This is not good.... WTF EPA?

In reply to tuna55:

And such a bang up job they've done keeping our drinking water safe, too!!

In reply to tuna55:

Accuse what you want of me. At least I can recognize that it's for fun.

None of that give you the right to pollute and harm other people's health.

volvoclearinghouse wrote:

alfadriver wrote: Again, all of the anti government rant is going to fix nothing. If it makes you feel better, great. But at the end of the day nobody who matters is listening.

I agree with this. Complaining, outrage etc is the knee-jerk reaction, but we need to focus this energy and take this to the people who matter. None of whom are on this board.

I wrote all of my representatives, signed the petition, and will be following up in a week. Did you?

Enough for me.

Good luck with the rants.

I see this path raising blood pressure and heart rates and accomplishing little.

volvoclearinghouse wrote: In reply to tuna55: And such a bang up job they've done keeping our drinking water safe, too!!

Dude, they rock at keeping water drinkable

bruceman wrote: Production catalytic converters are not made to withstand continuous use at high temperatures such as what will occur on a racecar. The brick will disintegrate and the cat will require frequent replacement. Maybe we all will be racing cars that are over 25 years old which hopefully would be exempt.

There are catalytic converters that are designed to withstand this and they also have replaceable cores. Marine industry has been using them for years.

tuna55 wrote:

volvoclearinghouse wrote: In reply to tuna55: And such a bang up job they've done keeping our drinking water safe, too!!

Dude, they rock at keeping water drinkable

yeah totally their fault too I mean its not like you don't have a whole party and their brainwashed constituents saying science isn't real for the corporate powers that fund them

Does any one have a link to how many people are employed by the aftermarket industry and how much money is made by the industry?

According to Wikipedia it was $318 billion and 4.2 million people in 2013 but that is on Wiki. I am trying to put a letter to my senators and representatives.

tuna55 wrote:

volvoclearinghouse wrote: In reply to tuna55: And such a bang up job they've done keeping our drinking water safe, too!!

Dude, they rock at keeping water drinkable

Yep. We have one of these:

And one of these:

Pretty sure we have some of the cleanest drinking water in the country. And the EPA had nothing to do with it.

In reply to volvoclearinghouse:

You understand the EPAs job is to make sure it stays that way right?

In reply to tuna55:

Here's some links to make this a little easier for everyone:

https://www.nationalpriorities.org/take-action/contact-your-representative/

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov//petition/tell-epa-withdraw-its-proposal-prohibit-conversion-vehicles-racecars-0

Flight Service wrote: In reply to volvoclearinghouse: You understand the EPAs job is to make sure it stays that way right?

You understand I can put pond water dosed with Mercury and Cyanide into that Berkey and drink what comes out of the spout?

My point is not that we should dump Mercury and Cyanide into ponds. I want a clean environment. But we have to balance that with doing things that we also deem valuable as humans. Otherwise we'll all eventually be relegated to sitting around in the dark and cold staring at each other, and occasionally grunting. And we all need to take a little more interest into what's going on in this country, rather than just assuming some deity of a government agency will make it all better.

volvoclearinghouse wrote:

Flight Service wrote: In reply to volvoclearinghouse: You understand the EPAs job is to make sure it stays that way right?

You understand I can put pond water dosed with Mercury and Cyanide into that Berkey and drink what comes out of the spout? My point is not that we should dump Mercury and Cyanide into ponds. I want a clean environment. But we have to balance that with doing things that we also deem valuable as humans. Otherwise we'll all eventually be relegated to sitting around in the dark and cold staring at each other, and occasionally grunting. And we all need to take a little more interest into what's going on in this country, rather than just assuming some deity of a government agency will make it all better.

And we all need to take a little more interest into what's going on in this country, rather than just assuming some deity of a government agency will make it all better.

absolutely correct, the exact same thing could be said for law enforcement and the military. But in this case I have a thread full of excuses as evidence on why clean tail pipe emissions from cars that were designed and built to have them is a problem with petitions for people to sign up saying that.

When people act responsibly it makes lots of groups irrelevant, until then, you have a people like on this thread advocating for polluting the air because it might make their entertainment a little different.

In reply to Flight Service:

Imagine that, people in this country not agreeing on something.

It's almost as if the laws should be voted on individually, and we could have representatives who could act in our stead.

Hence my complaint that legislation should be where this is at, rather than an unaccountable monolithic government agency with its own SWAT team.

tuna55 wrote: Hence my complaint that legislation should be where this is at, rather than an unaccountable monolithic government agency with its own SWAT team.

I'd tend to agree with this. Create / clarify the rules through the standard legislative and judicial processes, and the let agency exist to oversee enforcement of them.

93EXCivic wrote: Does any one have a link to how many people are employed by the aftermarket industry and how much money is made by the industry? According to Wikipedia it was $318 billion and 4.2 million people in 2013 but that is on Wiki. I am trying to put a letter to my senators and representatives.

To answer my own question, SEMA says $31 billion in 2013 but I don't know how many jobs. $318 billion is the whole car parts industry I believe.

Flight Service wrote:

bruceman wrote: Production catalytic converters are not made to withstand continuous use at high temperatures such as what will occur on a racecar. The brick will disintegrate and the cat will require frequent replacement. Maybe we all will be racing cars that are over 25 years old which hopefully would be exempt.

There are catalytic converters that are designed to withstand this and they also have replaceable cores. Marine industry has been using them for years.

Exactly. Metal matrix cats. What I run on my cars. They withstand racing heat and are actually better than the ceramic core OEM types at doing the catalyst thing. And they are more free flowing to boot, so the engine runs more efficiently and actually uses less fuel at cruise conditions. No rational person should be opposed to any of that.

About racing being "entertainment" - when we took the first MX-5 Cup cars to the 25 hours of Thunderhill, we discovered a weakness in the transmission that had been missed in all the pre-release durability testing. Before the end of the race, the information had flowed all the way to the top of the food chain in Mazda, and the NC 6-speed became a more reliable piece because of it.

Racing really does improve the breed. It's not all entertainment.

Keith Tanner wrote: About racing being "entertainment" - when we took the first MX-5 Cup cars to the 25 hours of Thunderhill, we discovered a weakness in the transmission that had been missed in all the pre-release durability testing. Before the end of the race, the information had flowed all the way to the top of the food chain in Mazda, and the NC 6-speed became a more reliable piece because of it. Racing really does improve the breed. It's not all entertainment.

Agreed. And there are other benefits as well. Leadership, problem solving, hands-on training...these are all things that racing, at ANY level, helps to foster. I've actually gotten jobs because an interviewer noticed that single line at the end of my resume where I listed "24 Hours of LeMons Team Captain".

I somehow doubt if I'd listed "Sits on couch and watches F1 on TV" as a qualification I'd have gotten the job.

This thread has started to be in danger of breaking the party rules.

That said, everybody who is saying "I do what I want and no government can tell me what to do!" should go google negative liberties. Your freedom ends when it could possibly harm somebody else or the world we live in.

Back on topic:

A possible mitigating solution to this is to have any car that is modified for racing struck from being certified and eligible for road use in any state, ever again. Kind of like Virginia does with cars that are wrecked and branded as "parts only." They can never be registered for on-road use again.

From the latest SEMA eNews:

Debunking the Myths: EPA Proposal to Prohibit Conversion of Vehicles Into Racecars

I don't have time to watch 3 hours of House Agriculture Committee hearing right now. Maybe I will tonight.

Public Hearing to Consider the Impacts of the EPA’s Actions on the Rural Economy

I suspect the primary goal of this EPA rule is to close the "for off-road use only" loophole. Sure, keep the minimal number of cars driving around pointlessly on weekends clean, but that's a lot smaller than the number of cars running competition-only parts on the street.

I do think it's chasing after diminishing returns, however. Is the effect on the country as a whole positive or negative? I'm not talking about civil liberties, I'm talking about a tiny incremental improvement in emissions versus the hit to a fairly large industry and the cost of investigating and enforcing.

alfadriver wrote: None of that give you the right to pollute and harm other people's health.

If you have no right to pollute, you have no right to breathe. Pretty much everything you do pollutes, from flipping the light switch on to driving an old Alfa. Flying a family down to Costa Rica for an Eco Tour pollutes a helluva lot more than me spending a Saturday at the track in my Miata, so shouldn't recreational travel be illegal too?

The Clean Air Act has done great things to do exactly what it was intended - clean up the air in our cities, but the EPA making all production race cars illegal is insane bureaucratic overreach.

jwagner wrote:

alfadriver wrote: None of that give you the right to pollute and harm other people's health.

If you have no right to pollute, you have no right to breathe. Pretty much everything you do pollutes, from flipping the light switch on to driving an old Alfa. Flying a family down to Costa Rica for an Eco Tour pollutes a helluva lot more than me spending a Saturday at the track in my Miata, so shouldn't recreational travel be illegal too? The Clean Air Act has done great things to do exactly what it was intended - clean up the air in our cities, but the EPA making all production race cars illegal is insane bureaucratic overreach.

I think it really should be said as no right to pollute excessively for no benefit. If you can slap a high flow cat and a few other tweaks on a race car and not sacrifice anything other than a few $$$, I see it as the responsible thing to do.

Brett_Murphy wrote: (a) That said, everybody who is saying "I do what I want and no government can tell me what to do!" should go google negative liberties. Your freedom ends when it could possibly harm somebody else or the world we live in. Back on topic: (b) A possible mitigating solution to this is to have any car that is modified for racing struck from being certified and eligible for road use in any state, ever again. Kind of like Virginia does with cars that are wrecked and branded as "parts only." They can never be registered for on-road use again.

(a) This is a gross oversimplification. Of both sides. Nobody (who isn't currently in prison, or should be) believes either.

(b) Less draconian, but still, I know lots of people who drive their track cars to the track. Unless you want to add in an exemption for "being driven to an event, car show, etc" like some states have now for vehicles with "Historic" or "Street Rod" plates. And then, good luck enforcing that.