4 ms·

What about it? No vehicle will do it from the factory, so I don't see how it's relevant here. It's the result of running a diesel massively, massively over-ri

by Syonyk 6y ago

What about it? No vehicle will do it from the factory, so I don't see how it's relevant here. It's the result of running a diesel massively, massively over-rich (with aftermarket tuning), and it's absolute hell on the engine - that amount of diesel in the cylinder washes down the cylinder walls and wipes off the lubricating film, so the cylinder wear is insane from even fairly short periods of it. Even in diesel truck circles, "the other 99.9%" of truck owners think it's just as stupid as everyone else does - in addition to being engine abuse, it tends to attract an awful lot of unwelcome attention, and there are people who won't distinguish between "You've modified your truck to belch a column of coal black smoke for attention" and "An older diesel puts out a bit of brown smoke if you get on it hard suddenly," which can lead to some nuisance emissions testing. My truck (24 years and change) will smoke a bit if I stand on it and the fuel flow outruns boost coming up, but it's also entirely emissions compliant and passes the tests cleanly - it's just something older diesels do under certain conditions. I try my best to avoid it, but if I need to get a trailer up to speed (especially quickly, if someone is coming up hard behind me), it'll put out a bit of brown smoke until the turbo gets spinning. None of that has anything to do with VW, though. They were burning clean, which any sort of modern high pressure injection system will typically do, they just had really high NOx emissions for their emissions tier.

yread 6y ago
> My truck (24 years and change) will smoke a bit if I stand on it and the fuel flow outruns boost coming up, but it's also entirely emissions compliant and passes the tests cleanly - it's just something older diesels do under certain conditions I always thought that banning old diesels from centers of European cities was just silly (they passed their emissions after all so they can't be billowing smoke, right?), thanks for changing my opinion
- Syonyk 6y ago
  No problem. If your concern is the particulate matter, then, yes, banning old diesels makes some sense. They don't have the particulate filters - those started showing up in the 2000-2010 era. However, I would rather see that implemented as tighter standards, and if you can meet them with a retrofit kit, you can continue driving the older ones. We saw this with noise kits for older jets (retrofit kits that reduce the noise to the new standards), and if the concern is specifically emissions, then if you can make an older vehicle meet the newer standards, there's no reason to keep them out. I'm not a fan of arbitrarily destroying old but operational equipment. My truck is a '97, and I believe the smoke opacity limit for emissions testing is 40% (it's allowed to block/scatter 40% of the light going through the exhaust). I believe commercial trucks of the same age are held to roughly the same standards. That's a good bit of smoke in the exhaust. But until you get into the high pressure common rail stuff (up at 30k+ psi, multiple injections per cycle), you'll get some smoke under certain conditions.
- gsnedders 6y ago
  Looking at emissions standards in Europe, a truck from 24 years ago in Europe, assuming its gross vehicle weight is between 1760 kg and 3500 kg, would be allowed to emit 0.25g of PM/km. The same limit for something built since 2013 is 0.0045g of PM/km. We're talking multiple orders of magnitude improvement here. As a sidenote, HO+NOx has gone from 1.7g/km to 0.350g/km in 2013 (and onto 0.215g/km since then, in 2016), which is often as significant when it comes to desires to reduce air pollution.
- llampx 6y ago
  Emissions standards change over time. You could get some really polluting cars in the old days, and you can't anymore. Why should we be breathing in the smoke from these old cars from an era where emissions and pollution weren't taken as seriously as now?
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    The proportion of old vehicles on the road is small. And the last thing most of the people who drive them need is additional expensive compliance hoops to drive through. For every hipster yuppie driving "muh classic Hilux just like daddy owned in 1993" there a few dozen people living out of the back of a Caprice Classic wagon because they have no better option.
ak217 6y ago
I used to live next to a freeway and I know the true cost of dirty diesel engines. Get on any US freeway and you'll notice that while a majority of diesels are fine, there is a minority that is belching soot any time the driver steps on the gas. This is simply unacceptable - this tiny minority of diesels kills people over time - especially the poorer populations who live close to the freeways. I would prefer much more stringent enforcement where any truck belching smoke can be spot checked and impounded. The emissions testing is not a "nuisance". It saves lives. A noisy motorcycle would be a better example of a nuisance.
- Syonyk 6y ago
  The pointless out of band emissions testing of an emissions compliant truck (that easily passes the tests) having to go in for a test because it smokes a bit under hard acceleration and someone called it in for "rolling coal" is very much a nuisance to the truck owner and a waste of time/resources for all parties involved. An older diesel engine can smoke a decent bit under hard acceleration and still be entirely emissions legal - it's not until you get into the particulate filters in the... oh, 2010s or so (not sure, I don't have anything that new) that you can contain all the particulate matter. If your stance is that diesels shouldn't be permitted, or that anything older than a certain age shouldn't be allowed to be registered, that's fine, but that's not what I'm referring to here.
  - ak217 6y ago
    My stance is that diesels should only be permitted if they satisfy the EPA 2008 diesel PM standards or better. No older engines should be permitted unless they are retrofitted to comply with the standard and pass regular state tests. We could have a "cash for clunkers" type program to incentivize them to be lawfully scrapped. I appreciate that you are as annoyed as the rest of us at the coal rollers. I think we need much more aggressive fines and impounds for those, too.
    - Syonyk 6y ago
      Destroying nearly-new trucks for emissions reasons is a pretty questionable use of funding (and, yes, a 12 year old truck is still quite new) - and you're not going to be able to get away with a token few thousand dollars to encourage people to scrap them. A decently maintained heavy road engine (tractor trailer) is a million+ mile motor, easily. A medium truck engine (think your typical toolbox work trucks, tow trucks, International boom trucks, etc) will do 300k-500k miles, and depending on how much the truck is used, that may be 20-30 years of operation. Same for the light diesels - they tend to have a practical service life of decades. My 24 year old truck is starting to be a little bit more rare on the roads out here, but I still see plenty... If you know what to listen for, you can identify a lot of diesels by sound - and the International T444E (mid-90s design, the Ford 7.3 Powerstroke is that engine with a few tweaks) has a very distinctive snap at idle from the single shot injectors. There are still an awful lot of those on the road, and the youngest of them is almost 20 years old. "Destroying 30-50% of the diesel fleet on the road" is not something I'd be particularly excited about - especially since new vehicle production isn't particularly environmentally friendly either. If you're specifically focused on the PM emissions, there may be ways to retrofit those older engines (at the cost of likely a substantial increase in fuel burn from the backpressure), but if you're going to hold them to the newer NOx standards, there's just no way to do it. They don't have the injection pressure and EGR systems in place to do it. As of right now, they'd just be replaced with new diesels, because there are no electrics meaningfully on the market that solve the problems a large diesel engine solves right now. Plenty have been announced, very few are actually shipping, and of those announced, everyone is silent on their towing capabilities (I don't care if you can tow 15k lbs on a receiver mount, that kind of trailer weight should be on a gooseneck or 5th wheel hitch, and everyone is really, really silent on how their announced electric trucks fit either of those). I also very much dislike "Cash for Clunkers" type programs in that they're one of the most nastily regressive programs one can possibly create. That program ruined the bottom end of the used car market for most of a decade, and permanently destroyed a lot of vehicles of a particularly easy to maintain and cheap to operate era (low pressure single point throttle body injection, not a ton of luxury features). It was a nice little handout to the next couple tiers up, but if you were operating in the "$100 car" realm (which were a thing at the time, I've owned 4 sub-$400 cars in the 2000-2010 era), it was absolutely devastating to your ability to find cheap cars. That sort of effective floor on vehicle prices for a while, followed by the hollowing out of anything below that price in the market... eh. Let's not do that again. As far as coal rollers, though, the best thing that could happen is that everyone stops getting worked up about them and ignore them. They do it for the attention, and I'll suggest that it works really, really well. If you see one, get the plate, call it into your local emissions enforcement hotline if that's a thing, and move on with life. Everyone getting all wound up about them on the internet is exactly what I expect a lot of them enjoy about it anymore.
samcheng 6y ago
It's not just trucks - I was able to get my (pre-cheating-scandal) 2003 VW TDI to belch a cloud of smoke if I idled for a while (over five minutes) then worked it hard (e.g. a freeway onramp). I remember getting honked at by a Prius once... IMO, these occasional particulate emissions were outweighed by the excellent fuel economy - rated at 46 MPG but regularly 43 MPG. Of course, this technology has been largely obsoleted by electric drivetrains. No rolling coal from a Tesla!
- xnx 6y ago
  I will not be at all surprised if there's an aftermarket kit to spew soot out of an otherwise electric vehicle.

by Syonyk 6y ago

yread 6y ago

> My truck (24 years and change) will smoke a bit if I stand on it and the fuel flow outruns boost coming up, but it's also entirely emissions compliant and passes the tests cleanly - it's just something older diesels do under certain conditions I always thought that banning old diesels from centers of European cities was just silly (they passed their emissions after all so they can't be billowing smoke, right?), thanks for changing my opinion

Syonyk 6y ago
No problem. If your concern is the particulate matter, then, yes, banning old diesels makes some sense. They don't have the particulate filters - those started showing up in the 2000-2010 era. However, I would rather see that implemented as tighter standards, and if you can meet them with a retrofit kit, you can continue driving the older ones. We saw this with noise kits for older jets (retrofit kits that reduce the noise to the new standards), and if the concern is specifically emissions, then if you can make an older vehicle meet the newer standards, there's no reason to keep them out. I'm not a fan of arbitrarily destroying old but operational equipment. My truck is a '97, and I believe the smoke opacity limit for emissions testing is 40% (it's allowed to block/scatter 40% of the light going through the exhaust). I believe commercial trucks of the same age are held to roughly the same standards. That's a good bit of smoke in the exhaust. But until you get into the high pressure common rail stuff (up at 30k+ psi, multiple injections per cycle), you'll get some smoke under certain conditions.
gsnedders 6y ago
Looking at emissions standards in Europe, a truck from 24 years ago in Europe, assuming its gross vehicle weight is between 1760 kg and 3500 kg, would be allowed to emit 0.25g of PM/km. The same limit for something built since 2013 is 0.0045g of PM/km. We're talking multiple orders of magnitude improvement here. As a sidenote, HO+NOx has gone from 1.7g/km to 0.350g/km in 2013 (and onto 0.215g/km since then, in 2016), which is often as significant when it comes to desires to reduce air pollution.
llampx 6y ago
Emissions standards change over time. You could get some really polluting cars in the old days, and you can't anymore. Why should we be breathing in the smoke from these old cars from an era where emissions and pollution weren't taken as seriously as now?
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  The proportion of old vehicles on the road is small. And the last thing most of the people who drive them need is additional expensive compliance hoops to drive through. For every hipster yuppie driving "muh classic Hilux just like daddy owned in 1993" there a few dozen people living out of the back of a Caprice Classic wagon because they have no better option.

ak217 6y ago

I used to live next to a freeway and I know the true cost of dirty diesel engines. Get on any US freeway and you'll notice that while a majority of diesels are fine, there is a minority that is belching soot any time the driver steps on the gas. This is simply unacceptable - this tiny minority of diesels kills people over time - especially the poorer populations who live close to the freeways. I would prefer much more stringent enforcement where any truck belching smoke can be spot checked and impounded. The emissions testing is not a "nuisance". It saves lives. A noisy motorcycle would be a better example of a nuisance.

Syonyk 6y ago
The pointless out of band emissions testing of an emissions compliant truck (that easily passes the tests) having to go in for a test because it smokes a bit under hard acceleration and someone called it in for "rolling coal" is very much a nuisance to the truck owner and a waste of time/resources for all parties involved. An older diesel engine can smoke a decent bit under hard acceleration and still be entirely emissions legal - it's not until you get into the particulate filters in the... oh, 2010s or so (not sure, I don't have anything that new) that you can contain all the particulate matter. If your stance is that diesels shouldn't be permitted, or that anything older than a certain age shouldn't be allowed to be registered, that's fine, but that's not what I'm referring to here.
- ak217 6y ago
  My stance is that diesels should only be permitted if they satisfy the EPA 2008 diesel PM standards or better. No older engines should be permitted unless they are retrofitted to comply with the standard and pass regular state tests. We could have a "cash for clunkers" type program to incentivize them to be lawfully scrapped. I appreciate that you are as annoyed as the rest of us at the coal rollers. I think we need much more aggressive fines and impounds for those, too.
  - Syonyk 6y ago
    Destroying nearly-new trucks for emissions reasons is a pretty questionable use of funding (and, yes, a 12 year old truck is still quite new) - and you're not going to be able to get away with a token few thousand dollars to encourage people to scrap them. A decently maintained heavy road engine (tractor trailer) is a million+ mile motor, easily. A medium truck engine (think your typical toolbox work trucks, tow trucks, International boom trucks, etc) will do 300k-500k miles, and depending on how much the truck is used, that may be 20-30 years of operation. Same for the light diesels - they tend to have a practical service life of decades. My 24 year old truck is starting to be a little bit more rare on the roads out here, but I still see plenty... If you know what to listen for, you can identify a lot of diesels by sound - and the International T444E (mid-90s design, the Ford 7.3 Powerstroke is that engine with a few tweaks) has a very distinctive snap at idle from the single shot injectors. There are still an awful lot of those on the road, and the youngest of them is almost 20 years old. "Destroying 30-50% of the diesel fleet on the road" is not something I'd be particularly excited about - especially since new vehicle production isn't particularly environmentally friendly either. If you're specifically focused on the PM emissions, there may be ways to retrofit those older engines (at the cost of likely a substantial increase in fuel burn from the backpressure), but if you're going to hold them to the newer NOx standards, there's just no way to do it. They don't have the injection pressure and EGR systems in place to do it. As of right now, they'd just be replaced with new diesels, because there are no electrics meaningfully on the market that solve the problems a large diesel engine solves right now. Plenty have been announced, very few are actually shipping, and of those announced, everyone is silent on their towing capabilities (I don't care if you can tow 15k lbs on a receiver mount, that kind of trailer weight should be on a gooseneck or 5th wheel hitch, and everyone is really, really silent on how their announced electric trucks fit either of those). I also very much dislike "Cash for Clunkers" type programs in that they're one of the most nastily regressive programs one can possibly create. That program ruined the bottom end of the used car market for most of a decade, and permanently destroyed a lot of vehicles of a particularly easy to maintain and cheap to operate era (low pressure single point throttle body injection, not a ton of luxury features). It was a nice little handout to the next couple tiers up, but if you were operating in the "$100 car" realm (which were a thing at the time, I've owned 4 sub-$400 cars in the 2000-2010 era), it was absolutely devastating to your ability to find cheap cars. That sort of effective floor on vehicle prices for a while, followed by the hollowing out of anything below that price in the market... eh. Let's not do that again. As far as coal rollers, though, the best thing that could happen is that everyone stops getting worked up about them and ignore them. They do it for the attention, and I'll suggest that it works really, really well. If you see one, get the plate, call it into your local emissions enforcement hotline if that's a thing, and move on with life. Everyone getting all wound up about them on the internet is exactly what I expect a lot of them enjoy about it anymore.

samcheng 6y ago

It's not just trucks - I was able to get my (pre-cheating-scandal) 2003 VW TDI to belch a cloud of smoke if I idled for a while (over five minutes) then worked it hard (e.g. a freeway onramp). I remember getting honked at by a Prius once... IMO, these occasional particulate emissions were outweighed by the excellent fuel economy - rated at 46 MPG but regularly 43 MPG. Of course, this technology has been largely obsoleted by electric drivetrains. No rolling coal from a Tesla!

xnx 6y ago
I will not be at all surprised if there's an aftermarket kit to spew soot out of an otherwise electric vehicle.