DPF and Emission Controls vs Models

[rScotty]

There becomes a point of diminishing returns.

I lived and commuted in Los Angeles. I was originally thrilled with the EPA and pollution control and regulations. It did make a difference in the air quality.

Now, they’re overreaching, taking options away from the consumer and making purchasing and financial decisions for us by causing most engine driven machines to be way more expensive than they should be or not an option at all.

Mike

I remember the old days with city smog and smoke-belching factories....but no EPA big brother either.
The EPA began over-reaching from the beginning; that's the price of dealing with an established problem.
Today it's either EPA or Smog. Pick your poison.

Or we could just accept rational self-restraint. Does that seem possible?

 

[pmsmechanic]

As I get older, I seem to have less tolerance when it comes to “dirty” air. The truth is, it’s much more pleasant running tier 4 (and 5) equipment. With 1,000s of hours under my belt running said equipment, I’ve never had a single emissions related failure.

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2023 Cummins tier 5

That's interesting because 2 of my mechanic friends tell me that over 50% of warranty work on new tractors is emissions related. It's interesting too that preemissions highway tractors command a premium on the used market because they have considerably lower operating costs. I could go on with more examples but you should get the picture by now.

And just for the record I'm not against clean engines. I'm very against the present way of meeting emissions standards. Where the customer pays for poor engineering with poorer fuel economy and reduced engine reliability. There has to be a better way.

 

[jyoutz]

EPA is the most out of control agency in government (and think what an extreme that is!) When they tightened the screws on small diesel cars 8 or 10 years ago those vehicles were contributing less than 1/10 of one % of the traffic pollution in the US. VW should have been given a whistleblower award for exposing the EPA and temporarily outsmarting them. Instead it cost VW north of $15billion. Appear to report to no one and throw on rules just because they get away with it. Maybe the 2024 election will put them under control??

EPA operates on laws established by Congress. The EPA is of course part of the executive branch, but like all executive branch agencies, the laws established by Congress have more effect on policies than the occupant of the White House. Some members of Congress like to claim otherwise, but that’s simply politics. Regulation rule making can only be stretched to the extent that congressional acts provide for. People who disagree with federal agency policies need to be contacting their congressional representatives and senators.

 

[jyoutz]

The often repeated idea that these systems are trouble free is so false that it needs to be called out as an outright deception. Anyone who has been writing these things for the long term knows that they are extremely problematic and the only “reliable” thing about them is that you can count on them failing within 5-7 years. Repairs are not affordable and many desire to bypass the system when faced with the cost. My Kubota regens every 16 hours or so, I run it at very high rpm.

Mine regens every 60+ hours. But what’s important to me is that I no longer get a sinus headache with my newer T4 tractor. With my old pre-emissions tractor, I would get a headache and even feel sick for a day whenever I operated the tractor more than 1 hour.

 

[CloverKnollFarms]

I will admit, I enjoy how cleanly the tractor operates. Whether I’ll feel that way after a few regens, is yet to be seen. At this rate, I may see one regen per year

 

[rScotty]

That's interesting because 2 of my mechanic friends tell me that over 50% of warranty work on new tractors is emissions related. It's interesting too that preemissions highway tractors command a premium on the used market because they have considerably lower operating costs. I could go on with more examples but you should get the picture by now.

And just for the record I'm not against clean engines. I'm very against the present way of meeting emissions standards. Where the customer pays for poor engineering with poorer fuel economy and reduced engine reliability. There has to be a better way.

I agree. The present state of emission system design seems like the engineers just copied each other instead of thinking the problem through. Using higher RPM to make more paticles which can be trapped and then burnt is questionable arithmetic. It still sums to more particles with more surface area & unknown biology - but has the downside of burning more fuel to get there.

This emissions snafu reminds me of the era when cars were transitioning from drum brakes to disk brakes. Drum brakes had poor reliability, difficult service, poor leverage, trapped particles, and couldn't get rid of their heat - all of which made drum brakes big, heavy, complex and expensive.
Disk brakes were better in all ways, and braked better too. But other than on race and sports cars it still took 20 years to even start to make the change over. And then for the longest time we still made vehicles with disk fronts and drum rears. Twice the complexity for zero gain.

rScotty

 

[Rdrcr]

I remember the old days with city smog and smoke-belching factories....but no EPA big brother either.
The EPA began over-reaching from the beginning; that's the price of dealing with an established problem.
Today it's either EPA or Smog. Pick your poison.

Or we could just accept rational self-restraint. Does that seem possible?

There certainly isn't a perfect solution to this problem. But, at this time, I'd go with self-restraint and let the consumer decide on what direction they would like to pursue. Let the best argument win...without government force or restriction.

Mike

 

[Paystar]

What offends me is they force unreliable emission controls on our small homeowner lawn mowers, yet back when I used to live in the city of SSM which has Algoma Steel, the inside of my house and my garage were covered in black graphite dust.
But you don't see the Ministry (EPA for you Americans) going after them.

And trust me, I have worked in there and witnessed it.....they wait for the sun to go down, then the black cloud is released when Joe public doesn't see it.

 

[rScotty]

There certainly isn't a perfect solution to this problem. But, at this time, I'd go with self-restraint and let the consumer decide on what direction they would like to pursue. Let the best argument win...without government force or restriction.

Mike

I would tend to agree - except we already tried it and it didn't work. Letting individuals decide what direction they would like to pursue without government force or restriction is exactly how the world got into the whole smog and dirty air problem in the first place. I wish it weren't true.

The problem seems to be that without regulations a single person or company is free to pollute as much of everyone's air/water/land as they want. Basically, that's a dictatorship.

What offends me is they force unreliable emission controls on our small homeowner lawn mowers, yet back when I used to live in the city of SSM which has Algoma Steel, the inside of my house and my garage were covered in black graphite dust.
But you don't see the Ministry (EPA for you Americans) going after them.

And trust me, I have worked in there and witnessed it.....they wait for the sun to go down, then the black cloud is released when Joe public doesn't see it.

Any group of citizens affected by some night-time black cloud just has to get together, document the problem, sign a formal complaint, and deliver it to the press and lawmakers. That usually gets some action, but people don't like to do that - they prefer to get some organization to do it for them.

Maybe that is how we ended up with these small stupid regulations. We were being lazy, so we invented the EPA and then inflicted it on ourselves.

rScotty

 

[Rdrcr]

I would tend to agree - except we already tried it and it didn't work. Letting individuals decide what direction they would like to pursue without government force or restriction is exactly how the world got into the whole smog and dirty air problem in the first place. I wish it weren't true.

The problem seems to be that without regulations a single person or company is free to pollute as much of everyone's air/water/land as they want. Basically, that's a dictatorship.

rScotty

I thought a government and/or a government leader telling everyone what to do, how to live and what to buy is precisely the definition of a dictatorship. Right?
So it's okay if its the government, but not okay if its the individual?

Plus, you already have rising pollution in many developing/developed nations that we cannot control. Or, do you wish the EPA had control over all 195 nations worldwide?

I'm okay with some commonsense regulation. But, we are way way beyond that at this point in the US.

Mike