I am a new owner of an '88 Cougar LS 5.0 with 47K original miles. The first thing that I did was put a "true" dual exhaust on the car. I now have the air pump tube that once pumped air into the exhaust hanging free. For those of you that have made a similar mod, what have you done with this tube?
The H-pipe I used had a place to connect the air pump tube. I shortened the air pump tube with a saw and then used a rubber heater hose to connect it to the tube sticking out of the H-pipe. It's been working fine for a couple years now.
Free the car of the smog pump and related hoses, then you don't have to worry about it.
I pulled mine out.
You can connect it like Jim did or you could fully remove the smog stuff. It depends primarily on your local emissions standards.
Since I had custom dual exhaust installed and I had to have cats I just had the exhaust shop weld a "Y" between the two cats and connect the air pump tube to it. It's worked fine now for 2 years and I've passed emissions no problem.
Thanks for the tips. Since I need to go back and have the ordered tailpipes installed I'll have them connect to air tube to the H-pipe.
If you want to keep the air pump working for the swirl ports on the heads, but not working for the catalytic converters, just cut the lower hose from the diverter on the passenger side of the engine bay so only a few inches are coming out, find a nice bolt that fits inside, put a radiator clamp around the hose where the bolt is, and you're done. You would still have to remove the metal tube that used to go to the Y-pipe, if you haven't already done that.
Wouldn't that cause the pump to push against a dead head and increase pump power?
That's the beauty of it...since there's a hex head on the bolt, some air gets past it to relieve the pressure. If it was a totally round head then no air could escape and there'd be backpressure. Everything therefore continues to work normally. I've had that setup on several cars for many, many years with no air pump or diverter failures.