and is attached with a nut in the wheel arch under the inspection hatch. To get at it you need to undo this nut and remove the radiator. Griffs have an inspection hatch down by the radiator which can be unscrewed to gain access I belive but Chims do not.
Edited by thenick on Thursday 21st August 11:22
I like to think I have done the job properly 
Cos a so called TVR specialist just ripped them out or stuffed a bolt in em and blocked em off doesn't mean it's the right thing to do, it most likely means a customer wasn't prepared to pay the bill for a replacement, they couldn't be arsed to do the work or any number of reasons including the one that it may be superflous to requirements. Hence why I tend to use specialists in their fields rather than a TVR specialist as I haven't found one who is yet that I trust to work on my car doing it better than I would do it myself.
Dave may not know where the cannister is, but that wasn't my point. I perhaps misunderstood which end of the pipe Nigel was on about was illustrating that when setting the car up the first thing he will do is to set up the base idle, checking that the base air intake level is controlled by the throttle and that there are not any further auxillary intakes other than designed. Mine has an issue with the breather system allowing too much air into the base set up for example. It's easily overcome for RR purposes and running, but it has to be done before you set the rest of the car up, square one.
If this pipe on Nigel's (which should be a one way valve) was allowing air into the plenum without it being on a cycle then the chances are that Dave (being a very good mechanic !) understands that this pipe connection would be surplus to requirements during a RR session and therefore removed it at the plenum end or blocked the radiator end to enable base air intake level to be set and understood.
Hope that explains why I made that point.
However, having re-read Nigel's post i think it is just a case of it being the air feed hose for the cannister in which case you need to check with Dave what he did about your set up. The pipe doesn't connect to anything, it just sucks up air when required . .. Keep it out of any water traps.
With all these things I like to understand how the system works, if it works, then why rip it out for the sake of it ? Venting anything to atmosphere where there is a perfectly good alternative seems like a regressive step to me. For example, I may vent the breather system on mine differently, but it won't be to atmosphere, it will be to catch tank if I can find the right size one !
Although venting to atmosphere with a steel ladder chassis done in the right way really does help it's longevity
Cos a so called TVR specialist just ripped them out or stuffed a bolt in em and blocked em off doesn't mean it's the right thing to do, it most likely means a customer wasn't prepared to pay the bill for a replacement, they couldn't be arsed to do the work or any number of reasons including the one that it may be superflous to requirements. Hence why I tend to use specialists in their fields rather than a TVR specialist as I haven't found one who is yet that I trust to work on my car doing it better than I would do it myself.
Dave may not know where the cannister is, but that wasn't my point. I perhaps misunderstood which end of the pipe Nigel was on about was illustrating that when setting the car up the first thing he will do is to set up the base idle, checking that the base air intake level is controlled by the throttle and that there are not any further auxillary intakes other than designed. Mine has an issue with the breather system allowing too much air into the base set up for example. It's easily overcome for RR purposes and running, but it has to be done before you set the rest of the car up, square one.
If this pipe on Nigel's (which should be a one way valve) was allowing air into the plenum without it being on a cycle then the chances are that Dave (being a very good mechanic !) understands that this pipe connection would be surplus to requirements during a RR session and therefore removed it at the plenum end or blocked the radiator end to enable base air intake level to be set and understood.
Hope that explains why I made that point.
However, having re-read Nigel's post i think it is just a case of it being the air feed hose for the cannister in which case you need to check with Dave what he did about your set up. The pipe doesn't connect to anything, it just sucks up air when required . .. Keep it out of any water traps.
With all these things I like to understand how the system works, if it works, then why rip it out for the sake of it ? Venting anything to atmosphere where there is a perfectly good alternative seems like a regressive step to me. For example, I may vent the breather system on mine differently, but it won't be to atmosphere, it will be to catch tank if I can find the right size one !
Although venting to atmosphere with a steel ladder chassis done in the right way really does help it's longevity
ok chaps I will need to check with paul dove, rather strange as I mentioned to him when I collected the car to go to Emerald and he said he hadnt disconnected this pipe from anything ??? as i said i never noticed it before, this pipe comes out on the left hand side of the expansion tank viewed from the passenger side. Not sure if the Ivac valve wiring is in either. any pictures should help if you can please.
The wiring for the cannister is mounted close to the oil pressure sender on the front of the block near the oil filter. The connection block is a 2 wire in and out sealed unit, and should be black and blue. The wiring then traces the chassis to the front o/s.
You'll notive the connector type as it is different to anything else in the engine bay. Some have been replaced over time with butt connectors etc. Sorry but I don't have any pictures.
It is normally tie wrapped together with the bottom of the loom which comes down from in front of the alternator for the auxillary oil pressure warning lamp sender, the oil pressure sender and the starter motor exciter wire.
It'll down there somewhere
You'll notive the connector type as it is different to anything else in the engine bay. Some have been replaced over time with butt connectors etc. Sorry but I don't have any pictures.
It is normally tie wrapped together with the bottom of the loom which comes down from in front of the alternator for the auxillary oil pressure warning lamp sender, the oil pressure sender and the starter motor exciter wire.
It'll down there somewhere
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