Hi All,
My In-Laws have in their woods a 1960 Valiant. It was parked there in the mid-70s after accumulating 225,000 plus miles and probably typical Southern Indiana rust (the Valiant was replaced by a Plymouth Cricket). The Valiant is a 170 3 speed 2 door-not much left of it but interesting to look at. I robbed the Valiant of its air cleaner for my '66 Dart. The air cleaner is a rather interesting half open element piece that I have never seen before-it appears to be factory as it is painted black and fits perfectly.
My question is:Is this a factory installed air cleaner? Or is it some oddball thing that my late father-in-law installed (wish he was still here so I could ask him).
Thanks
Todd

its factory. I have one on my 62 Lancer. Wanna trade for a regular one?

MJ

Here's a pic of it on my car: http://menko.no-ip.com/files/lancer/ballast.jpg

That air cleaner was used only on 170 engines, only in the 1962 model year. It will not allow the hood to close if used on a 225 in most passenger car applications. Also, there were no 2-door Valiants in 1960 (only 4-doors and wagons in '60; 2-door coupes and sedans starting in '61).

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Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

Thanks for the info and pix guys-most interesting! My mistake on the year of the Valiant-just going by memory from what my late father-in-law told me and he's been gone nine years. How can I ID the year of this car? It has the slanted (cat eye) looking taillights. And the air cleaner does fit (hood shuts without hitting) on my '66 225 Dart with a Holley 1945 carb.
Thanks again!
Todd

Cat's eye taillights were '60-'61 Valiant only. If it's a 2-door, it's a '61 (no 2-doors in '60). If it's a 4-door, check the instrument cluster. Separate left and right turn signal indicators and black gauge background w/white markings = '60; single central turn signal indicator and white gauge background w/black markings = '61.

I sit corrected on the hood clearance issue—it's just the '60-'62 cars with 225 engines that the two different '60-'62 flat-base air cleaners won't let the hood close. Now that you mention it, I tried out one of the "shielded open element" cleaners you're talking about on the 225 in my '65 when I owned it. Didn't leave it on very long; the noise was fun at first but then got irritating, and the types with the drop-hat base are said (by Chrysler in '63 when they nixed the flat-base cleaners) to flow better.

FWIW, the original air cleaner on a '60-'61 Valiant is fully enclosed with a round snorkel tube of about 2-1/4" diameter:



Nowtimes, most often the snorkel tube is long gone. If you look at the base of the '60-'61 cleaner, you can see it's the same stamping (with the added sidewalls, of course) as the half-shielded '62 cleaner this thread is about. If you have one of the snorkel-type '60-'61 cleaners, be sure to point the snorkel across the valve cover, not straight ahead as this owner has done (TSB from Chrysler in late '60—turning the snorkel across the valve cover solved a hesitation/stumble when accelerating from speed. I was intrigued when I read this, and ran the experiment. Sure enough, they were absolutely right!)

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Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

Thanks Dan,
According to your descripton it is a 61 model. Probably the only good parts left on the car were the air cleaner (that I took) and the glass. It's neat to look at as it is slowly sinking into the ground. The motor and trans are still in it but are probably not much good after setting 30 plus years. It does have a rather nice looking trailer hitch that attaches to the bumper-most of the chrome is gone and the interior has been mostly packed away by critters-but anyways-Thanks for all of the interesting information-you can always learn something new!
Todd

What's the heater box look like (on the passenger side of the firewall in the engine bay -- you can see the bottom of it in the top left corner of the photo I posted)? If it's still good, no broken-out bolt holes, etc., you may want to grab it. Those boxes and cores are tough to find and if you don't need one, someone else will...

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Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

Hey Todd. I'm restoring my '60 slowly but surely. do you have any pictures that we could see of it? if there were some good parts you would sell, i'd gladly take a look. A new top for my air cleaner is something I'm looking for Some person tried doing a homemade closed-loop pcv thingy with a hole cut out of the top of my air cleaner and now it looks atrocious with a rubber tube sticking halfway out of it. But to answer your original question, just as others already have, yes, that's an original air cleaner.

I'd be curious to see photos anyway.

Thanks!

Evan

Some of the '70-'76 1bbl slant-6 air cleaners used the same lid...much easier to find than one from a '60-'61!
Uh-huh...I notice you're in California. Did you know that in the late '60s, someone in the CA legislature got the bright (not) idea to retrofit used cars with emission control devices...and this idea became law? True. There were two kinds of retrofits required of various cars, depending on manufacture date and date of first registration.

Crankcase devices were required on most post-'54 cars. Most of the aftermarket devices, as you can imagine, were poorly designed "one size fits all" items that caused running and driveability problems. The crankcase breather part of the package often consisted of a cheesy potmetal hose elbow secured to the air cleaner with two sheetmetal screws and a crude rubber gasket (sound familiar?).

The other retrofit requirement was very much uglier: NOx control devices. These pieces of trash consisted of "spark advance controls" that eliminated vacuum advance entirely. The cheapest and most widely installed device was called the "Kar Kit". It consisted of two vacuum nipple caps and a decal. The instructions were as follows:

1) Remove vacuum advance hose.

2) Using pliers, crush carburetor and vacuum advance hose nipple so vacuum advance cannot be restored.

3) Install hose nipple caps.

4) Retard basic ignition timing by 3 degrees.

5) Affix decal to dashboard near speedometer.

The decal reads "CAUTION: Vehicle equipped with Kar Kit NOx retrofit device. Do not operate over 60mph for prolonged periods; engine overheating and damage may result."

The hell of it is that if any particular vehicle was required by the State of Kalifornia during the retrofit period (late '60s until the early '70s) to have a retrofit device installed...it still has to have a retrofit device! This is less of a problem than it used to be, since the smog check year cutoff is now '74 or so, but the ignominy of taking a clean-and-smooth-running car, removing the vacuum advance hose, retarding the timing and taking a now-sputtering, hard-to-keep-running, coughing car through smog check was just too much to bear for awhile there.

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.