It was the biases and infighting that put my newsletter "Logdogs Summer Sausage Monthly Review" out of business. The little cheese chunks vs no little cheese chunks debate created a lot of hard feelings.
It was the biases and infighting that put my newsletter "Logdogs Summer Sausage Monthly Review" out of business. The little cheese chunks vs no little cheese chunks debate created a lot of hard feelings.
Back on topic. It's an interesting conversation. The EPA says, says you're a street car as long as you have your emissions sticker. Remove sticker, no worries...
So... for race cars, just pull the sticker off. I'm sure this all has to do with too many people installing "test pipes" and they are trying to crush that industry.
Fueled by Caffeine wrote: Back on topic. It's an interesting conversation. The EPA says, says you're a street car as long as you have your emissions sticker. Remove sticker, no worries... So... for race cars, just pull the sticker off. I'm sure this all has to do with too many people installing "test pipes" and they are trying to crush that industry.
South Carolina has no emissions sticker, that means everything I own is a RACE CAR!!! Sweet!!!
In reply to Toyman01:
All motor vehicles sold brand-new in the United States have to type of emissions stickers they are talking about. Basically a stamp that says they comply with all relevant standards at the time of manufacture.
I see it this way: bureaucrats need jobs. They don't want to say: "OK, the air's a lot cleaner now, I think that I'll go do something different". So they find ways of tightening the screws, which gives them something to do. Now they understand that race cars are a drop in the bucket. The point of this legislation is to cripple the aftermarket performance industry so that we can't install those lumpy cams and all the other stuff that has the potential to make a car faster and/or more polluting. What they'd ultimately like to see (besides ICEs banned altogether) is anti-smog technology fitted to every ICE in the country.
In reply to Kreb:
No I don't see it that way. A cam isn't an emissions control device. Your vehicle lists the emissions control devices on the emissions sticker. https://www.epa.gov/importing-vehicles-and-engines/locating-vehicle-emissions-label
.
this is the second year in a row that carbon emissions have remained steady and maybe even slightly fallen. It is definitely showing a "decoupling" between economic growth and carbon emissions.. so we, as a world, are finally starting on the right path towards cleaning up this foul sewer we inhabit.
Granted, a lot of that was China beginning to clean up their act.. but I can remember when you could not see NYC from New Jersey and the Acid rain ate the paint off of my parent's chevy pickup.
Is the EPA a little far reaching and maybe even draconian.. without a doubt.. but I will take that over having to cut the air before taking a breath of it
I don't trust air I can't see.
OldGray320i wrote: EPA does do good things, but they're not infallable, and it's a little naive to think some of their leadership doesn't have an agenda.
Yeah, like sending millions of gallons of toxic water from an closed mine in Colorado down a river polluting hundreds of miles of shoreline and river bottom of what was once a clean river. And not one person lost their job!
IF a private company did the same thing they would have been drawn & quartered by the EPA and the media.
irish44j wrote:The Hoff wrote: Did I miss something? There wasn't a single fact or any documentation of the the headline claim.It's Fox News. I'm surprised the headline wasn't "EPA Chief Administrator Satan Beelzebub Sends His Evil Minions to Oppress Good White Christian Drivers"
Woah woah woah... This impacts me. They are coming for my race car? Why weren't you clear about this earlier. Time to get indignant.
Fueled by Caffeine wrote: In reply to Kreb: No I don't see it that way. A cam isn't an emissions control device. Your vehicle lists the emissions control devices on the emissions sticker. https://www.epa.gov/importing-vehicles-and-engines/locating-vehicle-emissions-label .
A cam is very definitely implicated in emissions. Changing it would not be cool with the EPA.
So is EPA going to have a tech shed at the bottom of every off ramp; I think not.
So I take the camshaft out of my Prius and send of to be reground. How exactly will the EPA check that I've increased the valve lift 1.5mm.
I know at least 3 people locally who could modify the ECM and you'd never be able to tell nor would it cuase a CEL.
There are a whole host of things one can do and short of putting cars on a rolling road how we the EPA know. Think VW.
Clearly the EPA is looking at people who sell the off-road only parts that go on road cars. As someone who has a government job and also has a family member working with/for the EPA I can tell you what happens is people tend to fall prey to an insular environment. What usually happens is the public or a lobby kick back into connection with reality.
Tom
Is this different than the SEMA thing from a few weeks ago?
I did a job in a boat yard yesterday and got talking to the manager. Turns out he's a car guy. He was telling me that all stern drive boats now have to have catalysts and are going to be sniffer tested soon. Also said they are trying to force thru emissions on outboards as well, but the technology isn't there. Said adding emission catalysts to a stern drive adds at least 6K in cost. Makes me want a boat even less.
In reply to novaderrik:
Nope, same thing
Keith Tanner wrote:Fueled by Caffeine wrote: In reply to Kreb: No I don't see it that way. A cam isn't an emissions control device. Your vehicle lists the emissions control devices on the emissions sticker. https://www.epa.gov/importing-vehicles-and-engines/locating-vehicle-emissions-label .A cam is very definitely implicated in emissions. Changing it would not be cool with the EPA.
Exactly. Remember the lousy cams in the later Spitfires?
Tom1200 wrote: So is EPA going to have a tech shed at the bottom of every off ramp; I think not. So I take the camshaft out of my Prius and send of to be reground. How exactly will the EPA check that I've increased the valve lift 1.5mm. I know at least 3 people locally who could modify the ECM and you'd never be able to tell nor would it cuase a CEL. There are a whole host of things one can do and short of putting cars on a rolling road how we the EPA know. Think VW. Clearly the EPA is looking at people who sell the off-road only parts that go on road cars. As someone who has a government job and also has a family member working with/for the EPA I can tell you what happens is people tend to fall prey to an insular environment. What usually happens is the public or a lobby kick back into connection with reality. Tom
It's well known that the EPA can not enforce their rules onto individuals. I called once to ask about that, and got a clear message that they can not do anything to an individual.
That's entirely left to each state to enforce.
I've pointed this out before, but I see this as closing the biggest loophole for enthusiests- the "off road use only" thing. And I really bet that it was SEMA who can be traced to the attention- as I'm sure they bragged about the industry and the cars that they represent. So some person probably did the rather simple math to determine that there are a lot more sales of off road use only parts than there are racers. And then brought that to the EPA to point out that there are sales of parts to road use vehicles that should not be allowed.
In the end, though, they can only go after the companies that sell the parts.
As much as I dont have any respect for FOX news, this looks to me as though this is simply reporting on one of the first congressional responses to the EPA "clarification" from last fall that has been widely discussed here and was pushed up to the surface by SEMA this winter.
It looks like the EPA overstepped its congressional mandate some time ago, but the wording was not clear enough, as it applies to former road certified vehicles now being used exclusively in off-road and racing, so no one got too excited. The latest proposal which was a set of regulations that apply to medium and heavy duty diesel engines included this "clarification" that essentially says 'what we meant is that any engine/vehicle that was EPA certified by the manufacturer must always remain in compliance, no matter what its current use'.
So now that the EPA words are clear, SEMA, racers, and (now) members of congress are crying foul, and want to correct this. The intent may actually be to try stop the use of emissions illegal components on road going vehicles, and I am all for that, but the rule as written and clarified effectively outlaws any vehicle that is modified, including those used exclusively for racing, that ever had an EPA emissions certification and requirement. As I read the rule and some EPA memos released after that, in order to be "legal" a race vehicle must either have to comply with all emissions that pertain to that vehicle, be a pre-emissions vehicle - both the engine and chassis, since it is not EPA permitted to swap an older engine into an emissions certified vehicle - or the engine and chassis must both manufactured specifically for racing and EPA exempted, having never had or required an EPA certification.
Keith Tanner wrote:Fueled by Caffeine wrote: In reply to Kreb: No I don't see it that way. A cam isn't an emissions control device. Your vehicle lists the emissions control devices on the emissions sticker. https://www.epa.gov/importing-vehicles-and-engines/locating-vehicle-emissions-label .A cam is very definitely implicated in emissions. Changing it would not be cool with the EPA.
Yes, but it is not an emissions control device under law as far as I can tell. This effort is aimed at emissions control devices, such as parts of the evaporative system or cats or air pumps.
Maybe they just need to make good quality high flow cats that are actually effective easier to get and specifically go after test pipes?
Pull the sticker off the car and it's an off road caR. Anything more is silly and I can't support. A one way door to convert to a race car.
In reply to wclark:
Bingo.
alfadriver wrote: It's well known that the EPA can not enforce their rules onto individuals. I called once to ask about that, and got a clear message that they can not do anything to an individual. That's entirely left to each state to enforce. I've pointed this out before, but I see this as closing the biggest loophole for enthusiests- the "off road use only" thing. And I really bet that it was SEMA who can be traced to the attention- as I'm sure they bragged about the industry and the cars that they represent. So some person probably did the rather simple math to determine that there are a lot more sales of off road use only parts than there are racers. And then brought that to the EPA to point out that there are sales of parts to road use vehicles that should not be allowed. In the end, though, they can only go after the companies that sell the parts.
That's what I'm talking about. Certain states (California most prominently) have stringent enough rules that the number of compromised emission systems is relatively low, while other states make it pretty easy to cheat. Since the EPA cannot force the states to adopt CAs rules, they are trying to put the hurt on the less compliant states by interfering with the flow of aftermarket stuff. Summit, Jegs et al, have to be going nuts right now.
I have mixed feelings about it. There's no reason that production-based race cars have to be smog exempt. It's more crap to sort through however. For a lot of us, one of the appeals of working on old or race-oriented stuff is getting rid of all the crap and reducing the mechanicals to their most basic, purpose-oriented form.
But I'm coming from the POV of someone who grew up in an era when big cities were cesspools of polution at times, and sports were what you did between coughing fits. That's relatively rare any more, and rural people undoubtedly see this as yet another government overreach. I don't disagree.
I understand that some want the world to be a perfectly healthy, risk-free place, but to me that's kind of like saying that the only color available is beige. Life tastes best when served with a side of risk.
Fueled by Caffeine wrote:Keith Tanner wrote:Yes, but it is not an emissions control device under law as far as I can tell. This effort is aimed at emissions control devices, such as parts of the evaporative system or cats or air pumps.Fueled by Caffeine wrote: In reply to Kreb: No I don't see it that way. A cam isn't an emissions control device. Your vehicle lists the emissions control devices on the emissions sticker. https://www.epa.gov/importing-vehicles-and-engines/locating-vehicle-emissions-label .A cam is very definitely implicated in emissions. Changing it would not be cool with the EPA.
You're trying to hide behind your own definition. The EPA does not want you modifying the car in such a way that emissions are affected. Yes, the emissions sticker only shows certain emissions control devices, it does not show everything in the vehicle that does affect emissions.
The CARB EO numbers are probably the clearest example of this. They basically regulate everything from the air filter to the cat outlet. Figure that any EPA crackdown would cover this same range.
Sure, you can regind the cam in your Prius and it would be difficult to catch. There's always a high-effort option. What the EPA would love to do is shut down the people selling aftermarket camshafts for your Prius.
"What if I can prove my car is still clean?" Sure, then you should be fine. But you'd have to go through the same tests that the OEs do, which are a whole lot more rigorous than a 15 minute test at a gas station. They involve cold starts, overnight evaporative emissions, testing under load and at speed, cat light-off time, etc. Very expensive.
So how about we take a specific car, apply a specific modification, and put it through the full test battery? If it passes, then any identical car with the same modification should pass. All you'd need is the paperwork. And voila, we have the California ARB EO program.
Keith Tanner wrote: So how about we take a specific car, apply a specific modification, and put it through the full test battery? If it passes, then any identical car with the same modification should pass. All you'd need is the paperwork. And voila, we have the California ARB EO program.
Now if we can limit the testing to items that may be effected by a given mod (a cam would need a re-test of exhaust emissions and cat light off time, but not evap stuff, for example) and make it possible for individuals to get this done, rather than just companies, it might be viable. By only letting companies get these tested for their parts, we end up with some cars with big aftermarkets and others with none because they don't want to invest in them.
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