I purchased a pretty nice 71 442 from an estate sale earlier this year and have really been enjoying driving it. One thing is bugging me though. The car seems to be very original including the air cleaner assembly. However, I have never seen a dual snorkel 71 air cleaner with the two holes drilled in it. Is it stock or did a previous owner drill these holes for some reason?

 

I'm restoring the same car. Those aren't factory holes, sorry to say. More airflow, more induction noise, maybe?

 

Terrible waste of a nice air cleaner. Is the car a manual transmission? I know the dual snorkel air cleaners were only provided on the SMT cars in 72. EDIT: New info from Rocketbrian. This is as Eric says - 71 non OAI had this air cleaner too.

I suppose you could weld in plugs and refinish it but from what I can see the air cleaner isn't 'functional' anyway. None of the vacuum lines are hooked up and it's not attached to the heat pipe for cold starts. You should check and see if the thermac flappers on the air horns are open or closed. The default spring position is 'open'.

 

I could very easily be wrong but I thought all 71 442s without OAI had this air cleaner?

 

A good welder, bodyman could weld in new circles, all isn't lost.
Allan, you're correct about the 72s, but all non OAI 442s got the dual snorkel air cleaner in 71. It was a change made to help offset going to lower compression by opening up the breathing.

 

Good to know. Thanks for the clarification. I'll update the previous post.

 

Original or not, I'd keep it just the way it is.

Very cool looking piece

 

Thanks everybody for your responses. I assumed it probably was a "PO mod" I will definitely leave it the way it is for now. At some point in the future I will probably restore the car and fix it then. Right now it's the only one of the cars I have, other than the Javelin, that I can drive and enjoy.


As you can see, under the hood someone took a black spray bomb and painted all kinds of things that shouldn't be painted so all that will need to be fixed. The more I look at it though, the more original pieces I find. A lot of the clamps and such that are usually lost are there. The original Uniroyal Tiger Paw tire is in the trunk and shows no sign of ever having been on the ground!