What is this in my engine bay

Some kind of sensor, where is it located in the engine bay?

 

Certainly isn't original. Can't imagine why it's there. The script on the side of the 'sensor' is readable. If you can determine all the numbers/letters you can do a search and probably find out what it is and then make a reasonable guess as to why a previous owner installed it.

 

What version 1983 308QV? Euro? US? Euro converted in some way to be NZ legal? Something else?

What are the insulation colors on the two wires? Off hand, it looks like a thermoswitch where the resistor heats up the plate (i.e., the thermoswitch is in one state cold, then, after starting, the resistor heats up the plate and the thermoswitch changes state for warm running when temperature X is reached). Many US models have something similar where the thermoswitch is mounted to the coolant expansion tank.

 

Looks like a power resistor

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My guess.. the powered vacuum solenoids were removed and this simple resistor allows the warmup light to still function when the expansion tank hits 140deg. I removed my 3 solenoids and added a 40 ohm power resistor out of sight...... warmup dash light still works. Just saying....

 

On my '83, there's the thermasistor(?) into the coolant tank. They are NLA. it's probable somebody rigged something to bypass it. The normal way is just connect the two wires together.

 

My 83 euro has same resistor just sitting there

 

Those insulation colors don't seem to indicate anything obvious. Can you post some pictures of the engine to see what's been changed, or added, from a stock euro version 308QV?

 

The gold finned device is a hi-wattage resistor. The other device looks like a thermo switch.Lot's of odd devices add to some Euro cars when brought to the US for federalization.

 

That's the typical "import" emission modification to add a (quasi) Lambda system to a K-Jet without Lambda model when needed to be legal. The thermoswitch discussed before is necessary to "tell" that added ECU "when cold, don't use the O2 sensor output" and "when warm, go ahead and use the O2 sensor output". You should have a frequency valve (the gizmo in the purple circle) added into the WUR plumbing like this:

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Do you have such a thing in the plumbing bundle running under/along your airbox?

Do you still have an O2 sensor and catalytic converters?

Here's another example of this quasi-Lambda modification on a euro 328:

 

Sounds like it's all sorted out - at least the reason/purpose for the mod.

I thought it would be fairly easy to determine what that part was with the numbers but I tried as well, going through several electronics suppliers like DigiKey, etc and couldn't come with anything either! BUT...now that you know essentially what it does, you can decide whether to leave it in place/be sure it's working OK or remove it.

 

What ever it is, I would replace those sheet metal screws with small nuts and bolts. Those exposed pointy screw tips don't look toontidy.

 

No - no effect on performance and/or runability with, or without, this added system (other than the added weight).

It may impact the resellability by reducing what markets where the car could be sold and increasing the cost of restoring such a system if needed (save it all in a box with some notes if you do decide to remove it). For the injection stuff, it's as easy as removing that added line with the frequency valve and using shorter banjo bolts (and fresh sealing washers) on each end where it was connected (and removing all the added wiring/electronics) -- but the A/F mixture may need to be reset.

You'd need to be careful removing the fuel evap system -- the black charcoal canister mounted near the dogbone and that added thermoswitch/resistor (This is a very passive system and is completely independent from the injection stuff so no sin to keep -- if you can pretty it up ). The canister itself is the air vent for the gas tank; whereas, on a euro version, there's a hose off the filler neck that acts as the air vent (and is routed in a way to prevent fuel from coming out if the car goes upside-down). The mistake would be to just block everything off -- which would seal-up the gas tanks, and they would collapse as the fuel pump removed gasoline with no air vent..

 

Thought that I had a pdf copy of this:
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to post for you to print out and put in the box , but I can only find this cover picture. If someone's got the content of this, please post.

 

[QUOTE="Tonksy1, post: 147167175, member: 196455"...If I disconnect everything (my preference), can I leave the frequency valve in place for now,and remove it further down the track on another project?[/QUOTE]
Not sure (without having a copy of that DC Johnson manual to read). As a test, you could just unplug the added frequency valve -- if it still runs well, then, yes, you could just leave it unplugged and leave that line in place until later.