Have a 77 Camaro trying to install the MSD Atomic, have a dam cold air style air pump. Anyone ran into this and found a work around, I'm in California where smog gods are king.

MSD Foot note:

AIR PUMP
Important: If your AIR system only puts air into the exhaust manifolds, the Atomic system CANNOT be installed. The fresh air being introduced to the exhaust will cause false readings to the WB02 sensor.
If your vehicle is equipped with an air pump, close attention must
be paid to the air injection lines. GM used multiple types of air
injection control from the 1960's to the 1980's. All of the systems
used a belt driven air pump that delivers clean air into the exhaust system. Some of these systems used a diverter valve to change where the air pump sent fresh air. Early systems with a diverter valve used a thermostatic control valve (TCV) that diverted the air to the converter at 160°F coolant temperature. In later years, the TCV was replaced by an ECU, which did the same job.

 

If you are not allowed to get rid of the air pump are you sure you can convert to EFI?

So when GM switch over the O2 sensors the air was injected directly into the catalytic converter instead of the manifolds. The air injection system off a 1981 would work with your EFI because it used a O2 sensor for the carburetor.

I have no idea how picky your emissions people are but maybe a Cat with a air nozzle (like was used on most 80s cars) and a air pump to supply it would work? You could still use the thermal switch to turn it off. Or you just weld your air pipes closed, The MSD EFI should have 4x better controlled emission then anything built in 1977 with or without air injection. So the question is, does all the original emission system need to be there or are they just checking the emissions. If they are just sniffing the tail pipe your good even if you just take the air off, If all original equipment needs to be there you are screwed because the Evap based Carburetor is a BIG part of your emission system. If they want everything original then the Carb not being there would be a huge no way. It is the signal most important part of the emission system.

Modern engines have done away with the air injection because with EFI it is not really needed.

 

I'm not allowed to remove the dam air pump, I'm not a true believer that the pumps makes that big of a difference out the exhaust pipe though. My motor is a 383, 10-1 202 heads with little message work, when it smogs it puts out great numbers. Here the do a visual so it has to be there, been thinking about gutting the pump and blocking it off the injection rack on the headers, then running it threw smog and see what the numbers do then.

 

Can you just switch to blow air into the converter?

In the old day the carb had chokes to richen the fuel up so it would start cold. This was especial rich the first few seconds the car started. The air pump so the Cat could burn all that extra fuel. The once the car warmed up the air pump shut off. If you don't live in an area that get extremely cold or you never drive the car in the cold or you have no choke on the car then the air pump is almost useless.

The threads on the air pipes should be a standard thread, Plugs from a hardware plumbing department should work. Would it be too much would to leave the carb on for inspection and swap everything over to EFI after. As long as you are not swapping headers the process may only take a couple of hours depending on the fuel system. Its kind of a pain to do it every year but might be worth it.