Keith Tanner said:Having flagged vins is an interesting idea.
Additionally, you could lock the tuner to a specific VIN or ECM code to make sure it wasn't sold to somebody second hand and used on road.
Keith Tanner said:Having flagged vins is an interesting idea.
Additionally, you could lock the tuner to a specific VIN or ECM code to make sure it wasn't sold to somebody second hand and used on road.
In reply to alfadriver :
That data fits what I thought was the effect of a cat.
Assuming that the systems as such remain in place (a big assumption given the article), what is the effect of "the usual tune" of a bit more fuel and timing/spark?
What is the effect of a FM style house that makes reliable power efficiently? With cams, turbo, etc, with the assumption that air fuel ratio remains close to stoich?
Assuming it's not tremendously significant the big three sell factory warrantied 600+ up motors.
If it can be done reasonably, why not allow a window within OBDII (such as you've already indicated, 1.5x) for performance increases?
And then I'm sort of back to my original question of what does that do to the total population of emissions output, knowing that there are only so many people that are going to mod their cars?
Keith Tanner said:No, it's about actually enforcing the laws on the books.
You are welcome to your opinion.
Toebra said:Keith Tanner said:No, it's about actually enforcing the laws on the books.You are welcome to your opinion.
EPA fines in 2017 = $3B... US Budget.. $3-4 $Trillion... So.. the fines are 0.1%ish.. the money argument doesn't add up.
https://www.epa.gov/enforcement/enforcement-annual-results-fiscal-year-2017
my experience is that they fine to correct behavior.. Fining people for a revenue stream is the definition of Cohocton NY... https://www.speedtrap.org/new-york/wayland/ shakes fist..
In reply to OldGray320i :
It really depends on who is doing what.
FM made the decision to get EO's for their products, so they are going out, doing the hard research to know what to be re-calibrating in the tune- then going to a lab to demonstrate that it works within the rules.
On the other hand, some of the hackers I've seen and sort of encountered- on the surface, they don't do anything. Until they start going racing, and in pretty short order they will start breaking stuff, like the catalyst. Which quickly devolves into double and triple the emissions, and also breaking the car.
But back to your last question, the real thing is- if the law isn't enforced for everyone, then what? It's very not fair for Ford Motorsports that Joe Blow Speedshop can do something that violates the law, even though it's only 3 cars, as there are some one off's that Ford Motorsports do deal with- but they have to meet the letter of the law, because of Ford. Just like it's not fair to GM if TVR can sell a handful of cars.
BTW, the 600hp cars that we sell are 100% compliant. They don't cheat. But it's far from easy or straight forward, unless you've been doing this for a long while.
In reply to alfadriver :
I may be confused. Doesn’t the violation of the law occur at the point a modified car is driven on public roads?
So wouldn’t it be legal for racers to race, modify, and race again as long as it’s not done on public roads?
In reply to frenchyd :
Why are you confused? That's legal for both CARB and the EPA. Always has been. At this point, nobody is questioning that.
The question is - how can the reseller ensure this is actually what's happening? Using the "for off-road use only" claim to sidestep the law doesn't always work.
Alfa is thinking of cars that are flagged as race cars from the factory, which is an easy solution. These cars simply can't be registered and with newer production cars, could even identify themselves over the vehicle network as such. Makes it easy to design and sell parts that simply can't be used on street cars, so the vendor is protected. But it's not a solution that works for a large proportion of racers, particularly those that run in the more affordable classes.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
I still think that the agencies will go after companies that are selling non-legal items clearly without the "off road use only" tag, or are direct marketing to on road vehicles. That's the key part- since the agencies really can't prosecute the consumer, directly. Unless they clearly find a large amount of modified vehicles that are driving around- which is easy to do with coal rollers.
alfadriver said:In reply to frenchyd :
Why are you confused? That's legal for both CARB and the EPA. Always has been. At this point, nobody is questioning that.
So why is this a problem? If you want to go racing you can modify all you want. Are some people afraid that this will morph into racing?
Or are they looking for a loophole to use race cars on the street?
In reply to frenchyd :
I think the concern is around vendors being targeted for selling stuff for race cars that someone could potentially also use on a street car.
docwyte said:It's very easy to set the readiness monitors to "ready - not reporting" in HP Tuners. That'll pretty much get you past most of the OBD2 scans, unless the place clears the monitors and then cycles the key to recheck them.
If you reset the monitors, cycling the key will get you a long list of incomplete monitors, which is an instant fail.
Ohio allows you to have one or two incomplete monitors (depends on model year) and still pass, because if you reset it in November, a car might not run the evap monitor until April, since evap generally requires certain temperature conditions.
rslifkin said:In reply to frenchyd :
I think the concern is around vendors being targeted for selling stuff for race cars that someone could potentially also use on a street car.
If venders clearly state for off road use only then wouldn’t the people who improperly use the equipment be responsible for their own misdeeds?
That would be nice. More likely, the onus would be put on the vendor to ensure that the car in fact is indeed a race car. I believe that’s the approach that AEM and MS are taking - signing waivers, etc. The question is if that would indeed be enough in the long term. We’ve stopped shipment of a lot of parts to CA because they don’t meet local regs, even if it’s for a race car.
Quite a difference from the way we ran things a couple of decades ago.
In reply to Keith Tanner : I think I understand your problem. Out of fear that someone in California might illegally use your product and the repercussions might come back to you. You are eliminating the largest potential market for your product?
Well prudence is a virtue. But not a guarantee of success.
We are eliminating an illegal market, and making more of our products legal. It is a bigger guarantee of success than not doing it, assuming you define success as not receiving a massive six or seven digit fine.
rslifkin said:In reply to frenchyd :
I think the concern is around vendors being targeted for selling stuff for race cars that someone could potentially also use on a street car.
That IS the issue. More damning is when vendors sell stuff that defeats emissions controls in any way to street cars. And with the "off road use only" claim- when you see it, obviously, on road- then you can get in trouble. Given how easy it is to see the coal rolling trucks, they are an obvious target.
frenchyd said:rslifkin said:In reply to frenchyd :
I think the concern is around vendors being targeted for selling stuff for race cars that someone could potentially also use on a street car.
If venders clearly state for off road use only then wouldn’t the people who improperly use the equipment be responsible for their own misdeeds?
One other obvious issue is the market you are selling to. If there are very few people actually racing or doing off road only, when you sell a large amount of product, you will be a target. Not many diesel trucks are raced or use off road, but there's a sizable market for tuned products- which are also pretty easy to spot. Or if you sell a bunch of racing stuff to people with a Buick SUV- well.... It only takes a small follow up to show that the product that was for a Buick SUV is actually being used in an MG race car that has no chance of being registered for the street.
Thinking about it, I do see one big downside to all of this: anyone who enjoys piecing together their own power upgrades, etc. and likes to tinker is stuck working with very old (and getting older, as the clean air act date doesn't move) cars if they want to do it legally.
In all technicality, my Jeep is completely illegal to run on the street as-is. Every single piece of emissions equipment on it is intact and functional, but other than the headers, none of the aftermarket parts have a CARB EO #. The cam, heads, etc. aren't emissions legal and neither is the home-modified ECU tune.
That said, it's probably worse than stock in some ways emissions wise and better in others if it were to be run through the full suite of tests. As an example, the cat is actually moved closer to the engine than it was in the stock setup (due to wanting to package more muffler into the available space). And between that and the way it's tuned, the cat lights off much faster than stock (judging by time at idle from cold start to the exhaust smell disappearing). And it burns a bit less fuel than stock too, although some of that comes from letting it run a little lean of peak at cruise, so NOx emissions are probably a little worse.
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