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I have no problem with fining the idiots who remove particulate filters and sensors to be able to 'roll coal' at urban stoplights. That's senseless. But expensi

I have no problem with fining the idiots who remove particulate filters and sensors to be able to 'roll coal' at urban stoplights. That's senseless. But expensive emissions control systems are a problem. One part of this issue is that regulations to require expensive emission control systems work for OEMs, but they are much harder to apply to an individual with a truck at >200,000 miles. The regulations are designed for new vehicles, and the components in those new vehicles are designed to last for 10 years or 100,000 miles. It's one thing to roll the costs of installation and purchasing these particulate filters and catalytic converters onto the OEM (who gets to install them on new, clean steel with working fasteners) and another thing entirely to ask it to be done two or three times on the same vehicle. An advantage of a diesel truck is that the engine may last for 300,000 miles, but if you're looking at a bill of $5,000 on a truck that's only worth $5,000, and you already have a welder...that particulate filter, EGR cooler, catalytic converter, etc. are awfully hard to justify compared to a big steel pipe. I just helped my brother install a 'bypass kit' for offroad use on his 2009 Toyota Sequoia (which has a 5.7L gas engine). The 'smog pump' valves are known to be failure points - Toyota got sued over the 2005-2007 engines and recategorized the system into the powertrain to extend the warranty. The system costs almost $3,000 to repair, because you need to remove the entire intake to get at the valves. This system only exists to pass OEM emissions tests - specifically, while the engine is completely cold, the first 60 seconds of exhaust contains methane slightly in excess of the legal limit. The programming only cycles the valves once, for only 60 seconds, only when it's been more than 7 hours since the last start-up, only when the engine is cold, only when the ambient temperature is under 5 degrees C. The bypass kit removes this problem, it just lies to the engine and tells it that the temperature is above the threshold. It's June; none of these things applied when he, his wife, and his 4 kids under 4 were stuck in the humidity and sun with the truck in limp-home mode trying to pull their camper home because the 12-year old system with 180,000 miles on it freaked out while leaving the gas station. I wish that we could have repaired the system to work properly. I don't want to emit excess methane, neither does he! But there's no calculus in which spending either $3,000 on that vehicle or spending $600 on parts and taking 3 days off work to replace them ourselves makes sense for those 60 seconds of recirculation on cold winter mornings. What do you want him to do, buy a new $60,000 truck off the dealership and send the old one to the junkyard? I'm pretty confident that would be a lot worse for the environment than keeping the old one going another 6 years. The problem is that Toyota has no incentive to care that these limited-lifetime components are inaccessible because they're off the hook after the truck is out of warranty.

MisterTea 4y ago
USA emissions laws are always hamfistedly stupid. Just look at air injection pumps on older engines from the 80's/90's. The emissions laws were met by simply diluting the exhaust stream with air pumped into the exhaust manifold. The EPA knew this but as long as the check box was checked the bureaucracy was appeased. EPA Diesel emissions are also handled in an equally idiotic way: When a new EPA diesel mandate went into effect, it is a strict cut off for sales of ALL non compliant engines lest manufactures pay fines (ask CAT). When EPA 2006 was going into effect mandating the particulate filter, 2007 truck sales took a hard dive. No one wanted to buy new and therefor "untested" engine technology to power their business. Europe on the other hand was smart: when a new emission tier goes into effect, the previous tier is still available, but at a higher cost! This allows companies to continue to buy trusted technology at the cost of paying a higher yearly registration fee which is a sort of pollution penalty. The new tier engines have standard registration cost so it provides a monetary incentive to encourage adoption. Compare this to the "hold a gun to everyone head" policy of the stupid EPA.
no-s 4y ago
> I have no problem with fining the idiots who remove particulate filters and sensors to be able to 'roll coal' at urban stoplights. That's senseless. But expensive emissions control systems are a problem. yeah, what percent of the guy’s business went to people who wanted to roll coal anyway? Here folks just assume it was for the worst case, but they seem ignorant of the concerns you pose. I modified my diesel pickup because restoring the OEM emissions package was about $12k, more than 50% of the resale value. The truck still had 6000 hours of engine life left. My fix was about $800 and it not only passed emissions, it passed the dyno check too. It would have been cheaper if I welded the parts in myself, but I stuck with doing fuel map optimization. The value you can produce from these vehicles in a rural setting is fantastic and the designed-in longevity means environmental impact from manufacturing is amortized over very long time, unlike commuter cars which nowadays seem purposely designed to last only as long as the loan.
fargle 4y ago
Yep, my two cents here as well. Thank you for refuting the strawman that people only defeat emissions devices to roll coal. Look, adolescent per-pubescent wanna-be boys (of any age) will always exist. But diesel emissions controls are currently out-of-control. We buy diesel trucks because it's an inherently efficient engine and fuel that is rugged and should last "forever". However, the current state of the art emissions controls are a mess. Diesel-exhaust-fluid (DEF) injection, particulate filters (DPF), and exhaust-gas re-circulation (EGR) systems barely work. The manufacturers aren't truly incentivized to engineer them to function properly. Even worse, the EPA rules require even more complex and error prone fault checking - most of the time these things fail it's the built-in-test BIT checks and trip-wires. Sort of a DRM for hardware - and that what fails. Now EPA has a mandatory 5 year emissions warranty. Which sounds great until you're on the side of the road and the dealer says it'll be 5 weeks for parts (because all they can do is swap parts). You want to see a lot less people removing this half-assed claptrap? Make the warranty force manufacturers buy back any trucks that are in the shop for more than a week. Make the warranty cover a loaner vehicle of equal value and specs for vehicles throwing emissions codes. Cover RV towing or travel compensation. If we are only "renting" our trucks and have no control over them, then big-brother and big-auto need be held responsible for them. Of course this will never fly - the manufacturers know that these technologies are too unreliable to make that kind of bet on. OK, then have real right-to-repair and not just allow, not just encourage, but mandate, 3rd party parts sources - including software. This would also work. But what we have now is commercial trucks and personal vehicles that are significant investments being crippled. So what would you do? If the white-market and grey-market can't help, you go to the black market and not only fix your truck but get 150 extra horsepower and screw the planet. If you want to save the environment, stop insisting that "nobody needs diesel trucks" and stop keeping the people that do between a rock and a hard place. People mostly follow the path of least resistance. So on gas cars, things like catalytic converters are no longer so faulty that's is worth bypassing for joe-consumer. You want compliance, make it the best, easiest, option. For 99% of the truck owners, being broke on the side of the road, being out of service for weeks, or having a 4-5 figure repair bill is the issue. If you had security that as long as you didn't tamper with the system, you'd be actually be safe from these things, NOBODY would risk it.

MisterTea 4y ago

USA emissions laws are always hamfistedly stupid. Just look at air injection pumps on older engines from the 80's/90's. The emissions laws were met by simply diluting the exhaust stream with air pumped into the exhaust manifold. The EPA knew this but as long as the check box was checked the bureaucracy was appeased. EPA Diesel emissions are also handled in an equally idiotic way: When a new EPA diesel mandate went into effect, it is a strict cut off for sales of ALL non compliant engines lest manufactures pay fines (ask CAT). When EPA 2006 was going into effect mandating the particulate filter, 2007 truck sales took a hard dive. No one wanted to buy new and therefor "untested" engine technology to power their business. Europe on the other hand was smart: when a new emission tier goes into effect, the previous tier is still available, but at a higher cost! This allows companies to continue to buy trusted technology at the cost of paying a higher yearly registration fee which is a sort of pollution penalty. The new tier engines have standard registration cost so it provides a monetary incentive to encourage adoption. Compare this to the "hold a gun to everyone head" policy of the stupid EPA.

no-s 4y ago

> I have no problem with fining the idiots who remove particulate filters and sensors to be able to 'roll coal' at urban stoplights. That's senseless. But expensive emissions control systems are a problem. yeah, what percent of the guy’s business went to people who wanted to roll coal anyway? Here folks just assume it was for the worst case, but they seem ignorant of the concerns you pose. I modified my diesel pickup because restoring the OEM emissions package was about $12k, more than 50% of the resale value. The truck still had 6000 hours of engine life left. My fix was about $800 and it not only passed emissions, it passed the dyno check too. It would have been cheaper if I welded the parts in myself, but I stuck with doing fuel map optimization. The value you can produce from these vehicles in a rural setting is fantastic and the designed-in longevity means environmental impact from manufacturing is amortized over very long time, unlike commuter cars which nowadays seem purposely designed to last only as long as the loan.

fargle 4y ago

Yep, my two cents here as well. Thank you for refuting the strawman that people only defeat emissions devices to roll coal. Look, adolescent per-pubescent wanna-be boys (of any age) will always exist. But diesel emissions controls are currently out-of-control. We buy diesel trucks because it's an inherently efficient engine and fuel that is rugged and should last "forever". However, the current state of the art emissions controls are a mess. Diesel-exhaust-fluid (DEF) injection, particulate filters (DPF), and exhaust-gas re-circulation (EGR) systems barely work. The manufacturers aren't truly incentivized to engineer them to function properly. Even worse, the EPA rules require even more complex and error prone fault checking - most of the time these things fail it's the built-in-test BIT checks and trip-wires. Sort of a DRM for hardware - and that what fails. Now EPA has a mandatory 5 year emissions warranty. Which sounds great until you're on the side of the road and the dealer says it'll be 5 weeks for parts (because all they can do is swap parts). You want to see a lot less people removing this half-assed claptrap? Make the warranty force manufacturers buy back any trucks that are in the shop for more than a week. Make the warranty cover a loaner vehicle of equal value and specs for vehicles throwing emissions codes. Cover RV towing or travel compensation. If we are only "renting" our trucks and have no control over them, then big-brother and big-auto need be held responsible for them. Of course this will never fly - the manufacturers know that these technologies are too unreliable to make that kind of bet on. OK, then have real right-to-repair and not just allow, not just encourage, but mandate, 3rd party parts sources - including software. This would also work. But what we have now is commercial trucks and personal vehicles that are significant investments being crippled. So what would you do? If the white-market and grey-market can't help, you go to the black market and not only fix your truck but get 150 extra horsepower and screw the planet. If you want to save the environment, stop insisting that "nobody needs diesel trucks" and stop keeping the people that do between a rock and a hard place. People mostly follow the path of least resistance. So on gas cars, things like catalytic converters are no longer so faulty that's is worth bypassing for joe-consumer. You want compliance, make it the best, easiest, option. For 99% of the truck owners, being broke on the side of the road, being out of service for weeks, or having a 4-5 figure repair bill is the issue. If you had security that as long as you didn't tamper with the system, you'd be actually be safe from these things, NOBODY would risk it.