SteveM928

So older cars are much more likely to be polluting, and yet cars over 25 years old are the ones that are exempt. Yes, sounds like they've got things all figured out.

Ron_H

The "reasoning" is that most cars 25 years and older would most likely be ready for the junkyard, except for those that are collectible. The collectibles would tend to be preserved and maintained fastidiously. And they would be so few that they don't constitute a measureable nuisance.
Many of them are not driven regularly either, only on "Sunday" and to shows or for pleasure. My 914/6 falls into this catagory. I could put just about any combination of fuel/exhaust system into this car so long as it is 1970 or later, which assumes that later is better and more efficient. I have MFI for it which was not available on 914/6s but is more efficient (but not much). The engine IS cleaner than the original six engine. And if is not driven regularly. But I could put a Chevy into it.

Of course there are a few poorly maintained clunkers around contradicting this reasoning, and there are always efforts to change this exemption. That would kill the restoration business drastically. Unfortunately, some jerks make it bad for everyone in some instances. Many cherry restored Porsches and other nice examples of automotive history would become relics if this ever happened. Anyone who has experienced a drive or ride in a 2.8L 911RSR would know what a tragedy that would be.

Old & New

Yes, here in the Northeast we often praise California for pioneering air-quality standards... some of our fondest thoughts.

Jessa

For the sake of cleaner air, I do fully support emissions laws and testing to enforce them. However, requiring a cat, or any other specific device is silly. It makes more sence to limit the permissable volume of certain gas emissions and leave it up the automakers and individual car owners to meet that requirement however they can. Most cars would probably meet that requirement by using a cat, but it would leave the door open for other aproaches that would work just as well.

Legislating a specific technology, instead of a specific goal, is a bad idea. What happens when a completely new or different technology comes along and does the same thing? Then, you've got a lobby of people with a vested financial interest in the "old way" that fight to keep the laws the same.

Ron_H

No one needs to search very far to see examples that prove Jessa's assertion.

Here is someone who put it a little differently:

John Stuart Mill said, "It often happens that the universal belief of one age, a belief from which no one was free or could be free without an extraordinary effort of genius or courage, becomes to a subsequent age, so palpable an absurdity that the only difference is to imagine how such an idea could have ever have appeared credible."

Anyone remember when a car with an engine behind the driver won Indianapolis? How could that happen??

dr bob

Great idea, but it leaves the door open to massive fraud. I know that if I dump a significant amount of ethanol or even some methanol in he tank, I can get the car to pass NOx with no cat. I just need to put in a tank of this super additive, whatever that is, to get past my bi-annual auto-rectal exam. (No, by 'auto' I meant the car...). We have proven that the smog-station guys are seldom doctoral candidates even when it comes to their stated specialty, so asking them to do anything beyond the "is it there?" questions is asking a lot.

We also need to keep in mind that the smog systems on the car are not limited to tailpipe emissions. Those that are older than twice the age of their cars (sometimes wish I wasn't...) may remember that one of the first smog devices was based on venting crankcase fumes back to the intake. Blowby gasses used to be vented through hoses and pipes to the ground under the car. HC vapor "recovery" systems showed up later, to help manage all the raw fuel vapors being vented directly to the air we breath. Along with the vapor-recovery nozzles that are pretty much universal in smog market areas, they cut almost all of the HC emissions from the cars. Consider that a good running car would spew 90% or more of it's HC while sitting or at the pump, and you get an idea how this relates to tailpipe tests.


Ultimately, the aassumption is that the manufacturers have engineers that are smarter than the test guys, and certainly smarter than the commoners like us. If there was a better method, it would have been done for you. Remember also that the manufacturers, Porsche included, were not required to have catalysts on the cars. They were only given emissions targets, and could use whatever they wanted. However, they are required to warranty that the car won't fail a test during an extended warranty period that's currently 100,000 miles IIRC. So while it may have been able to pass catless as it left the factory, there was no way to guarantee that it would always pass after things started to wear a bit.


Wanna drive without a cat and sure you can always pass a sniff test, even with some bad gas, a weak plug, leaking injector, and those ten-year-old wires? Is there really anybody here ready to make that claim? Porsche wasn't.


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OK bob, take a DEEP breath....

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SteveM928

I definitely agree. The more you start to think about some of it, the more it seems that much of this stuff really has little to do with actually cleaning up the air. If I have a '74 Buick that's literally got gasoline dripping out of the exhaust, I'm exempt, even if I drive it a couple of hundred miles every day. Even if I'm not exempt, in at least some areas you get an exemption if you show that you've spent some fixed amount of money on emissions related repairs to the vehicle. The vehicle would still be above test standards and polluting, but since you've spent some money it's apparently okay to continue polluting the air. Diesel trucks and busses can belch out all kinds soot and are aparently okay as well. If a 928 can run cleaner than the existing standards without having cats on it, they still have to be on there. Why? Just because. In some areas the standards for cars are being raised over periods of time. Even if your car is running perfectly, and has the same levels of emissions that it's always had, and has always passed emissions tests, it may not pass in the future because the standards for it may have been changed. Someone trained in the testing once told me that the goal was to have 10% of all tested cars fail. Standards would become increasingly tougher to meet in an effort to maintain that 10% failure rate, not matter how clean the cars were. An argument for reduced emissions is that the emissions from autos destroys the ozone layer, which is miles and miles up. Planes burn huge amounts of fuel and are operated up nearer to that ozone layer. I don't know what sort of emissions a comercial jet liner puts out up there, but I'm pretty sure they're not required to have cats, smog pumps, emissions tests, etc. I have no doubt that if a large enough group of performance auto enthusiasts got organized, started lobbying and making campaign contributions, an emissions exemption could end up getting passed for performance cars. If enough money got put into the right hands, and enough potential voters organized, some politically correct spin would be put on it and you'd be able to supercharge, build stroker motors, throw away your cats, and do whatever else you wanted to. In my opinion an awful lot of these laws have a lot more to do with money than with cleaning the air.

2V4V

The solution for the 'high quality older collector cars' would be relatively simple, though not (at this point) inexpensive unless...

Retrofit with EFI and a cat or two. Pretty much any motor from the last 50 years will be able to pass any states' emission testing with these two items (and a PCV valve). In fact, you could just inject it and add PVC - it'll reduce the HC number by boatloads. Sure, there's a few exceptions, but you might be suprised how efficient, clean and powerful even a cheaply rebuilt 50's era engine is, with EFI and a coupla cats.

Anybody who really wanted to could could upgrade to a basic sort of port injection for a coupla K US$. If our gubment were really thinking (I know, oxymoron, but bear with me) they could provide a tax credit roughly approximate to (or maybe 125% of, as a REAL motivator) the cost of adding aftermarket EFI. A huge win-win for all sorts of folks - except maybe those cave dwelling primates at Holley who still promote, manufacture, and sell carbs (I know, they do have an EFI product, but it's laughable) and the even more pathetic sanctioning bodies who not only allow, but mandate this 'tech' - like NHRA, NASCAR. Sadly allowing some people to think that "two Double-Pumpers and a polished 6-71 GMC" is still part of a viable induction system. These people must get their medical advice from "Theodoric of York, Medieval Barber".

(The preceeding historical subreference was from an old, semi-recurrent SNL skit. Back when it, and the comedian who played Theodoric, Steve Martin, were funnier. Don't worry if you missed this one, it's for the older folks, with an odd sense of humor, like me.)

*End of "I grew up with carbs, and always found them an absurdly complex, stone-age thinking, PITA compared to even CIS-FI" rant.

People would have better running, less polluting, more fuel efficient 'classic' cars. The cars stay on the road, tailpipe emissions greatly reduced at minimal cost -compared to the many other brilliant plans the gov has executed. The incentivized approach has proven tremendously successful in Europe in getting people to add cats to their cars.

Prevention is always cheaper than remediation. (Anybody wanna guess what its gonna cost to clean up MTBE, in CA alone?)

There would also be a positive economic impact from hundreds of thousands of cars getting fuel injection systems added on - the mind boggles at the amount of business that could be generated.

Port injection can even be disguised to be almost invisible. Sure, if you have a bone-stock down to the inspector's paint marks car, maybe you wanna keep your carb(s). Cool. It is still a (semi)free country, you just don't get the tax credit for a "free" upgrade to modern tech. Everybody's happy, nobody gets forced to upgrade, the world is a bit better off. (cue: birds singing, couple walking on beach at sunrise...)

Of course, the funniest part of this all is that a much bigger chunk of the pollution in the air (and rest of environment) is put there by factories and energy plants. Cars are really only a slice of the pie - bigger in some areas, but overall, a small part of the pollution picture. Big stationary facilities are much easier to engineer pollution solutions for because they don't have to meet any (relatively speaking) weight or size constraints. Unfortunately, if there's no carrots (they just buy-off the sticks with campaign money), factories/plants won't upgrade anything because it's not directly profitable. Back to tax credits to encourage responsible behaviour again.

Then there's the whole reality of countries that have few, if any, enviro regs. You know the ones, where every company that can, is relocating to.

Quick, I'm on a roll, somebody call "zie gov-ah-nay-tah"...

Greg

ViribusUnits

Catylitic converts are required by law on all cars built after 1984 and opperated in Texas. Texas being the reletivly conservitive state that it is, I can't imagion it was the first to adopt that requirement.

Here is why cats are required. EFI is very good at maintaing a good mixture under normal conditions. When your cruiseing down the highway with a warm motor all is well, the mixture is maintained at stochi, and emissions are minimal. However, when you first start up the car, the mixture is not at stochi. No sir, to be driveable it's rich from stochi. Cats will heat up FAR quicker than the engine, and then use the O2 supplyed by the smog pump to reduce the CO emissions, and HC emissions to neglegable amounts. Also, let say your driveing around on a hot day, and the a/c is on, tunes blasting, and the motor is running hot. Because the motor is running hot, the combustion chamber temps are high, and NOx is being formed. The cat cleans up that NOx, and again life is good.

Now you can make it so that mannufactors are required to pass these emission laws, BUT the problem is how to administer such tests at testing stations?

The reason for the age exeption is that they group cars made before a certain date "classic" cars, unlikely to be driven. These cars are eighter owned by collectors, in junk yards, owned by little old ladys, or by mechenicaly inclinded, but poor members of socity. They decided that these reletivly few cars that are driven often arn't worth the effort to test.

Diesels have gotten a pass because of the dark times of the fuel shortage. The diesel engines could burn a heavier grade of fuel w/o additives, and did so more efficently. While this was a sigificant motivation to use them, they had other problems. 70 and 80s desile engines had huge drivability issues, they didn't want to start when it was cold, made lots of noise, and were down on the power. The legslators decided that since the CO and HC emissions were really good, and the other positives of diesel engines, they could over look the emissions problems for the time being. Currently, the emission laws that diesels have to pass have been getting stronger and stronger. A properly built modern diesel emits almost no soot, but they still are working on how to solve the NOx issues. By 2008 diesel engines will have to pass the same emissions standards as gasoline engines.

Also on jet engines. The engines opperate WAY lean of stochi. So far lean that they shouldn't ever get hot enough to produce NOx. Even with modern materials, turbine blades don't stand up to that kind of heat for long peroids of time. Thus NOx is something of a non issue. Computer engine control have made it much easyer to reduce HC emissions. The turbines opperate so far lean that it actualy increases the HC emissions. They basicly don't get hot enough to react all the fuel. Computers and modern materials have made it much easyer to keep the temp inside the combustion chamber of the turbine right at the proper temp to allow the complete combustion of the fuel, but still save the turbine blades.