This is not good.... WTF EPA?

I sent the following email to both my senators and my representative.

Hi Senator Sessions,

I has recently come to attention of many involved in the car modifying community that the EPA was trying to pass a proposal (Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Fuel Efficiency Standards for Medium- and Heavy-Duty Engines and Vehicles—Phase 2) that would basically end the ability of people to race at a grassroots level and also pretty much destroy the aftermarket industry. A lawyer for one the grassroots motorsports organizations did an analysis of the new law (http://www.24hoursoflemons.com/images/EPA-Memo.pdf).

"The EPA’s approach reaches its zenith in two different sections of the proposed rule.40 CFR 86.1854-12(b)(5) states that Certified motor vehicles and motor vehicle engines and their emission control devices must remain in their certified configuration even if they are used solely for competition or if they become nonroad vehicles or engines; anyone modifying a certified motor vehicle or motor vehicle engine for any reason is subject to the tampering and defeat device prohibitions of paragraph (a)(3) of this section and 42 USC 7522(a)(3). The proposed rule is more draconian in 40 CFR 1068.101, “What general actions does this regulation prohibit?” The answer is “don’t modify your engine, ever.” It bans: Knowingly removing or rendering inoperative any device or element of design installed on or in engines/equipment in compliance with the regulations after such sale and delivery to the ultimate purchaser. Violation of same by a manufacturer or dealer comes with a civil penalty of $37,500 for each engine or piece of equipment in violation; violation by anyone else may be assessed a civil penalty of up to $3,750 per engine or piece of equipment; Knowingly manufacturing, selling, offering to sell, or installing any component that bypasses, impairs, defeats, or disables the control of emissions of any regulated pollutant. Violation of same may draw a civil penalty of up to $3,750 for each component in violation Certified motor vehicles and motor vehicle engines must remain in their certified configuration even if they are used solely for competition or if they become nonroad vehicles or engines; anyone modifying a certified motor vehicle or motor vehicle engine for any reason is subject to the tampering and defeat device prohibitions of 1068.101(b): a civil penalty of $37,500 may be subjected for each engine or piece of equipment in violation by a manufacturer or dealer; violation by anyone else may be assessed a civil penalty of up to $3,750 per engine or piece of equipment Importation of uncertified engines or equipment is prohibited if it is defined to be “new.” The definition of “new” is broad for imported engines and equipment; uncertified equipment, including used engines and equipment, will generally be considered to be “new;” violators are subject to the manufacturer/dealer penalty of $37,500 for each piece of equipment in violation."

According to SEMA, the automotive modifying industry had $31.32 billion in sales in 2013. This includes Alabama based companies like APR Tuning (https://www.goapr.com/company/) in Opelika and countless other small businesses that modify cars within Alabama and also have a major effect on Alabama's race tracks that run races other than professional race series like Barber Motorsports Park, Talladega Gran Prix track, Alabama International Dragway, Huntsville Dragway and several other tracks (http://www.racingin.com/track/alabama.aspx).

This draconian ruling would destroy many people's livelihoods, many more people's passion and have a major effect on the US's and Alabama’s economy. I hope you can help us car enthusiast stop this overreaching EPA regulation.

Thank you very much for your time.

alfadriver wrote: In reply to tuna55: Accuse what you want of me. At least I can recognize that it's for fun. None of that give you the right to pollute and harm other people's health.

I'm exhaling berkeleying tons of CO2 every year. That's harming people. Guess I'll berkeleying off myself to reduce my burden on the planet. Why don't we all do that? There's an idea.

Brett_Murphy wrote: A possible mitigating solution to this is to have any car that is modified for racing struck from being certified and eligible for road use in any state, ever again. Kind of like Virginia does with cars that are wrecked and branded as "parts only." They can never be registered for on-road use again.

Unintended consequence: With the need to trailer, many small, efficient cars are replaced by huge, inefficient, unsafe trucks that increase traffic jams (and therefore wasted fuel, and therefore pollution) because of their size and how ponderously slow they are.

In reply to Knurled:

Sort of how the SUV boom happened not long after CAFE made it impossible to build a large family car anymore?

(Yes, I know that's not the only reason, but it was a contributing factor, that's generally agreed-upon)

If there is one thing that the pro-hyper-regulation crowd has always failed to understand, it's the Law of Unintended Consequences.

Duke wrote:

alfadriver wrote: In reply to tuna55: Accuse what you want of me. At least I can recognize that it's for fun. None of that give you the right to pollute and harm other people's health.

I'm exhaling berkeleying tons of CO2 every year. That's harming people. Guess I'll berkeleying off myself to reduce my burden on the planet. Why don't we all do that? There's an idea.

If the world's population would just hold their breath for 20 minutes a day, the reduction in CO2 would be incalculable.

alfadriver wrote: In reply to chiodos: So you think you are free to pollute however you want? What about the people who want clean air? Again, all of the anti government rant is going to fix nothing. If it makes you feel better, great. But at the end of the day nobody who matters is listening.

When did I say either the words pollution or government? I drive old cars, I only drive to work and back so I only pollute as much as I have to, my daily is a 4 cylinder so it should pollute less than say everyone else in this city who drive v8 trucks with no mufflers. I don't know why you decided to be the pollution nazi but it's unnecessary.

Btw I see your avatar is an old alfa with presumably carburetor(s) on a race track, so you probably contribute to air pollution in a way MUCH WORSE than I (and you have been polluting longer) so please alpha driver, turn in your old cars for a Nissan Leaf because you are polluting too much!

Alfa and others, this mainly gets under my skin because they are targeting a small fraction of producers while company's get away with dumping chemicals in the air and water who are the largest of the polluters but because they have money and we don't, when epa or whoever has to crack down, they do so on the ones not paying them.

Pig farms in the Carolinas? Chicken farms all over the south releasing millions of tons of ammonia into the air and water, the millions of cows farting releasing millions of tons of methane (yes it's real) and that's not even considering the chemical/ energy companies and everyone else! So again Alfadriver, explain to me why I should worry about MY pollution when big wigs are getting away with it on a much larger scale.

IIRC, Alfa's Alfa has fuel injection and a cat on it. He's also an emissions engineer for Ford.

I think what has everyone all worked up is that this has very much the feeling of 'All your illegally modified capitalist vehicles now belong to us, comrades! Rejoice in Glorious EPA's new Five Year Plan!'

My questions are, what's the end game? Is the plan to sequentially attack motorcycles, general aviation, boating, RC engines next? Where's the point of diminishing returns? Have we already crossed that threshold?

Also, does this include modifications that IMPROVE emissions and/or gas mileage. The Trionic conversion I have planned for my Saab will do both (stop snickering, I'll get to it eventually ). I'm guessing the same is true for MS, and the TBI conversion a co-worker was talking about for classic V8 engines. I'm thinking things like this may part of a solution, not part of the problem.

Tom Suddard wrote: IIRC, Alfa's Alfa has fuel injection and a cat on it. He's also an emissions engineer for Ford.

Ouch!

XLR99 wrote: Also, does this include modifications that IMPROVE emissions and/or gas mileage. The Trionic conversion I have planned for my Saab will do both (stop snickering, I'll get to it eventually ). I'm guessing the same is true for MS, and the TBI conversion a co-worker was talking about for classic V8 engines. I'm thinking things like this may part of a solution, not part of the problem.

Can you prove it? Like, scientifically, not just gut feeling?

XLR99 wrote: I think what has everyone all worked up is that this has very much the feeling of 'All your illegally modified capitalist vehicles now belong to us, comrades! Rejoice in Glorious EPA's new Five Year Plan!' My questions are, what's the end game? Is the plan to sequentially attack motorcycles, general aviation, boating, RC engines next? Where's the point of diminishing returns? Have we already crossed that threshold? Also, does this include modifications that IMPROVE emissions and/or gas mileage. The Trionic conversion I have planned for my Saab will do both (stop snickering, I'll get to it eventually ). I'm guessing the same is true for MS, and the TBI conversion a co-worker was talking about for classic V8 engines. I'm thinking things like this may part of a solution, not part of the problem.

Yeah, like, emissions credits. If I own a prius, I can use some of those credits for my hot rod a la international carbon credits/power plant carbon credits.

Lolno.

I really understand why everyone is up in arms over this. I really do. But, and this is hard to say, I kinda have to fall on Alfa's side on this one.

I just don't know how they plan to enforce it.

Knurled wrote:

XLR99 wrote: Also, does this include modifications that IMPROVE emissions and/or gas mileage. The Trionic conversion I have planned for my Saab will do both (stop snickering, I'll get to it eventually ). I'm guessing the same is true for MS, and the TBI conversion a co-worker was talking about for classic V8 engines. I'm thinking things like this may part of a solution, not part of the problem.

Can you prove it? Like, scientifically, not just gut feeling?

Yes. Anyone remember the old portable sniffer's they used to hook up to show you if your car was polluting more or less than it was supposed to? This was back in the early to mid 90's. Had my old cop car. Came with the old GM A.I.R. system that pumped fresh air into the manifolds. I had removed that, run midlength headers, a pair of 2.5" cats with true duals. The car tested better than the original 1989 specs it was supposed to according to their books.

Was this truly scientific? Nah... but it passes the common sense test that if you get the engine running more efficiently with twice the catalyst surface area it's likely to do pretty good compared to stock. But that car would have been 100% illegal in many states even though it was less polluting than before because it did not have all of the original emissions equipment in place.

Which brings forward yet another fallacy in the EPA and CARB. 1970's and 80's "emissions" technology was a joke at best. Most of those engines/vehicles could be so much better environmentally and enjoyable if allowed to use modern fuel injection and 30 years of technological advancements in engine tuning.

There cannot possibly be a net positive cost-benefit equation at play here.

Looks like light passenger vehicles account for about 10% of total US greenhouse gas emissions, which is not insignificant. But what is the total number of miles driven in the US on racetracks each year as a percentage the total miles driven? It's got to be fractions of a percent (Google didn't yield any quick answers.) So take that and then divide by ten, there's your total contribution. It's miniscule.

Alternatively, what do you think the fraction is of cars running around on the street with modifications that would be deemed illegal by this 'law' (Or, alternatively, modifications that would actually significantly impact the greenhouse gas emissions of a car)? It's got to be relatively low as a percentage of registered vehicles, and even lower as a percentage of miles driven. I'm sure this group makes up a larger contribution than the purely race driven vehicles do, but again we're probably talking fractions of a percent.

I think a lot of people here are thinking about 'race cars' in terms of road race and auto x, naturally given that that is the focus of this fine publication. Maybe being forced to run completely stock engines, with full complement of emissions controls intact, wouldn't completely kill the experience for many in this venue of competition. But what about drag racers? What about the salt flat guys? Tractor pullers, or whatever they call themselves? What fun would production car based drag racing be without nitrous and big cams?

Racing may just be entertainment. It may be completely unnecessary. But so is eating beef, when we could all just as well survive as vegetarians. Its been proven that meat production is significantly more costly from an emmissions standpoint than produce. So why not regulate everyone into becoming a vegetarian, because we meat eaters are just poisoning everyone's atmosphere for our own enjoyment? Where do you really draw the line? It feels sometimes like the holier than thou types would rather have us go back to the 1700s.

The point is this: the EPA is looking to kill an entire industry, a hobby and source of enjoyment for millions of Americans, with regulation that will prove costly and difficult to enforce, for gains that are utterly miniscule and could easily be made up elsewhere. Not to mention, as Keith stated above, racing genuinely does improve the breed, and that includes efficiency. It's not a strategy based on a sound evaluation of efficiencies of effort and most easily attainable gains, its based on the number of lobbyists the industry can afford.

I'll be damned if some beurocrat is going to rob me of my hobby, my passion, for some perceived moral victory of theirs. Cold dead hands and all that E36 M3.

alfadriver wrote: In reply to tuna55: Accuse what you want of me. At least I can recognize that it's for fun. None of that give you the right to pollute and harm other people's health.

My beef here is who defines this? The EPA that was responsible for this?

EPA, subject to public scrutiny...

There are a LOT of great people who work in government, so I'm not out to disparage them en masse.

But sometimes government policies become inane.

In government contracting, it's the government's job to determine a fair and reasonable price. They review your cost inputs as compared to other offerors, or they compare market prices for Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) items.

When it's your cost inputs, they ask for "Cost or Pricing Data", so all your labor cost, indirects, profit, etc - to make the determination.

With COTS items, the catalog or list prices are determined as "fair and reasonable". No need for the build up.

So what does the DoD head do? Institutes a requirement for government contracts personnel to get cost or pricing data on COTS items.

It's no longer about "fair and reasonable" it's a way beat contractors down on cost.

Yes, I know, all contractors are theives and liars... Just like all citizens are gross polluters who cannot be trusted to do the right thing...

volvoclearinghouse wrote: (a) This is a gross oversimplification. Of both sides. Nobody (who isn't currently in prison, or should be) believes either.

It was oversimplified, but not entirely inaccurate. I'd gotten myself in a snit over some of the things I've read in this thread. I think things are getting heated because most of us have at least some skin in this game.

And yes, my (B) proposal would have unintended consequences. I thought of a few of them when I wrote it (like the aforementioned trailers and tow vehicles), but everybody who wants to remove their catalytic converters shouldn't be driving their cars on the street, anyhow.

Keith Tanner wrote: I suspect the primary goal of this EPA rule is to close the "for off-road use only" loophole. Sure, keep the minimal number of cars driving around pointlessly on weekends clean, but that's a lot smaller than the number of cars running competition-only parts on the street. I do think it's chasing after diminishing returns, however. Is the effect on the country as a whole positive or negative? I'm not talking about civil liberties, I'm talking about a tiny incremental improvement in emissions versus the hit to a fairly large industry and the cost of investigating and enforcing.

I think that's my biggest problem with this entire thing. Eventually you're trying to get blood from a stone and in the process cutting off the hand that feeds you.

If Congress, and by extension, the EPA were really as serious as they claim to be about further reducing emissions CAFE would actually have been written in such a way that doesn't base gas mileage off the the footprint of a vehicle and there would be massive infrastructure investments from Congress pushing an alternative fuel or electric. As it stands now they're waffling so they can point the finger elsewhere if a bet doesn't pay off on new technologies and funding technologies that have no future but can enrichen them personally in the future.

In reply to The0retical:

I'm going paraphrase slightly the root cause of the immoral authoritarianism and contempt regularly displayed by the EPA: The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone has both the desire and ability to get themselves into a postion of power and authority over others should on no account be allowed to do the job.

The Hoff wrote:

Tom Suddard wrote: IIRC, Alfa's Alfa has fuel injection and a cat on it. He's also an emissions engineer for Ford.

Ouch!

Well damn, scratch that part, but my other part about him polluting more than I (he's much older than I) and the part about us gear heads being the TINIEST fraction of polluters compared to big corporation stands. Alfa, keep farting out pollution and I will to, but don't get onto me about polluting old man!

WildScotsRacing wrote: In reply to The0retical: To summarize the summary: anyone has both the desire and ability to get themselves into a postion of power and authority over others should on no account be allowed to do the job.

So your saying, everyone with a government job, including police, dmv, dang everyone, should loose their jobs and be replaced with stoners and vagrants who don't care to rule "their world"? Sounds great but who's supposed to be enforcing that rule? Haha this sounds like it could the next great purge, maybe make it into a movie where in the end good people take over the gov and America is a better place.

Eh just dreaming, we're stuck in this civilization because we didn't immediately Fight tooth and nail to become the sheep herders so we're just stuck being the little sheep. Nothing we can do or say can change anything about the world we live in, there's far too many people making money off it to let it get better.

Brett_Murphy wrote:

volvoclearinghouse wrote: (a) This is a gross oversimplification. Of both sides. Nobody (who isn't currently in prison, or should be) believes either.

It was oversimplified, but not entirely inaccurate. I'd gotten myself in a snit over some of the things I've read in this thread. I think things are getting heated because most of us have at least some skin in this game. And yes, my (B) proposal would have unintended consequences. I thought of a few of them when I wrote it (like the aforementioned trailers and tow vehicles), but everybody who wants to remove their catalytic converters shouldn't be driving their cars on the street, anyhow.

FWIW, We recently bought a '91 Suburban for Mrs. VCH to use as her mommy mobile. When I bought it, the catalytic converter had been removed. Since it needs an exhaust anyway, I bought a cat to install along with the new muffler and pipes. Because really, why not? it was $50, it'll make it stink less, and it was meant to have it anyway. I'm not opposed to clean air and water. And most people, given enough information, aren't either. What we're opposed to is being governed like a bunch of children who cant be trusted to make the right decisions, by people who really aren't any more intelligent than we are.

I spent some time talking to the guys building the MX-5 Cup cars for Mazda. They're very worried. Their car is the poster child for this enforcement (literally in the case of some news articles) and they're a big fish. It's interesting, they're not thinking about Le Mons at all, they're talking about things like the Tudor series. The manufacturers are worried about losing a testing ground (he named off a number of current, new technologies coming online in various cars that have their roots in racing) and of course marketing. So the manufacturers are on our side on this, Mazda is working on it at least.

In reply to Keith Tanner:

Good to know

volvoclearinghouse wrote: I'm not opposed to clean air and water. And most people, given enough information, aren't either. What we're opposed to is being governed like a bunch of children who cant be trusted to make the right decisions, by people who really aren't any more intelligent than we are.

And this is the crux of the whole argument, the inmates are running the asylum.