Learned something about diesel today.

In reply to Crxpilot :

What harm?  We live in a world where there are multiple muscle cars that have well over 500hp.  Where having that much in a super car is on the low end.  Where you can get an incredibly capable sports car.  All of which are light years more efficeient and cleaner than anything anyone could dream of even 20 years ago.   Daily driven sedans are faster and more capable than almost every car 30 years ago- heck, the base power in a Fusion is MORE than a Mustang GT when I started working.

Auto companies continue to make huge amounts of money,  and what I see as problems have more to do with decisions around the car than issues with any madated things on the car.

SEMA is probably bigger now than it ever has been, so it's hard to see harm there.

Everyone says harm, but nobody can be specific on it.  I can for sure tell you of benefits- as there are thousands of highly skilled jobs that are just there to satisfy the various requirements around the world.  Yes, good regulations have lead to some amazing jobs.  

And if you do the math, you will actually find out that cars are cheaper now than they were 30 years ago, adjusted for inflaction- and they are safer, cleaner, more powerful, more efficient, etc etc etc.  Cars are better in every single measureable statistic and the price hasn't gone up over inflation much what so ever.

I forgot to add- the choices of doing stuff with your car hasn't diminished due to rules- I can still go autocross, road race, rally cross, rally, drag race, land speed race, etc.  Last I heard, the last Solo II championship had more participants than they ever have- including record classes in the heavily  modified classes.  If I had enough money, the choices to go racing is almost endless.

So where's the harm?

This is one of these verbal forays that requires a quiet trip back to the beginning of the subject matter to fully embrace the nuances of this apparently heated topic.....where's me brandy and the big chair?

In reply to 759NRNG :

So it's not a stunner that diesels cars being much more scrutinized.  That's what happens when someone does something wrong.  

And on road emissions measurements are the next big thing.  Already are for the EU.

I'm just gonna say the place I work keeps some pretty nasty chemicals on site and the EPA are the ones who say we have to make sure those chemicals don't make it into the local water supply, so that's cool. 

Also if you've ever been in traffic behind a pre-emissions diesel engine it will become very obvious why efforts have to be made to clean that E36 M3 up a bit.

Daylan C said:

I'm just gonna say the place I work keeps some pretty nasty chemicals on site and the EPA are the ones who say we have to make sure those chemicals don't make it into the local water supply, so that's cool. 

Also if you've ever been in traffic behind a pre-emissions diesel engine it will become very obvious why efforts have to be made to clean that E36 M3 up a bit.

We don't have much of a vehicle inspection here if FL, and let me tell you. Whenever a dump truck that's CLEARLY been poorly maintained gets in front of me, I can feel it. 

Daylan C said:

I'm just gonna say the place I work keeps some pretty nasty chemicals on site and the EPA are the ones who say we have to make sure those chemicals don't make it into the local water supply, so that's cool. 

Also if you've ever been in traffic behind a pre-emissions diesel engine it will become very obvious why efforts have to be made to clean that E36 M3 up a bit.

Or gasoline engines.  We're pretty far removed from that because gas engines are fairly easy to clean up and we've been doing it for a lot longer (since 1975 for catalysts, 1966 at all) but pre-smog engines can be damned eye-watering.  Nothin' says lovin' like a car with its choke stuck on, and its road draft tube huffing oil smoke.  PCV?  What's PCV?

Oh, I have to get this off my chest.

(cue metal voice)

I got something to say!

I learned something about Diesel today

And it doesn't matter much to me

As long as it's this thread...

In reply to Knurled. :

I just remembered I was following an MGB with a badly tuned carb recently and had to shut the AC off and roll the windows down because of the fumes that were getting fed into the cowl vent on the truck I was diving.

Daylan C said:

In reply to Knurled. :

I just remembered I was following an MGB with a badly tuned carb recently and had to shut the AC off and roll the windows down because of the fumes that were getting fed into the cowl vent on the truck I was diving.

I drive a car with a pollution-absorbing radiator to atone for this:

The brap is gone, and I don't hardly drive it ever anymore anyway.  But that awesome idle is the engine literally (as in you can mathematically deduce it from a slowed-down audio sample) throwing at least half the fuel going in straight back out the exhaust unencumbered by combustion.

The other RX-7 has a catalyst.  It's boring enough to be able to run one without turning it into metallic jelly.

alfadriver said:

In reply to Crxpilot :

What harm?  We live in a world where there are multiple muscle cars that have well over 500hp.  Where having that much in a super car is on the low end.  Where you can get an incredibly capable sports car.  All of which are light years more efficeient and cleaner than anything anyone could dream of even 20 years ago.   Daily driven sedans are faster and more capable than almost every car 30 years ago- heck, the base power in a Fusion is MORE than a Mustang GT when I started working.

Auto companies continue to make huge amounts of money,  and what I see as problems have more to do with decisions around the car than issues with any madated things on the car.

SEMA is probably bigger now than it ever has been, so it's hard to see harm there.

Everyone says harm, but nobody can be specific on it.  I can for sure tell you of benefits- as there are thousands of highly skilled jobs that are just there to satisfy the various requirements around the world.  Yes, good regulations have lead to some amazing jobs.  

And if you do the math, you will actually find out that cars are cheaper now than they were 30 years ago, adjusted for inflaction- and they are safer, cleaner, more powerful, more efficient, etc etc etc.  Cars are better in every single measureable statistic and the price hasn't gone up over inflation much what so ever.

I forgot to add- the choices of doing stuff with your car hasn't diminished due to rules- I can still go autocross, road race, rally cross, rally, drag race, land speed race, etc.  Last I heard, the last Solo II championship had more participants than they ever have- including record classes in the heavily  modified classes.  If I had enough money, the choices to go racing is almost endless.

So where's the harm?

My personal experience is mainly related to companies and individuals, less about cars and car manufacturers.  So my long statement below is outside the realm of GRM subject matter. Stop reading if this may make you upset.

What harm can the EPA cause? 

My great-grandfather, Newton L of Raleigh, NC owned a few acres of land north of town up through the time of his death in the early 80s.  He had a small farm and a dried up pond behind his home. In the 1950s a neighbor asked if he could dump scrap metal into his dried pond and cover it over for Newton, since he wanted it filled with earth anyway. Newton agreed and the neighbor dumped trash metal into the pit and covered it with fresh dirt, like landfills work today.

In the early 2000s, my grandfather Al H was in the process of selling this land he inherited when 2 agents from the EPA visited him at his home. “Mr. H, we have suspicion that your land has an illegal dumping ground.” The land was marked with a pond in early surveys and flat land in more recent maps. “We’ll have to dig an exploratory hole on the site and check for pollutants.”

The test hole had metals but also trace amounts of refrigerants from refrigerators dumped in the hole 50 years prior.

The EPA sued Al and ordered the lot “amended”.

The entire pond site was excavated at Al’s cost. The site was cleared of every material ever in the hole at Al’s cost. The soil was treated and amended at Al’s cost. The hole was then covered at Al’s cost and marked on county maps as a hazardous dump ground into perpetuity.

Al wasn’t a wealthy man. This suit and the fees he incurred afterward ate his entire life savings, put him into debt, and forced him back into the workforce until his death in 2014, leaving his wife penniless and their children with the costs of her care as she survives even today.

I don’t think the EPA suicides anybody and I do appreciate charcoal evap systems. But they press ordinary, law-abiding people and entities into really ugly situations. Much is too heavy handed and misplaced in my opinion. Please pay attention to all the voices you hear on both sides of any debate.

Brown diesel manual wagons!

In reply to Crxpilot :

It seems to me that the person at fault here is the guy who asked to dump a bunch of trash on his property, without being forthcoming about the consequences.  Seriously, "can I bury some things in your yard?" is kind of a red flag that shady things are afoot.

Knurled. said:

In reply to Crxpilot :

It seems to me that the person at fault here is the guy who asked to dump a bunch of trash on his property, without being forthcoming about the consequences.  Seriously, "can I bury some things in your yard?" is kind of a red flag that shady things are afoot.

Sure, but you’re using a 2019 brain. 1950s in the south was a different place. And there’s no finding that guy today. 

In reply to Crxpilot :

Nothing's more of a pain than when the scammer gets away with it.

I’ve been intrigued about how gas expands when it’s heated ... I wonder if you could somehow make it burn better and cleaner if you could pretty much inject fuel vapor instead of raw fuel or whatever... just some weird and wacky ideas I need to get out of my head before I go and blow myself up or something 

I decided to pick up this thread from the start. Quite a ride! 

I thought I would learn something new about diesels. Instead I got reminded of something more related to human nature.

Kind of like this.

MrSmokey said:

I’ve been intrigued about how gas expands when it’s heated ... I wonder if you could somehow make it burn better and cleaner if you could pretty much inject fuel vapor instead of raw fuel or whatever... just some weird and wacky ideas I need to get out of my head before I go and blow myself up or something 

Google adibiatic engines, and Smokey Yunick.

Knurled. said:

In reply to Crxpilot :

It seems to me that the person at fault here is the guy who asked to dump a bunch of trash on his property, without being forthcoming about the consequences.  Seriously, "can I bury some things in your yard?" is kind of a red flag that shady things are afoot.

He was filling on a pothole that they wanted to fill.  This was perfectly normal behavior at that time.

As I said in another thread about changes through the years, My Grandfather was injured by the non collapsing steering column in his Model A.  Shall I sue Ford on his estates behalf?

Crxpilot said:

alfadriver said:

In reply to Crxpilot :

What harm can the EPA cause? 

 

My great-grandfather, Newton L of Raleigh, NC owned a few acres of land north of town up through the time of his death in the early 80s.  He had a small farm and a dried up pond behind his home. In the 1950s a neighbor asked if he could dump scrap metal into his dried pond and cover it over for Newton, since he wanted it filled with earth anyway. Newton agreed and the neighbor dumped trash metal into the pit and covered it with fresh dirt, like landfills work today.

In the early 2000s, my grandfather Al H was in the process of selling this land he inherited when 2 agents from the EPA visited him at his home. “Mr. H, we have suspicion that your land has an illegal dumping ground.” The land was marked with a pond in early surveys and flat land in more recent maps. “We’ll have to dig an exploratory hole on the site and check for pollutants.”

The test hole had metals but also trace amounts of refrigerants from refrigerators dumped in the hole 50 years prior.

The EPA sued Al and ordered the lot “amended”.

The entire pond site was excavated at Al’s cost. The site was cleared of every material ever in the hole at Al’s cost. The soil was treated and amended at Al’s cost. The hole was then covered at Al’s cost and marked on county maps as a hazardous dump ground into perpetuity.

Al wasn’t a wealthy man. This suit and the fees he incurred afterward ate his entire life savings, put him into debt, and forced him back into the workforce until his death in 2014, leaving his wife penniless and their children with the costs of her care as she survives even today.

I don’t think the EPA suicides anybody and I do appreciate charcoal evap systems. But they press ordinary, law-abiding people and entities into really ugly situations. Much is too heavy handed and misplaced in my opinion. Please pay attention to all the voices you hear on both sides of any debate.

Brown diesel manual wagons!

Just imagine- this was based on results from a land survey done in the 1950's.  With Google Earth today, anyone with a mind to could conceivably crack down on anyone with more than a few cars parked in their yard that haven't moved in a few years.  

I used to be really hard-core libertarian, but as I've aged (some might say, mellowed) I realize that (to use the old analogy about swinging arms and noses) when it comes to environmental issues, one's arm can be extremely long, and another's nose can extend out fairly far.  And it sometimes takes an act of a governing body to set those boundaries.  

Unfortunately, what inevitably happens is anecdotes like the one shared above- a story that could have been prevented from transpiring in the way it did at any of SEVERAL points throughout the period of time in which it transpired.  I can totally understand the mindset of what went down in 1950's South- I lived in South Carolina in the 2000's and trust me, there were parts that hadn't evolved much since the 50's, or so it would seem.  If the legislation were written better, if grandfather clauses and such were established, if the federal agents weren't so gung-ho about worrying about every little hole in the ground that might have had something put into it 50 years ago, even if there were some *gasp* relief fund for folks who had to clean up their property...I mean, FEMA has paid out billions of dollars to people who knowingly built their homes in hurricane-prone areas....and yet they expect some poor dirt farmer to shell out in full for the cleanup of some guy who his father let dump a bunch of old refrigerators in his pond hole half a century ago?

This is my main issue with government- not that it exists, but that it is powerful enough to destroy its citizens' lives.

In reply to Crxpilot :

So someone scammed and illegally dumped stuff.  Sure, they can be heavy handed, just like any corporation in our country- like the ones who would sue you for even looking into if the stuff they were dumping was harmful.  They are rather hampered by the law- that does state that the current owner of a property is responsible for the land.  If you don't like that, then we need to change the law so that people who had no idea others were dumping on their property can get help to clean it up.  Then again, that also exists.

But that specific instance is about pollution on an individual piece of property.

How is it that it's a harm to our hobby?  How do you conclude that based on two people's interaction makes all of them evil with bad intentions?

Again, if they were working 100% within the letter of the law that they are given, how is it even their personal fault?

I'll keep getting back to- how in the world does that impact our car hobby?  Where there are more racing organizing bodies out there than when I started working almost 30 years ago?  There's more particiaption racing now than ever.  The speed of cars that you can buy is stunning.

In reply to alfadriver :

You'd have to go back to 1950's NC and determine if it was actually illegal to do what they did, then.  Of course, there was likely no way to prove who did what, or when it was done.  "Al" was essentially tried and found guilty outside of any sort of court, it sounds like.  Not due process.  

This relates to our specific hobby inasmuch as the potential exists for this agency to extrapolate its powers subjectively based on who's in charge at the time.  This isn't stating that they are all evil with bad intentions- actually just the opposite.  The government is run by people- therefore, like people, it is not perfect.  And even seemingly good people with outwardly good intentions can screw up.

And no, it's no one's "personal fault" that they were working 100% within the letter of the law...but "I was just doing what I was told" is about the weakest excuse for personal behavior.  There needs to be a sanity check in the process.  Like I said, there were any number of points in that particular anecdote where someone from the agency could have said "whoa, let's take a look at what we're doing here".  But it sounds like that never happened.  Ever read "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"?  That's how Arthur Dent's house got knocked down.  And how the Earth itself was vaporized.  Obviously that's all fiction, but like all good fiction (and humor) there is truth to it.  

Streetwiseguy said:

MrSmokey said:

I’ve been intrigued about how gas expands when it’s heated ... I wonder if you could somehow make it burn better and cleaner if you could pretty much inject fuel vapor instead of raw fuel or whatever... just some weird and wacky ideas I need to get out of my head before I go and blow myself up or something 

Google adibiatic engines, and Smokey Yunick.

Im a huge fan

Daylan C said:

I'm just gonna say the place I work keeps some pretty nasty chemicals on site and the EPA are the ones who say we have to make sure those chemicals don't make it into the local water supply, so that's cool. 

Also if you've ever been in traffic behind a pre-emissions diesel engine it will become very obvious why efforts have to be made to clean that E36 M3 up a bit.

Just go to a big classic car gathering and hang around as everyone is leaving at the same time.  Sure, some of the cars are tuned well and don't stink very much. Many others are not and will induce choking. Then think about what it was like 40 years ago when that was the norm. Everywhere. All the time.  My '64 Mini was an absolute bitch to get tuned right. Nobody wanted to be behind that car for very long due to how noxious the exhaust was.

Honestly, if any of my classic cars get fairly modern EFI set-ups, I may very well add an aftermarket catalytic converter to reduce emissions.  Especially if it's a car I plan to drive a fair amount. Modern converters have proven to have negligible affect on performance and I am not really concerned about all-out HP on these cars anyway. 

As far as diesels go, I honestly can't really take sides.  My own diesel - a 2003 VW TDI - has a cat, but otherwise the emissions controls are minimal.  And it doesn't get tested for emissions in PA. The '95 Cummins 12V I had was similar (no cat at all). That said, the VW can practically leave a super-fund site behind it if I want it to (although not really to full-on "roll coal" levels).  And that's with the engine being 100% stock. With any mods, all bets are off.  

As far as the EPA being over-bearing, there are legal recourses to take. A friend's father owned a gas station back in the 60's, long before there were any EPA rules about dumping oil and leaking UG tanks.  Naturally, the site was polluted as hell and he didn't have the money to remediate it entirely on his own. Much of the remediation cost was covered by state and federal grant programs.  

Crxpilot said:

My personal experience is mainly related to companies and individuals, less about cars and car manufacturers.  So my long statement below is outside the realm of GRM subject matter. Stop reading if this may make you upset.

 

What harm can the EPA cause? 

 

My great-grandfather, Newton L of Raleigh, NC owned a few acres of land north of town up through the time of his death in the early 80s.  He had a small farm and a dried up pond behind his home. In the 1950s a neighbor asked if he could dump scrap metal into his dried pond and cover it over for Newton, since he wanted it filled with earth anyway. Newton agreed and the neighbor dumped trash metal into the pit and covered it with fresh dirt, like landfills work today.

In the early 2000s, my grandfather Al H was in the process of selling this land he inherited when 2 agents from the EPA visited him at his home. “Mr. H, we have suspicion that your land has an illegal dumping ground.” The land was marked with a pond in early surveys and flat land in more recent maps. “We’ll have to dig an exploratory hole on the site and check for pollutants.”

The test hole had metals but also trace amounts of refrigerants from refrigerators dumped in the hole 50 years prior.

The EPA sued Al and ordered the lot “amended”.

The entire pond site was excavated at Al’s cost. The site was cleared of every material ever in the hole at Al’s cost. The soil was treated and amended at Al’s cost. The hole was then covered at Al’s cost and marked on county maps as a hazardous dump ground into perpetuity.

Al wasn’t a wealthy man. This suit and the fees he incurred afterward ate his entire life savings, put him into debt, and forced him back into the workforce until his death in 2014, leaving his wife penniless and their children with the costs of her care as she survives even today.

I don’t think the EPA suicides anybody and I do appreciate charcoal evap systems. But they press ordinary, law-abiding people and entities into really ugly situations. Much is too heavy handed and misplaced in my opinion. Please pay attention to all the voices you hear on both sides of any debate.

Brown diesel manual wagons!

Sorry to hear about your grandfather. It always sucks when somebody innocent is left holding the bag for another's actions. Would you allow me to give an alternative viewpoint on a similar situation?

My town has an old industrial site. There's known contamination in the soil from a company that closed shop decades ago. That contamination has moved and spread over time. The local water company had a well nearby that eventually had to be shut off as the underground "plume" of contamination moved to the wellfield and caused unsafe levels of carcinogens in the water supply. There's a creek nearby that runs through the middle of the entire town that nobody has seen fish in for years now. Many of the homes (and a couple of elementary schools) nearby have been tested and there are unsafe levels of carcinogens off gassing from the soil and becoming airborne. Oh, and there's coincidentally a higher than average number of juvenile cancer cases over the last 10-15 years in town.

So the EPA is kind of in a can't win situation aren't they? If they go in and clean up the site, and the current owner is holding the bag for something that others did decades ago, they're examples of oppressive government overreach. But if they don't act, and ignore it, then you've got a neighborhood full of contaminated soil/air/water and a bunch of innocent kids with cancer who are the ones left holding the bag for what others did decades ago. Either way, the EPA is the bad guy and the people actually responsible are probably no longer around to be held liable.

I guess my point is that either way, the minute something bad gets dumped like that, somebody innocent is going to have to deal with the consequences. It's easy to be mad at the EPA because they're this huge, faceless monolithic agency but they've got a tough job in cases like this and they're going to be seen as the bad guy by somebody no matter what. Personally, I'd rather see them act to contain it and wreck a single person/entity's finances than have an entire town suffering from potentially deadly health impacts but I know that's  easy to say when you're not the one being held financially liable for the cleanup too.

volvoclearinghouse said:

In reply to alfadriver :

You'd have to go back to 1950's NC and determine if it was actually illegal to do what they did, then.  Of course, there was likely no way to prove who did what, or when it was done.  "Al" was essentially tried and found guilty outside of any sort of court, it sounds like.  Not due process.  

This relates to our specific hobby inasmuch as the potential exists for this agency to extrapolate its powers subjectively based on who's in charge at the time.  This isn't stating that they are all evil with bad intentions- actually just the opposite.  The government is run by people- therefore, like people, it is not perfect.  And even seemingly good people with outwardly good intentions can screw up.

And no, it's no one's "personal fault" that they were working 100% within the letter of the law...but "I was just doing what I was told" is about the weakest excuse for personal behavior.  There needs to be a sanity check in the process.  Like I said, there were any number of points in that particular anecdote where someone from the agency could have said "whoa, let's take a look at what we're doing here".  But it sounds like that never happened.  Ever read "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"?  That's how Arthur Dent's house got knocked down.  And how the Earth itself was vaporized.  Obviously that's all fiction, but like all good fiction (and humor) there is truth to it.  

So we are going to extrapolate two people's interpretation of enforcing the law that the EPA will come down with the ban hammer on our hobby?  Even though there's 1) no evidence that they have done that what so ever, in all of the history of the EPA, and 2) they are not legally allowed to enforce the Clean Air Act rules onto an individual- that's up to the states.  That seems terribly paranoid.  

Two people doing something is not a justification that an entire organization are a group of horrible people.  Never has been, never will be.  And it's also not justification to pretend that there are not car enthusiasts at the EPA- there are, quite a few of them.  They don't have an agenda to end personal transportation, let alone cars.  As you say, they are people, too- which means there are liberals and conservatives, people who adore cars and people who drive refrigerators.  They are far, far, far from evil people.  

And, again, if they are working to the letter of the law- how it's it bad that they are doing what the law instructs?  How is it a "personal choice" to enforce the law?  I very much don't understand that line of thinking.  If you get pulled over by the cops for speeding, do you hold them personally responsible for you getting a ticket?  If you don't like how the law is written, talk to your representative- it's their responsibility to change it.  Enforcement is just there to enforce the law, as written, no matter how nonsensical it may seem.  Hate the message, not the messenger.  

As you said, there are more sides to the story that most hear- and I do expect that there's more to the story that we are being told.  Let alone there has always been help to clean up sites that the owner could not afford to clean up.

I used to be in environmental assessment consulting.  We almost never saw it heard of the EPA ever showing up around here. They had to be drug here kicking and screaming.  Our state regulatory agency (SCDHEC) handles much of the dirty work.  Bother of those agencies and the USACE will hammer you over wetland violations.  

We have numerous contaminated industrial sites that EPA and DHEC ignore because the property is abandoned and there is no money. Unless the Superfund cleans it up or it gets into a Voluntary Cleanup Contract, it will sit there. 

I would love to know the backstory on how EPA showed up on Al’s doorstep.  Somebody must have ratted him out.  Every farm had a pre-regulatory landfill.  Every mill had one.  I used to find them all the time.  No regulators were out looking for these.  

No, get back to diesels.