A Question of Ethics and Emissions

It's not about clean air it's about regulating small operations out of the picture. Competition is a sin. Regulations are the tool and tax used to eliminate it. The big boys are fine with it. You have a choice. Respect the regulatory burden and pay the price or skirt it and pay it. The more people who have no respect for the law the more moot it becomes. The government has caused such a mess with so many issues at home and abroad I have to think that probably within 3 or 5 years at the most a little smoke coming out exhaust is going to be the least of their worries.

 

First off the pollution controls started in 1970, and the injection pressures were below 450 lbs, and we had pre cups, and early PT systems.
So before you get all soft and fussy for the good old days.
The pollution laws were fast tracked By Ronald Reagan when the companies were caught cheating. I am not aware of any new Class eight EPA rules coming on board, and getting all soft and fuzzy for the 350 HP engines of that day would get you broke in a hurry.
The new tecnoligy is going to open up new avenues of HP, DEF.
Many technologies could not be used when the fuel was full of sulphur, I loved doing burnt valve Jobs caused by sulphur fuel, and turbo's from sulphur chunks coming loose.
Please do give us a link to any new EPA pollution laws related to Class eights.
International lost there fight with the EPA, they are running out of carbon credits this month, and it was about the DEF equipped engines running after the DEF was empty. Not one thing about changing the law, all about trying to get away with polluting using enhanced EGR.

 

To answer your question I think the Detroit trick would still be considered tampering with the emission equipment. But you would have a good argument. The only real way to get power and not emission equipment is to buy a glider while it's still legal or transplant an older engine into a newer truck which I read was legal but am still amazed. You could probably find a truck with a C13 in it for a good deal and rip it out and put a C15 6NZ in there.

 

Nobody is longing for the "good ol days" of no a/c and 300hp engines. The free market will always come up with a solution. The problem is and always has been the market isnt free. Still waiting on the promised new avenues of clean, reliable, HP from government madates.

 

I think you're stuck in your truck a little too much looking down a tunnel. On-Road vehicles get their emissions tightened up at the same time. From cars and pickups to Class 8s. They all are mandated on the same dates with the same standards.

Off-road equipment under 750hp is going through the same processes, they are just a couple years behind right now. Why the epa gave them a couple years longer than on-road equipment I do not know. I can speculate that maybe it was due to the amount of on-road vehicles versus the amount of off-road. Maybe it was because many on-road vehicle engines were manufactured by the same companies that also manufacture many off-road engines, so this gave them time to implement it all versus having to try to figure it all out at once, and they considered on-road to be the first order of business. I also feel its partially due to the environment that on-road got chosen first, you don't see a farmer driving their tractor in the middle of LA, or a parking ramp, or a loading dock.

Off-road equipment is currently in the "Tier 4 Interim" stage which was put into effect for 2011. They have until 2014 when "Tier 4 Final" goes into effect to clean up the rest of their act. Then they will be on the same level as on-road vehicles. Yes our tractors have SCR,EGR,DPFs you name it, its all there.

They also need to establish a DEF network, its easier for on-road vehicles to find DEF because they are not often operating divorced from civilization like off road vehicles.

As its been stated, these standards were put into effect a long time ago.

There weren't many engine manufacturers sitting back collecting profits, most all of the major ones that are in the off-Road market are also in the on-road markets. Cummins, Daimler, CAT,Iveco, and Volvo are some that come to mind. The off-road only engine makers are usually just making them for their own vehicles (Sisu,Deere,etc)

I'm not trying to be negative. As I do see your side of "why cant they just make it work right first and then put it on, in the long run it would make sense". Well ya, but its the government, and they dont like to make sense. Part of it is also like any other new part, even after lab testing and preliminary testing, there is a point where they release it and it fails. Look at the new SCR systems. More research and testing went into them, and less and less issues are the result. Its something that has to evolve over time.

All industries have emissions regulations. Heck even dairy farmers, like me, have emissions regulations for our cows. Fortunately here in Wisconsin we are a little more normal, but I have a lot of friends in CA that are paying an additional tax for their cows emissions.

What extra pollutants? The particulate filter is trapping the PM which is now lessened thanks to the SCR allowing the engine to create as much NOX as needed (good efficient combustion,lots of heat,less PM, lots of NOX). The SCR scrubs the NOX, and the SOX is reduced by lessening its presense in the fuel itself. The 2010 Emissions diesels (2011 model year) are basically pumping a lot of Nitrogen,CO2,H20 and some CO into the air. There are trace amounts of NOX,SOX,and PM still, but hardly any. The air coming out of them is extremely clean, there aren't any extra pollutants.

While I agree, wheres the benefit in consuming more fuel, to make less emissions, see my above statement. The emissions are less no matter how much fuel is burned when compared to the older non-emissions controlled engines. When NOX is reduced by 90% and you go from 7mpg to say 5mpg thats only a 30% reduction in fuel consumption, so again, in the long run, emissions are reduced.

And again I will state, am I a treehugger, no. I work on diesels for a living and see the terrors some of these systems impose on the engines, and have seen the nightmares that every single OEM has had with the 07 emissions trucks DPFs. CAT, Cummins, Ford,GM,etc. They all had their issues. I'm just here being devils advocate because I listen to people repeat this statement at the local gatherings and its not fair to the other side of the story. I'm all for not liking the emissions systems, but I'm not the type of person who won't take the time to see the other side as well, which i do see in this case. MPGs suffered, but emissions went down. You can have all of the conspiracies you want, thats fine, many of them probably hold some truth. Nothings honest anymore, but at the end of the day were talking about the emissions controls and our trucks. Yes MPGs went down, but in the long run emissions did as well.

As for the need to reduce them to this level in the first place, that I do not know or have much of an opinion on. I am all for clean air, but do I support global warming and such, not really. I just know that I like driving an SCR equipped truck into the shop to work on it, because I am sensitive to diesel exhaust (tightness of chest, watery eyes, headache, nausea) and while I like the smell of diesel in the morning, and think SCR trucks faintly stink, i'd rather have one of them running in the shop than the older ones. And then theres the pulling tractor, that takes emissions to a whole new level.

Again, i hate the stuff as much as the next guy, but the newer SCR stuff is running much better from what I have see and I feel things are not on the right track. Is a 10-20% price increase on new equipment worth it all? I dont know, but I can only hope it is in the end.

 

I'm curious, has anyone had a BullyDog or PDI tuned ACERT fail any sort of emissions test ?

 

CO2 is not reduced, it's higher, and if they didn't need to care about NOx, all other pollutants would be low without aftertreatment and cats because with todays technology fuel can be burned very clean. NOx is coming from the air that is pumped through engine so there's nothing that can be done to it without aftertreatment, greenies should just accept that. Maybe some special regulations for the trucks and busses that operate in tight city centres and tunnels where NOx might be a real problem for peoples health.

You must always think how much oil drilling, transporting and refining pollutes, a little bit of NOx coming from the diesel exhaust is nothing compared to that.

 

Probably not if their software is done right because only emissions test they can do is smoketest.

 

Yes that is true though. CO2 and CO both are increased as more fuel is burned. No way around that.

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