An entire section of the automotive industry—racing—has been exempt from the requirements for emission-control devices found on our everyday cars and trucks. Race enthusiasts got worried early in 2016 when the EPA issued new regulatory language aimed at race vehicles that have had their emissions control devices tampered with that are then driven on public roads. That may seem reasonable on its face, but the Union of Concerned Scientists is sounding the alarm that the defeat devices under discussion will not be used only by racers, since they are sometimes marketed to, “the general public who think it's fun to 'roll coal' and blow black smoke at Priuses.” The UCS wants to ensure the general public is not allowed to buy these defeat devices, only racers, and that vehicles modified with them for racing are not found on public roads away from the race track. Looking at the politics of the situation, the UCS says that as the bill is moving through the legislature, “so far, many in Congress are siding against clean air.” RPM Act in Congress would legalize emission defeat devices, for racing only (supposedly) Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.
Yes, yes, lets take the opportunity to bash diesels. Hybrids outsell diesels among personal vehicles. Most of the vehicles used for racing are gasoline. A Mazda6 diesel getting entered in a race was newsworthy for that alone. The majority of racing and off road use emission defeat devices being used on road are on gasoline cars.
There has recently been a cosmochemistry in UK on duckduckset diesel car owners who have removed their particulate filters (sometimes when they've failed) and not replaced them. It is said that this returns the exhaust emissions efficiency back 30 years!
We could blame CARB. Replaceable exhaust filters could have been a thing, but they wanted something that was 'maintenance free'.
Cosmochemistry, duckduckset???? How's that for crazy auto-corection!!! Cosmochemistry - clampdown Duckduckset - certain Can't wait for the applause from @Prodigyplace and @bisco
I just consider the source of the gibberish - Usually either spell-correct or PriusChat. The other day I tried pasting the wikipedia URL for t y r e. PC insisted on spell correcting the URL which of course, did not work any longer.
What about trucks, though? So, ultimately, here's what's going on. The EPA has long held a doctrine of, if a vehicle legitimately isn't being used on the road, then they don't care about whether the emissions equipment is modified. This allows racers to perform the engine modifications that are so often done to be competitive - and racing is usually done far away from city centers (due to race tracks being NIMBYs), and only occasionally, so the environmental impact of this is relatively low. However, many vendors are selling emissions delete equipment and tuning software and hardware for off-road use only wink wink nudge nudge. Everyone knows they're being used on the street, but it's extremely hard for the EPA to prove that - a lot of these vendors are mail order, they never see the vehicle. And, some of them may be one-man operations that the EPA is unlikely to have the resources to go after, or they may just be one-man installers using the parts/tunes "not how they're intended", and act as fall people for the larger company. While there's certainly a lot of gasoline vehicles with aftermarket defeat devices, it's really the diesel pickup trucks where it becomes a huge problem - rolling coal is a very, very visible problem, and parts to remove diesel emissions controls are ridiculously popular, between coal rollers, and also even normal diesel truck owners, due to the maintenance issues with badly implemented emissions controls on, oh, five years or so of diesel pickups (after being very weakly regulated for decades). So, last year, the EPA proposed a regulation that would close that loophole - the law never actually had a provision for an off-road use exemption, that was all EPA regulation, so they could regulate differently. Essentially, it was going to be illegal to ever remove a vehicle or engine that had been certified from compliance - if you wanted a race car, you had to buy it from the manufacturer new. So, "off-road only" parts would suddenly have no legal use, and the EPA could therefore go after any company advertising them. Amateur racers were obviously incensed by this - it would mean that an actual legit race car wouldn't be able to have any engine modifications. EPA officials basically implied that if something was an actual race car that wasn't on the street, they'd look the other way, although this would still affect the availability of parts to do those modifications with. Upshot is, some Republicans got lobbied to try to shut this down, the EPA decided to not implement that regulation, and this bill got written to try to prevent the EPA from doing it and to maintain the status quo.
I hate the coal rollers, but as you state, it is very visible. Which makes it easier to enforce if a jurisdiction has the will to do so. Before we get to that point, a pick up with a diesel starts up just over $40k, and it costs thousands to defeat the emissions on a modern one. A down pipe and a tune is about $500 for a Sonic. The coal rollers I've seen on my commute stand out, but I have only spotted 2 or 3. I can see 2 or 3 gas cars with sooty bumpers in a month. So I don't know if the coal rollers can be called a huge problem in terms of actual excessive emissions in comparison. Any studies on which is contributing more to pollution? As for amateur racing, the change in enforcement should effect all equally, and modifications to systems beside the engine wouldn't be disallowed.
Although there's some categories of amateur racing that are only really possible at a high level with extreme modifications (drag racing, pulling, and drifting come to mind)...
Are those high level racers used as daily drivers? The only ones I've seen, and can call high level, on a public road were on a trailer.
At a high level, no, but note that the EPA was going to ban anything that had ever been certified being modified for racing. So, it'd be basically impossible to get to the high levels, because you'd effectively need manufacturer sponsorship to get non-certified cars pulled off the line for you.
I understand the EPA withdrew the proposed rule. So now the question is whether the proposed legislation is just a backdoor attempt to nullify protections for the emissions control systems. Bob Wilson
I wouldn't say it's a backdoor attempt to nullify them - that's the status quo. It's a backdoor attempt to keep them nullified.
Exhaust pipe? <Chuckle> I’m wondering how soon we will see generation viewing their existence as utterly bizarre. I can hear it now...”you did what grampa? On purpose?!?”
Or some enterprising company will start building gliders for racing. Yeah, some states still might allow low sulfur(<500ppm) heating oil to be used. Though I think all the refineries are only making ULSD at this point. Then NASCAR was still using leaded gas up to a few years ago.
It's a federal law on sulfur content in fuel for road use - states can't allow it except in some limited cases of emergencies (I've heard of it in the wake of hurricanes causing oil pipeline shutdowns, that red diesel (which can legally be low sulfur diesel) becomes legal to sell for use in pre-2007 vehicles in the immediately affected states).
I come from a car brand where a "cat delete" bypass and how to defeat the emissions CEL are common points of discussion on the forums. The US cars had 2 cats per side where the ROW (Rest of world) had one. Has nothing to do with blowing smoke, more IMHO with bragging rights at how cool the mods to my car are.
As much as we don't like them, this can be covered by implementing yearly or every other year emissions inspections. In Colorado, guys rolling coal or running without cats are likely living in counties without emissions testing. Those guys who want to install mods to roll coal or otherwise defeat emissions controls would have to do a yearly install-uninstall cycle, which would be incentive enough for most to not install them. Amateur racing is damn fun, and I support allowing those guys to not have to meet emissions controls when on the track (including buying "off-road" parts). However on the street they need to meet the regulations like the rest of us.
Yes!!! Yes!!! We can get a toofer for poorly written laws while we're at it!! It's pretty simple, really. When the only tool that you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. See also: Mattress Tag laws.
