No more lead wheel weights ?
#46
Rennlist Member
With all the challenges & big picture problems we face in this country, including ones that were created by the very same idiots in government (such as corn ethanol and MTBE mandates in fuel, which cause significantly increased fuel consumption & pollution, and major ground water contamination from MTBE), having columns of marching bureaucrat drones spending their endless cycles worrying about bullets and wheel weights seems retarded and trivial in the extreme, and a level of selective outrage only possible with nanny staters.
How about focusing on real sources of pollution, such as the 5,000,000 illegal aliens here who all seem to use two cycle leaf blowers instead of rakes. Two cycle=bad. But that gets totally ignored while the holier than thou drones worry about wheel weights and bullets.
Oy vey.
Professional Racing and Driving Coach
#47
Mr. Excitement
Rennlist Member
Rennlist Member
What river is (was) that?! Thats some sick **** to be picking plastic to make some $.01
#48
Rennlist Member
Of course it is smart not to **** in your own bed. REAL men (and women) simply don't, and certainly don't need some unelected drone from D.C. to tell them this. Guys who posture and puff up their chests, however, always seem to need an "authority figure" to tell them what to do & not to do, how to live, and what to think.
Professional Racing and Driving Coach
#49
Drifting
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How about focusing on real sources of pollution, such as the 5,000,000 illegal aliens here who all seem to use two cycle leaf blowers instead of rakes. Two cycle=bad. But that gets totally ignored while the holier than thou drones worry about wheel weights and bullets.
Professional Racing and Driving Coach
Seriously, guys, like many issues it ain't black and white. No doubt the government's role to keep citizens safe includes rational environmental rules. But those rules can and will overreach. That's why we have elections.
And the new wheel weights, I believe, are made from embryonic stem cells.
#50
Rennlist Member
Why don't they just get to the root of the problem for crying out loud? Why can't they make tires that are already balanced? Then you wouldn't need weights.
It would be a lot cheaper for us track dudes too. For a mount and balance of a set of wheels, you would only need to pay for half.
It would be a lot cheaper for us track dudes too. For a mount and balance of a set of wheels, you would only need to pay for half.
#51
Rennlist Member
#52
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#53
Administrator - "Tyson"
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#55
Mr. Excitement
Rennlist Member
Rennlist Member
Of course it is smart not to **** in your own bed. REAL men (and women) simply don't, and certainly don't need some unelected drone from D.C. to tell them this. Guys who posture and puff up their chests, however, always seem to need an "authority figure" to tell them what to do & not to do, how to live, and what to think.
Professional Racing and Driving Coach
Professional Racing and Driving Coach
So regarding the weights rather than replace something bad with something that works as well but it not bad you want to ban 2 stroke blowers? How Kalifornicate of you. If I did not have my backpack blower I would be hiring, lets just say someone "that is willing to do simple work for cheap", to rake my property.
Seriously, the tire weight thing is a real simple change no muss no fuss. I can see where from a single user viewpoint it looks like pocket change but from a tire shop angle that I see there is a ****load of lead getting dumped into the waste stream. It does not just gom into a corner and sit there. It builds up and travels up the food chain.
Ammo is not the same, unlike tire weights there are not many simple replacements.
#56
In the end money trumps government at fixing almost anything. Scrap lead prices are moving up much faster than gold, silver or platinum.
Federal regulation on hunting migratory birds prohibits the use of lead shot, and that's a good thing. Ducks Unlimited and NRA are both on board.
Federal regulation on hunting migratory birds prohibits the use of lead shot, and that's a good thing. Ducks Unlimited and NRA are both on board.
Last edited by sig_a; 05-29-2014 at 06:44 PM.
#57
I came across this thread while researching my problems with keeping wheel weights on my dirty rims, I think I'd be remiss not to point out the following:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknap...rime-epidemic/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknap...rime-epidemic/
Starting in the 1960s, America saw a huge increase in levels of violent crime that peaked in the early 1990s, then steadily declined, and continues to decline today. All kinds of theories have been promulgated to explain this peak and decline in crime, and plenty of politicians in the 1990s took credit for it. But in what I personally consider to be a tour de force of journalism, Kevin Drum of Mother Jones has summarized all of the available research. All of it points to one simple idea: violent crime rose as a result of lead poisoning because of leaded gasoline. It declined because of lead abatement policies.
There are three basic reasons why this theory should be believed. First, as Drum points out, the numbers correlate almost perfectly. “If you add a lag time of 23 years,” he writes. “Lead emissions from automobiles explain 90 percent of the variation in violent crime in America. Toddlers who ingested high levels of lead in the ’40s and ’50s really were more likely to become violent criminals in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s.”
Second, this correlation holds true with no exceptions. Every country studied has shown this same strong correlation between leaded gasoline and violent crime rates. Within the United States, you can see the data at the state level. Where lead concentrations declined quickly, crime declined quickly. Where it declined slowly, crime declined slowly. The data even holds true at the neighborhood level – high lead concentrations correlate so well that you can overlay maps of crime rates over maps of lead concentrations and get an almost perfect fit.
Third, and probably most important, the data goes beyond just these models. As Drum himself points out, “if econometric studies were all there were to the story of lead, you’d be justified in remaining skeptical no matter how good the statistics look.” But the chemistry and neuroscience of lead gives us good reason to believe the connection. Decades of research has shown that lead poisoning causes significant and probably irreversible damage to the brain. Not only does lead degrade cognitive abilities and lower intelligence, it also degrades a person’s ability to make decisions by damaging areas of the brain responsible for “emotional regulation, impulse control, attention, verbal reasoning, and mental flexibility.”
The bottom line, as Drum points out, is that “even moderately high levels of lead exposure are associated with aggressivity, impulsivity, ADHD, and lower IQ. And right there, you’ve practically defined the profile of a violent young offender.”
I’ve barely scratched the surface of Drum’s excellent article, and I’d seriously encourage you to hop over to Mother Jones right now and read the whole thing. I’ve been reading Drum for years and he’s been blogging about this topic for a long time. Indeed, I’ve been convinced of the lead/crime hypothesis for years thanks to Drum’s writing. But this article is a masterpiece. Read it. Talk about it. It’s an important piece of journalism.
In particular, it’s important because this is precisely the kind of problem that people are uncomfortable about believing. It’s hard for us to see the link between cause and effect when there’s a 20+ year gap between one and the other. Additionally, none of us like thinking that our autonomy as human beings can be destroyed by forces beyond our control that we can’t even see.
But such time lags between cause and effect do exist. Invisible molecules like tetraethyl lead can do us great harm. We need to understand this. It’s not enough to know this as an interesting fact. We have to know in our guts that these types of things are possible, because this is far from the only problem like it. And that kind of deep understanding that these problems are possible are what’s necessary to motivate us as people to do something about it
There are three basic reasons why this theory should be believed. First, as Drum points out, the numbers correlate almost perfectly. “If you add a lag time of 23 years,” he writes. “Lead emissions from automobiles explain 90 percent of the variation in violent crime in America. Toddlers who ingested high levels of lead in the ’40s and ’50s really were more likely to become violent criminals in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s.”
Second, this correlation holds true with no exceptions. Every country studied has shown this same strong correlation between leaded gasoline and violent crime rates. Within the United States, you can see the data at the state level. Where lead concentrations declined quickly, crime declined quickly. Where it declined slowly, crime declined slowly. The data even holds true at the neighborhood level – high lead concentrations correlate so well that you can overlay maps of crime rates over maps of lead concentrations and get an almost perfect fit.
Third, and probably most important, the data goes beyond just these models. As Drum himself points out, “if econometric studies were all there were to the story of lead, you’d be justified in remaining skeptical no matter how good the statistics look.” But the chemistry and neuroscience of lead gives us good reason to believe the connection. Decades of research has shown that lead poisoning causes significant and probably irreversible damage to the brain. Not only does lead degrade cognitive abilities and lower intelligence, it also degrades a person’s ability to make decisions by damaging areas of the brain responsible for “emotional regulation, impulse control, attention, verbal reasoning, and mental flexibility.”
The bottom line, as Drum points out, is that “even moderately high levels of lead exposure are associated with aggressivity, impulsivity, ADHD, and lower IQ. And right there, you’ve practically defined the profile of a violent young offender.”
I’ve barely scratched the surface of Drum’s excellent article, and I’d seriously encourage you to hop over to Mother Jones right now and read the whole thing. I’ve been reading Drum for years and he’s been blogging about this topic for a long time. Indeed, I’ve been convinced of the lead/crime hypothesis for years thanks to Drum’s writing. But this article is a masterpiece. Read it. Talk about it. It’s an important piece of journalism.
In particular, it’s important because this is precisely the kind of problem that people are uncomfortable about believing. It’s hard for us to see the link between cause and effect when there’s a 20+ year gap between one and the other. Additionally, none of us like thinking that our autonomy as human beings can be destroyed by forces beyond our control that we can’t even see.
But such time lags between cause and effect do exist. Invisible molecules like tetraethyl lead can do us great harm. We need to understand this. It’s not enough to know this as an interesting fact. We have to know in our guts that these types of things are possible, because this is far from the only problem like it. And that kind of deep understanding that these problems are possible are what’s necessary to motivate us as people to do something about it
#58
Drifting
Guess I'll have to pull out my stock pile of depleted uranium......
#59
Burning Brakes
Fact is that elements and chemicals we use in products ends up in our bodies through environmental exposure. Lead is a known hazard, and the thousands of other compounds we carry around..who knows? The system is flawed..you can put whatever new chemical or compund you want in your products...unless it is a proven hazard, the exact opposite of how it should be. I am a strong believer in capitalism but face it, without government intervention, our corporate citizens would have killled us all off long ago in pursuit of maximum profits.
#60
Mr. Excitement
Rennlist Member
Rennlist Member
Anyone having issues with using zinc rather than lead weights? We are not and the recycler is now all tuned in and happy to be taking any and all weights we have. We get some $ and no wheel weights going into the trash to elec power plant down the road. turned someting bad into Money.
Prior to my push on this the answer was "Meh, the guys won't want to take the time to sort them out and it will just be a PITA." Well it was not a bother and it works well for all. The zinc weights work just fine to the point the mechanics don't even think of the "good old days" when men were men and the ground around us was our toilet.