EGR & charcoal canister stuff (needed?)

[vince@performancecarstereo.com (Vince Royer)]

Just a thought for today:

A buddy of mine has a Mazda B2200 and he built up a nice motor for it.
During the building process, he simplified everything as much as he could.
He removed all the emissions equipment from it, all the exhaust
recirculation stuff.  There were 3 big hoses going to a large unit up on top
of the carb.  He took it all off and plugged all the ends.  There were tons
of hoses that came out, and a couple little valves and the like.  He was
told that everything could come off of the motor with no problems.   After
it was all gone and the motor all built, the truck runs like never before.
He passes emissions tests with much better numbers than before, the truck
got a whole lot quieter and smoother, and has monstrous torque.  It seems
like the motor was just sucking a lot of exhaust instead of fresh air.

Now for Scirocco content. (mandatory now I guess)

Do our motors absolutely need all the crap that's hooked up to them?  I'm
mostly talking about my 1.7 8V.  It has the super-basic CIS. No ox sensor
either, Canadian car.  I understand that the fuel vapours have to go
somewhere, but I mean... if you were building up a tube framed full race
spec car, what would you do?  Would you have to keep all the evaporative
emissions canisters and lines?  Or could you just vent it out?

I must say I don't really know how it all works, so I can't decide if it
would work without it.  What's the bare minimum you can run an 8V with?  I'm
trying to get my engine compartment as simple as possible without going to
carbs.  I want to hide all the wiring and loom it all up better.  My battery
is already in the back so it looks much better already.

Vince