My experience is that eBay screws up their filters and wayyy overfilters.
The Canadian government has some secret spat with Xiaomi cellphones and got eBay, newegg and Amazon to stop their sale. They weren’t approved for sale in Canada, but I suspect some other reasoning for targeting a Chinese manufacturer in particular and not all the other unapproved products.
However, eBay just blocked anything with “xiaomi” in the title, so their scooters, vacuums, android TV hubs and everything were no longer available for sale.
I had an old Mi Box (TV hub) listed for sale that became shadow-banned: after it didn’t sell for a while (duh, nobody could find it), I went to lower the price and it gave some vague error. I called eBay and they said it was due to gov regulation but had no further info, so I just took “xiaomi” out of the title and voila!
I’m still trying to get the gov to cough up the documents, but funny how the gov didn’t tell our telecoms to ban them from roaming on our cellular networks. Nor identify domestic users that imported them and put on a transition plan to get them off our networks.
If they’re actually so harmful to public health.
Though I wonder if our telecoms were behind this; they prefer you to buy your device from them.
I don't think “harmful to public health” is a consideration. Pretty much every country with a functioning government requires RF certification for electronics, but especially radio transmitters. It's never going to be worth hunting down individual buyers or hassling tourists, but selling is another thing.
Cell phones do have emitted energy regulations based on estimated tissue absorption. And they vary country to country (some countries even further regulate them near schools & other locations).
If they were causing harmful interference, I’d like to think they would be harder-headed about it.
No one is saying they cause harmful interference. It's up to the vendor to get certified that they don't. You can't sell an uncertified radio transmitter. It's not a conspiracy.
> You can't sell an uncertified radio transmitter. It's not a conspiracy.
When they pick and choose who they target for RF and somehow end up focusing on a Chinese cellphone manufacturer, it suggests something is going on beyond RF reasons.
I'm sure I can find wifi access points and other cell phones that aren't certified, but I'm too lazy to check against what vendors' models bothered getting Canadian approval or not.
Once again, it's up to the vendor. You submit your test reports showing compliance with the standards, and you get your certification. The only ‘pick and choose’ here would be by Xiaomi who apparently don't think the Canadian market is large enough to bother with.
Can be a handy tool to selectively remove vendors from the market (which may be what occurred here).
If there was a problem with interference, I really wished our regulator would require the telecoms to disable them from the networks to force migration to non-interfering devices.
I know they do have limits, but I don't believe any government or private entity has linked absorption to any kind of health impact at levels anywhere close to the published SAR limits.
These are likely just out of an abundance of caution just in case, not because they actually think harm will come. Frankly that's just fine, I wish they'd do that more - especially with new chemicals.
> If there was a problem with interference, I really wished our regulator would require the telecoms to disable them from the networks to force migration to non-interfering devices.
Regulation happens at the margin of functionality. If something is very useful but "bad" (asbestos, lead, perfluorocarbons, radioactive stuff) it gets regulated out of places where there are substitutes. But of course not with any overarching consistency. (Unsurprisingly due to classic lobbying, typical problems of governance, etc.)
Then some regulatory body ossifies into some role, and then we end up with some regulations.
Some useful but not doing enough (lead, fly ash from powerplants, plus basically any emissions regulations via the EPA, huge political battleground, insane lobbying, etc), some that have benefits but are doing too much and in a very wrong way (environmental reviews and zoning regulations which make construction permitting process a non-deterministic nightmare with bonus added possibility for endless legal challenges, but no outright bans of course ... you can try to apply for whatever you want, and local democracy, council, judiciary will just happen to say no. how fair, right!? ... of course, makes no sense, since persistent/rich builders end up getting approved eventually. democracy, fairness, yey!) And again, of course, public good projects, from railways/subways to nuclear power plants, where there are no special interests pushing for (and plenty of against), that simply don't get built (or carry an enormous premium of wasted time and "reviews").
And then chemicals and RF. Since there's a clear and obvious good in having nice radios (in phones, laptops, headphones, doorbells, etc) and a very obvious problem of interfere, it very quickly got the FCC to manage it. (And sometimes it's too slow to allow or free up spectrum for non-exclusive usage, and there are sometimes conflicts, but in general it's clear, fine, easy to measure, great.) And then the health concerns are added on top of it, and it's very much not clear WTF should happen. How to prove safety? With 5G we have had a total crusade by motivated folks trying to prove it does at least something bad. Kills/warms insects, tracks each and every one of us, and of course causes cancer. And ... it seems the sheer momentum of functionality simply marched through this soup of uncertainty.
And it seems something very similar happens with "chemicals". Obviously working with them in factories almost always causes a lot of harm, but we allow it, because it's very useful (and weak labor laws, and no compensatory tariffs), and there's simply no clear way to prove safety.
Or just google it. Pretty common knowledge that the too cheap to be true chinese phones, amazon fires, etc all trade on your personal data to subsidize the device, either overtly with amazon, or less openly in the case of xiaomi, huwei, and dozens of smaller brands of phone, television, and other connected devices.
Creating more supply is hard. Jacking up the price is easier. Sure, someone will see the opportunity and undercut your inflated price, but you will have made your money by then and there will be a lot of collateral damage in the interim.
If you don't let people price goods at what they're worth the buyer is decided by random chance and you get shortages instead. Is there really a human right for "the fastest buyers on eBay should get the goods"?
Do you see any downsides to government's setting prices? There have been a few examples of this in the 20th century..
> Rewarding this kind of greed also isn't exactly pushing society in a positive direction, longer term.
Call it what you want, but they're the ones making and providing goods we all agree are necessary :) money is the tool our society uses to incentivize more of that behavior.
Goodharts' Law applies to money too. Government action need not be as draconian as a centrally-planned economy to push incentives just enough to eliminate the worst excesses. How much is 'just enough' is, of course, up for debate. But the answer is not 0% just as it obviously isn't 100%
My understanding is that such parts are not by themselves illegal. The crime is actually using them on the road. My understanding was that they were legal for track purposes.
I would never want to say that people should be able to defeat emissions, but a part of me does not like the idea that every vehicle owner is beholden to the OEM for parts in perpetuity. The "right to repair" people should be all over this fight. Restrict cars to only their original emissions parts and that becomes yet another lever for manufacturers to pull when they want to sell new cars/trucks/tractors. I say let people use the parts they want to use, then properly inspect and test the resulting vehicles once they are on the road.
The manufacturers got sued by the EPA for not actually enforcing the “for track use” only rule.
A lot of the big name exhaust companies have stopped producing catless products; and others require all of your information to be on file if you’re buying a catless race downpipe.
A lot of the install shops around here in Maryland that run a legit receipt paper trail of work type of business won’t even touch catless installs anymore.
They will require you to fill out a waiver saying you that you will use it for offroad use only, and all liability is on you and not them. They will also require you to upload your photo id in order to purchase it.
Is the rule really about "track use" or is it just off-road or on-private-property use? How does the distributor know I'm not just rolling coal on my uncle's farm?
From what I can find, "track use" isn't in the law, but rather a matter of enforcement discretion.
"The Clean Air Act does not contemplate removing emissions controls from an EPA-certified motor vehicle in order to convert it into a competition vehicle. As a matter of enforcement discretion, the EPA’s longstanding practice has been not to take enforcement action against vehicle owners for removing or defeating the emission controls of their EPA-certified motor vehicles, so long as they can show the vehicles are used solely for competition events and no longer driven on public roads."
ok, I've never heard the word catless but I've definitely driven vehicles that had a pipe welded in place :)
I or a family member has acquired a few vehicles where the catalytic converter was cut out by thieves, and I've done both so I can tell you from experience that it's the difference between $15 and $800 (parts and labor).
Having grown up extremely poor, sometimes families make those decisions because they don't really have a choice. Thankfully nowadays I do so I tend to err on the side of being a good citizen but personally will not judge anyone who choose s to weld a pipe in place rather than spend the exorbitant amount necessary to replace it, especially considering it might just get stolen again.
It has never been legal in the US to remove any emissions equipment on any vehicle that is to be driven on the street. Even if it is outside of the smog check window, it still can not be removed or tampered with.
You can't modify the factory emissions output to go below the required output.
People like the Diesel Brothers from the Discovery Channel settled for like $3 million USD with the EPA for selling and promoting emissions defeat devices like tunes and straight pipes.
This too is incorrect. If a vehicle is made with for street purposes, it can never have its emission devices removed. Even if it used as a dedicated race car
As you probably know, I was referring to custom built race cars, such as Indy or Nascar. But yes there is a very tiny set of cars that were once street cars that have been modified and now only race and never, ever, even for a minute, drive on the roads.
Maybe in terms of CO2, but turbines also don't burn as completely as most piston engine cars. 10k is probably an exaggeration , but the pollution is much worse than the fuel economy indicates.
Similarly, my chain saw probably pollutes nearly as much as my new Honda truck even though it only gets a few gallons of gas per year.
But nobody drives their Ford F-250 10,000 miles a week. It's not about the energy efficiency of someone's mode of transport, it's about the total emissions from their transit habits. You know, the actually important metric when measuring an individual's impact on the climate.
A Gulfstream G700 carries 22,407kg of fuel (about 6,100 gallons at 800kg/m^3 ) and a max range of 14,353km (8,918.5mi), for 1.45mpg. Closer to 10x, by a bit. Using the 12,316km high-speed cruise range manages to bring it down to 1.24mpg, just under 10x worse.
Yes but an F250 does not use leaded gas like many planes do, has much more complete and efficient combustion, and likely produces far less particulate emissions.
Just curious, where in the wikipedia article does it say Private jets don't use leaded gas ?
Just searching the article for "lead" only gets this quote: "The possibility of environmental legislation banning the use of leaded avgas (fuel in spark-ignited internal combustion engine, which usually contains tetraethyllead (TEL), a toxic substance added to prevent engine knocking), and the lack of a replacement fuel with similar performance, has left aircraft designers and pilot's organizations searching for alternative engines for use in small aircraft."
Also a reference to "Planemakers challenged to find unleaded fuel option - The Wichita Eagle" a 2009 article which has a dead link.
Curious to me why you would cite an article that says the opposite of your assertion and then repeat the definitive statement. I must be missing something.
Jets don't use avgas (which is still available with lead), they use jet fuel.
The planes you are thinking of are mostly used for hobby flying or some short haul commercial flights, e.g. float planes. These have piston engines, more like your car ICE.
It's funny watching you all use different words and think they mean the same thing. Turbine powered aircraft, whether jet, fan or prop (a Citation is a turbofan powered aircraft) use Jet-A which is basically diesel (OK, OK, it's kerosene but they aren't that different). Piston planes (of which there are plenty) mostly use 100LL - high octane, leaded gasoline. Now that we're done with the pedantry, please continue with your argument.
And furthermore, it matters where non-CO2 pollution is released. Particulates released from a jet at cruising altitude, particularly over an ocean, are less harmful to human health than a truck belching pollution next to a kindergarten.\
I'd also add that two wrongs don't make a right, and while not strict enough there are emissions regulations for aviation.
I think you're probably rather exaggerating the difference here, but nonetheless, sure, let's regulate or the tax the shit out of private jets too, I'm okay with that.
My understanding is that such parts are not by themselves illegal.
The relevant text regulating the sale and manufacture merely allows the EPA to exempt products "that you intend to be used solely for competition, where we determine that such engines/equipment are unlikely to be used contrary to your intent."
> but a part of me does not like the idea that every vehicle owner is beholden to the OEM for parts in perpetuity.
I don't think the regulation requires OEM parts, Dorman and MagnaFlow sell bolt-on Catalytic converters without any trouble from the EPA. I think there is a real problem when it comes to more complex parts like ECUs but right to repair laws can help solve that by requiring documentation and restricting arbitrary locks of electronic components.
I was thinking more about O2 sensors. At least a lot of Toyotas don’t like the aftermarket ones for some reason. No idea if they’re truly out of spec or what.
But there’s a risk with living with a check engine light. Some vehicles disable stuff like traction control in that state, and you won’t know when a new unique code has hit that you should deal with for other reasons.
My old Suzuki SX4 (RIP) disabled cruise control when it threw a code, but so far as I could tell that was the only thing it did. Traction control still worked, automatic/manual all wheel drive still worked...it was also a secondary catalytic converter alarm, so I just kept a code reader with me and reset it whenever it would come on.
It would always come on after I got off the interstate and coasted up the on-ramp, so I am not sure if it came on after getting hot enough on the interstate or if it was just the coasting that caused it.
> It would always come on after I got off the interstate and coasted up the on-ramp, so I am not sure if it came on after getting hot enough on the interstate or if it was just the coasting that caused it.
I suspect you may have had a very regular time/distance in the repetitive sequence of [reset code, drive some amount, code comes back]. For low-priority codes (unlike major engine emergencies) the ECU will use a "fault frequency" counter to suppress nuisance check engine lights that don't actually need fixing (like if a sensor was briefly out of range just once, a fluke rather than indicating a problem). So if it increments the fault frequency counter for that particular problem once every 10 miles of the fault actually happening continuously, and doesn't throw a check engine light until it counts to 6, then the light will come on after 60 miles. Just making up numbers but you get the idea... so if you always reset it that much driving before the same on-ramp, then it will always light up at that point. Also, the fault frequency counter might reset with every drive cycle, rather than just at the point that you cleared the code. Taking a detour during the same drive cycle as the on-ramp (as opposed to relying on variance of how long ago you did a reset) would be a good experiment.
But if you know that the drive cycles weren't so regular, then it could indeed be related to overrun fuel cut (coasting) or whatever.
It would basically always happen after about 30 minutes of interstate traffic at 70 MPH (using Cruise Control), but it generally didn't happen if I was only driving at 55/60 on standard highways. Just one of the quirks of the car :)
> My understanding is that such parts are not by themselves illegal. The crime is actually using them on the road. My understanding was that they were legal for track purposes.
That certainly used to be the case, but it changed recently, and the EPA has been aggressively going after anyone who sells them for any purpose.
If you're in the US and sell things that can modify emissions stuff, they're coming for you. Period.
Omitting wear and reliability concerns, some tunes gain their effect by not controlling for things like NoX and unburned hydrocarbons.
The worst offenders? "Coal rolling". It would be one thing to do this to help spool a turbo or for some other performance reason, but it's literally running the motor as rich as possible to dump unburned fuel out the tailpipe to make a visual effect. At the expense of everyone around you.
It does, but it's worth noting that a manufacturer of such devices can make it meet federal emissions regulations (if they want to spend the $$$$ on R&D), and they can sell devices that are 100% legal in all 50 states.
Examples are Green Diesel Engineering (Who did a TON of dyno time and used to work for a major OEM on emissions stuff) and Banks (who are virtually an OEM at this point)
> My understanding is that such parts are not by themselves illegal. The crime is actually using them on the road. My understanding was that they were legal for track purposes.
ok, it's just a single datapoint, but motocross racetracks in New England, already built in the woods away from civilization, started requiring mufflers about 50 years ago, early 1970's
In the case of gasoline cars, there are mechanisms for controlling intake air, recirculating exhaust gas, and filtering emissions directly out of the exhaust gases. All of these impact carbon emissions.
These defeat devices allow drivers to modify some or all of these attributes in favor of gaining engine performance.
Muffler delete is a known cause of misfires. It manifests as a popping sound surrounded by the other shitty sounds produced by such a modified exhaust. We have all heard it.
That's a backfire. You're right in that a muffler can diminish the volume of a backfire, and that it is caused by combustion in the exhaust.
But the incomplete ignition of fuel can occur in both stock and modified vehicles. My car is completely unmodified, but can very easily have a low quiet popping noise during downshifts. With e removal of my muffler, it would be quite loud.
A modified engine can do this to a much greater extent, depending on the modifications. Some do so intentionally with what is known as a "burble tune", which is quite annoying in my opinion. It is inspired by rally cars that would intentionally inject fuel during the exhaust stroke and fire the spark plugs to keep exhaust driven turbines spinning even when under deceleration.
A misfire is a failure to combust the air/fuel charge in the combustion chamber during the expansion stroke, and they aren't typically caused by muffler deletes.
They can lead to the popping sound you're describing, but they don't always, and they're far from the only cause, and muffler deletes aren't necessary for those either. Unburned fuel hitting oxygen in the tip of a hot exhaust and immediately burning is the direct source of the noise, and causes for that are numerous.
In my kneck of the woods we call that backfire. A misfire is when something goes wrong in the cylinder such as the spark failing. Misfire can cause backfire, but not all backfire is traced to misfire. A very rich mixture can backfire without misfire.
A backfire is when the exhaust goes back out the air intake. An explosion in the exhaust system is called an afterfire, and is far more common. Most people just say backfire for both, unaware of the other term
Ok, we have quite a few keyboard mechanics here it seems. The muffler is a source of back pressure. That back pressure is part of the highly optimized emissions systems tuning done by the manufacturer. When you remove that back pressure there is high likelyhood that the reading from the 02 sensor are going to change and cause the computer to alter the air-fuel ratio based on that change. Hence, you will likely lose power, mpg, and introduce the possibility of misfires and other unwanted behavior.
I saw this analyzed on a Chevy Silverado that would randomly misfire. Everything else checked out: fuel pressure, spark plugs, firing timing, and fuel injector pressure. The remaining item: muffler delete.
We’re not taking about mufflers. For example in California “Emissions defeat system” means you simply used an off-brand air filter that wasn’t blessed by the government.
The parts may even be more efficient and less polluting, the government bureaucracy everyone here is worshipping doesn’t give a rats behind.
Exactly. Years back, I moved to California with an 80's sports car that was admittedly quite hotrodded, but I made very sure that the hotrodding did not worsen its emissions because 1. I wanted to keep driving the car in CA and 2. I don't want to pollute. First SMOG test in CA, the car blew clean as a whistle. It met emissions standards 40 years harsher than it ever had to meet.
Except I had all sorts of aftermarket parts in there from years of repairs, none of them with the all-important California CARB seal of approval on them, so even though it blew clean, it still "failed emissions" and I had to sell it to someone out of state. I'm still bitter about it.
In Ohio in the early 2000s all us kids were removing cats and passing the sniffer test easily. There was a visual test so we would normally just hollow out the existing cats. A lot of times cars with missing cats would pass the visual as well.
This is disingenuous; you have to do a lot more than change an air filter. You would have to change the actual piping, etc. with one that the seller declined to spend the money on certifying as compliant.
Further, and most people don't know this is a thing, you CAN tune your car as much as you want and have it certified with all of those parts as a one off for about $5,000 and a six-ish month wait. This is how you can legally import overseas vehicles and get a California title and registration, but it's $5,000 per test, and it usually takes more than one if you aren't super prepared. After the certification the entire engine (including all modifications) are regarded as that being the SMOG compliant form.
One other major loophole is kit cars; SB100 allows for non-SMOG vehicles to be built as a kit. Not everyone's cup of tea, but you can build things like the Superlite GT-R [0] or SL-C [1] and never SMOG it.
Which air filter? The engine air filter? I've never had a smog check that involves looking at that one. And AFAICT there's no RFID or anything in it, so it's not something they can check remotely
I for one love that BMW built the catalytic converters into the exhaust manifolds on my car, meaning that the only CARB-viable route outside of gambling on used units is a $10k replacement.
Not everyone lives in California so while OEM's might produce all cars to meet California standards, it is completely legal in states with more relaxed laws to make such modifications.
At the least I think the government could argue about selling in jurisdictions where it is illegal.
To tap into this thread - this is quite real. One can just remove a catalytic converter (or have it stolen) and they'd then be "defeating emissions" so this lawsuit seems a bit zealous to me.
Recently saw a post on a diesel truck forum about a CA resident who had legal/registration issues because of an engine swap (post emissions engine into a pre-emissions vehicle) [1]
Am under the impression this particular vehicle would be fine in WA state by comparison.
It's frustrating to see consumer vehicles being so strongly targeted by regulatory shenanigans compared to "private jets" and the like
for the non c02 pollutants it makes a ton of sense to go after consumer vehicles more than private jets. noise, N0x, and other pollutants have significant negative effects for anyone nearby. I care a lot more about the vehicles 20 ft from me than the ones 30k feet above me
I think the reason is (any diesel mechanics around please correct me if I'm wrong) that modern engines stripped of their emissions equipment will pollute a lot more than old engines.
I understand the reasoning and am all for mitigating pollution. It may be frustrating for consumers when these systems have potential to decrease economy, performance, and reliability while increasing cost and maintenance.
In the case of the DEF it absolutely reduces the lifespan of the engine. A truck engine that could last 500K miles lasts 200K max.
Factor a second or third engine (whole new truck) and the energy and pollution to produce it and DEF looks not as great.
Vehicles and engines that last 25 years are easy to build yet they are rare outside of commerical and military.
The whole argument is disengenuous and proceeds from an unstated a priori desire by government to restrict movement of citizens and markets, rather than as a real requirement for a real benefit.
Commercial fleet and military engines do not 'last' 25 years. They have a consistent maintenance schedule to fix and replace common wear parts. You have to think of it much more like the Ship of Theseus and not the same vehicle.
My last two vehicles lasted over 250k each, well, one is still going, I just don't own it any more. I feel the engine on the Toyota thats still running may last forever. It's replacing other parts outside the drive train that made it not worth it. Consumers are much more into toss and replace than full rebuild maintenance schedules.
I am not sure why you so casually dismissed this complaint without doing a quick search.
The whole reason why DEF is used[0] is because it reduces nitrous oxides, which are thought to be a pollutant.
Whether they actually are an effective greenhouse gas or not is probably a completely different thing we could argue about, but what is undisputed is the mechanism of action in the hot catalytic converter during engine operation, since it's the entire point of using the DEF in the first place.
In the catalytic converter, the urea thermally decomposes[0] to form Ammonia and Isocyanic acid[1], which is "a colourless, volatile and poisonous substance, with a boiling point of 23.5 °C".
23.5C is 74.3F. So, basically at room temperature the isocyanic acid becomes vapor. On a hot day, it vaporizes quickly and all that isocyanic acid has to go somewhere.
This is nasty stuff[2].
Anyway, the EPA probably figures that poisoning someone who's operating a diesel serves you right in order to reduce nitrous oxides. I've operated other diesels that are pre-DEF and never got sick like that.
There is no reason you should be exposed to volatile compounds from a normal parked rental truck. I would have asked for another truck or avoided U-Haul altogether.
Agreed. It was actually another national moving truck rental brand (not U-haul, I was just using it as a generic descriptor). I don't know why I'm not mentioning it since it seems like there's only a few national brands, but it's not their fault they have to use DEF and the truck was really great otherwise.
Oh, absolutely. Emissions equipment in modern diesel engines is extremely complicated and expensive to repair/replace. Multiple cats/particulate filters that can get clogged.
But, at least in Europe, diesel options in passenger cars are mostly gone, most SUVs nowadays are either gas powered (with a particulate filter, of course, so another thing that can go wrong) or some kind of gas/electric hybrid.
I would fully suspect people to be fined for producing enhanced emissions reduction hardware and offering it for sale. The default emissions systems end up reducing the life of the engine, creating another problem for the environment, and there are opportunities for fixing those deficiencies.
I don't know about the political leanings of right to repair supporters on average, but there are prominent supports who I certainly wouldn't characterize as leftist. See Louis Rossman for example.
I think this is an oversimplification at best. Right-to-repair has huge support amongst e.g. farmers, who are not homogeneously left-leaning by any stretch.
The right is not significantly more opposed to regulation of business than the left, except in some shallow rhetoric. They just want the regulations to align with their own world view.
The right to repair isn't leftist for those who don't believe intellectual property is property. For those people, the laws prohibiting people from cracking lockouts on hardware they own and modifying the code running on their own equipment are the governmental regulation they're fighting against.
it's pretty classic, people creating new throwaway accounts to spout their garbage because they're too embarrassed to chance it being linked back to them.
what does that say about the quality of what you have to say?
>> more governmental regulation, such as the right to repair itself.
Wanting more personal freedoms is generally considered a right-wing view. Creating a right to repair is about placing limits on corporations, not actual people. Try telling people that they can only use "original" parts in their guns and suddenly the entire NRA will be on the streets demanding a constitutional amendment in support of right-to-repair. This isn't a left-right political thing. It is a persons v. corporations issue, with government as the representative of the people.
I think a lot of folks use "leftist" in modern usage to mean "those who are further left than liberals". And that's where you're getting a lot of pushback. In terms of governmental regulation "you cannot use the judicial system to compel people to use your preferred avenue of repair" is pretty weak. I think there's a path to saying "there's no legal concept of 'felony contempt of business model'" is anti governmental regulation.
What I'm saying is that by casting right-to-repair as leftist (or rightist) just muddies the waters of what leftism is without providing any guiding context about why people might be for or against the right to repair. In any case, there's very few parts of the governmental-regulation spectrum that are unambiguously left or right.
That's false. I'm extremely (machine guns are a human right, the government got too big in 1777) libertarian-right, and right-to-repair is a sensible regulation that empowers individual agency and adds massive value to the economy.
Not to mention good old fashioned overpowered unfocused led lighting. Its been a meme with the truck bros for years, but now these products have entered the general lighting supply. Now your landlord replaces the garage light with one thats brighter than the sun and shines into your bedroom. You will end up like Kramer in the chicken roaster episode of Seinfeld.
A friend of mine bought a hyundai i20, and the LED lights in it aren't aimed low enough, either by manufacturing error or design, and even when dipped they shine at oncoming drivers. No idea if this is common, or if he can get them adjusted anywhere.
Can't tell you the amount of times I've seen people in the other lane flash their highbeams at him while I've been riding in the passenger seat, because they think he's doing the same.
It's 100% adjustable by user. Very likely when replacing them they got bumped? The classic way is you go in a garage or against a wall and shine them, and measure to ensure the horizontal line is going down towards the ground (vs going up and blinding everyone). Not only is it nicer for oncoming traffic, they actually work a lot better...
It is somehow every single vehicle on the road with these. People should lose their license for operating a vehicle with the blinding LEDs tilted up higher than highbeams would be. It is unsafe that approaching drivers cannot see past them as they drive by.
Ugh yeah. It's that time of year where it gets dark early and I get blinded on the way home from work by all the bro-dozer truck lights and intense LEDs.
But unfortunately it is the type of thing that, although obviously a superior solution, is unlikely to be adopted in the rest of the world. Where I live, as, I think, in most places, people would think you were very strange if you put those kinds of metal shutters on your windows, and I can even imagine neighbours being displeased with you as it makes it look like it is a bad neighbourhood.
Very common in Italy as well - search Images or Youtube for "finestra tapparelle" for an idea. The sound of tapparelle is super ingrained in many european minds, i.e. https://italybeyondtheobvious.com/taparelle/
If you seriously want to take action here, then do this;
1) Look up your city ordinances on sound, there should be copies of this is the reference section of your city's public library. Identify the ordinance and paragraph that the people nearby are violating. Record/video one or more violations on your phone.
2) Call the police, don't "complain about the noise", tell them you want to "swear out a complaint" for violating ordinance x, paragraph y. They are obligated to take your complaint and forward it to the District Attorney[1].
3) You will probably be called as a witness if the folks with the noisy cars choose a trial.
[1] When a police officer hears a complaint, they can "investigate", and then "cite" the offender. It is up to the officer's discretion. That citation is the sworn complaint from the officer of the offending behavior. When the police refuse to do their job, everyone has the right to "step in" to that role and swear out a complaint. The downside is that retaliating against an officer is 'scary' but retaliating against a neighbor isn't. This can result in a variety of negative externalities that may be criminal but hard to prove (car getting 'keyed', tires slashed, rocks thrown through windows, feces on your porch, Etc.)
Because taking on the job of enforcement when the cops let you down incurs significant personal risk, I usually suggest people make an appointment with their representative on the city's governing body, city manager, or district attorney and encourage them to actually do their job. Editorials in the local paper are good to, but projecting soft power as a voter in that way is less likely to blow back directly on you. I can also take longer and be less successful but sending emails to the DA with repeat infractions over and over can often convince them of the need for enforcement.
> 2) Call the police, don't "complain about the noise", tell them you want to "swear out a complaint" for violating ordinance x, paragraph y. They are obligated to take your complaint and forward it to the District Attorney[1].
Good luck getting them to pick up. At least where I live (Seattle), I don't think its possible to get someone on the phone unless you call 911. Daytime phones automated system defers everything to online.
City council meetings are for this. They typically have a citizen comments section at the end of the meeting.
Where I live, these citizen comments are beloved by wingnuts who hate their neighbors and are trying to convince the city to harass them. So - you know - try not to come off as one of those.
Agreed, per my comment the 1:1 meeting with your representative works well too. I don't know how common it is but I have found my city council member always willing to sit down for 5 - 20 minutes to hear what I have to say. Want to emphasize again though about doing a bit of research at the library about just what ordinances are involved and how to identify them for law enforcement to use. This helps your rep appear to be smart and well informed when they go to the police chief or city manager to ask them to "can you do something about this?" kind of request.
That saves waiting for your turn at the podium in the meeting and it avoids the wingnuts labeling you as the person "out to get them." Both are good things IMHO.
I lived in Portland for years - and it's the same. Even if you did get someone on the phone, I doubt anything would happen. There's tons of cars without plates, mufflers, windshields, etc. driving around that the police don't care about.
I fear Oregon may become a flyover state. I was at a local meetup (though admittedly, all tech centric) in Portland and there was consistent joking about how Oregon is what you see when you're traveling between Seattle and California or California and Seattle.
Actually faster here to dial the non-emergency. I once called 911 because a 7 year old child approached me at a gas station asking for money. I was put on hold. When I called the non-emergency I got through right away. The cherry on top was when I received a callback from 911 dispatch over an hour later to check if I was okay.
As someone who has lived in a variety of south-east US cities, the idea that nobody picks up on the non-emergency police line is bananas to me. Is this really true?
Are you unfamiliar with “non-emergency” lines? I’ve made considerably more (obviously still not a large number) of calls to the non-emergency number than 911. Most recently when my car was towed but the two company hadn’t updated their database quickly enough, for example.
I thought that being able to connect to a live human operator / police dispatcher outside of 911 was ubiquitous in America.
I’m sure this has worked but I have gotten the same result by writing fix your exhaust on a piece of paper and tying it to a brick and throwing it through their back windshield. Some times two wrongs make a right.
Your municipality likely has noise ordinances for anything above a certain decibel level. This can be handled by your local PD giving them tickets for their exhausts. I’ve seen it done before. If they keep getting tickets/fines they will likely change their exhausts. You can probably call the city about it but you can also call the cops. Just remember what they say about snitches.
Management (the courts) do not find it lucrative enough (political capital) to pursue weak cases (lax laws passed by the legislative branch).
In order to fix you must bring awareness in your local community to the problem (lax laws) and petition change (raise political capital). The courts and byproxy, enforcement, will follow. The larger the city, the more difficult this becomes.
The really frustrating thing is I love cars. I love driving, I love shifting though the gears, I love working on them, I've replaced headgaskets, rebuilt transmissions, and regeared differentials. I just hate how obnoxious noisy vehicles are.
For sure - I love speed myself. (Ironic that my fastest car ever is also the quietest, but EVs are a different creature). I guess not everyone has the same ethos that our personal enjoyment doesn't entitle us to encroach on others.
I got pulled over for noise (in the UK) as my ZX6-R had a hole in the downpipes and it was obviously a bit too noisy. I was trying my best to keep the noise down and (genuinely, provably) on my way to drop the bike off to have it repaired.
The Cop that pulled me over was happy to chat about it when I explained that it was on its way to get fixed he let me off.
Then a Harley that was twice as loud went past and the cop says "Cor, doesn't that sound lovely!" I asked him if he was going to pull it over for being louder than mine and he suddenly got very grumpy with me again. I didn't push any further as I didn't want to end up with a fine.
What's the old line?
"Harley's are probably the most efficient machine to turn gasoline into noise without that pesky by-product of horsepower."
This logic is absurd. Cops are hands off with bikers not because they own bikes. Extrapolating your logic one could say:
Cops don’t ticket cars because they also own a car
Cops don’t stop people with guns because they also own guns
Cops don’t go after bikers because they factor in if the offense is worth the risk, to both themselves and the public. There’s also a whole thing with outlaw motorcycle gangs that plays into it. Most non entry level bikes can out maneuver and outrun cop cars with ease, yes, even those slow looking Harley’s. Starting a chase over loud pipes would put a lot of innocent people at risk and for what? It isn’t worth it and it’s safe to say if the biker is running modified pipes they are not on an entry level bike.
Story: a buddy of mine had a gsxr 1000 and would purposely screw with cops on the freeway and as soon as they’d light up he’d be gone and doing 200mph within a few seconds, fitting between cars easily. Within 30-60 seconds a bike can be damn near a mile away from a cop car. Radioing ahead won’t help if you don’t know where they went and they were never running a plate to run… most cops know it’s pointless to chase and often immediately call it off. Public safety is more important. Those types of bikers have a way of making the issue go away all on their own eventually. You can’t temp fate that much and not eventually meet yours.
> Story: a buddy of mine had a gsxr 1000 and would purposely screw with cops on the freeway ... You can’t temp fate that much and not eventually meet yours.
An idiot friend used to do similar (in the UK), then one day he did it and the Police turned up at his house 1 minute after he had stopped and put his bike away. He'd gotten away with it loads of times but this time he did it with a Police helicopter in the air less than a mile away and easily able to track a bike all the way back to his house. A top sports bike may be able to do 200mph but not everywhere, and helicopters are fast, can see for miles with very good tracking cameras, and can fly in straight lines.
They then used all of the footage from the Police cars of previous incidents to tie them all to him (similar clothing, similar bespoke exhaust, etc). I think he got 8 years in prison with all of the totting up that went on (and previous offences taken into account).
A video that opens from a news helicopter and a reporter stating "we've been tracking him for ten minutes" that continues to track for another 3 or four minutes.
The police helicopter pulls off towards the end for lack of fuel .. and the news helicopter says that they are having trouble keeping up (despite having done so for at least 13 minutes).
I'm going to guess this is more a resources ran out thing than a car outran helicopter thing.
( FWiW "The speed of a police helicopter can vary depending on the make and model. However, most police helicopters have a top speed of around 130-145 miles per hour (209-233 kilometers per hour)."
The car was peaking at 110 mph, the helicopters may have been hitting headwinds, even so the statement was explicit that police helicopter had low fuel.
)
The police rig was probably easily keeping up - but was low on fuel, the news helicopter likely had less grunt and|or started to exceed budget burn rate | run low on fuel itself.
The follow through on that wasn't given but there's a fair chance the car was tracked down - being distinctive and the police capturing the plates.
It's still kind of amazing to me that race-tuned liter bikes are even legal in the US. Even a starter 250 likely has a faster 0-60 than most cars on the road. I believe you need a little extra power to spare when riding, so that you can suddenly speed up if you need to, but not so much extra power that a quarter-turn on the throttle gets you from 70 to 100 MPH in 1 second.
I've heard big bikes described as "ride to survive" because even a small mistake can be fatal when you are dealing with that much performance. Full disclosure, I ride a big, fat Kawasaki touring bike (1993 ZG1200, right about 760 pounds wet) and while the engine is big, it's geared to a max of 113 MPH. It's big enough I have to respect it when riding, but powerful enough that if I need to I can spur it a bit :)
I’ve had a Honda cbr and I’ve been into modified tuner cars my whole life. I have much more experience going fast in cars than on bikes. Everything becomes much bigger at higher speeds. You learn pretty quickly that when you’re doing 150 you don’t make jerky movements with the steering wheel. Tiny, tiny, fluid movements are amplified to become more. You need to anticipate understeer and be able to feel when the ass end is getting squirrelly or is breaking loose. You learn to use the engine compression as a brake assist when trying to slow that mass by 80mph in a 100 foot span. I’m guilty of doing obnoxious and deadly things on the highway in my various drift cars over the years and that’s more than enough for me. I had my bike up to 120 when I owned it and decides squiding out wasn’t something I wanted to risk. The shit I do in cars is more than enough to get the devil looking my way.
Interestingly enough I passed a cop on the highway doing 150 once. He was merging on from the on ramp. I stayed in it thinking I was fucked anyway but to my surprise he took the very next exit and got right back off the highway. There’s no way he didn’t notice me blow past him. The only thing I can think of is he got a priority call or he saw my speed and said fuck this my shift is about over and noped on out of running me down.
So we should kill people for loud exhausts? What about the innocent bystander the bike turns into jelly when it is catapulted into the air and lands on them? That energy has to go somewhere…
Well, you're the one talking about a friend who takes many lives into his hands by doing this, so it's not about "loud exhausts." It's about someone who thinks so little of his own and others' lives that he'd be doing 200mph on a crowded public highway. Pretty much the definition os "reckless indifference to human life."
>> Story: a buddy of mine had a gsxr 1000 and would purposely screw with cops on the freeway and as soon as they’d light up he’d be gone and doing 200mph within a few seconds, fitting between cars easily. Within 30-60 seconds a bike can be damn near a mile away from a cop car. Radioing ahead won’t help if you don’t know where they went and they were never running a plate to run… most cops know it’s pointless to chase and often immediately call it off.
Yes because Americans all over are going vigilante and taking justice into their own hands. What world are you living in? The America I live in everyone is too chicken shit to handle things for themselves and when I get to that point I’m not thinking about grappling hooks and going after people with loud exhausts…
safer for whom? My windows only rattle after the motorcycle has driven past, they don't project the noise ahead of you nearly as much as you think they do.
If you are riding on the highway going the same speed as other cars, it is often hard for them to see you, but if they can hear you they know you are there. It isn’t about driving past.
That's not actually the case in many places in the US, they were forcibly taken for cars in the same way electric streetcar systems were taken from us:
> Before the American city could be physically reconstructed to accommodate automobiles, its streets had to be socially reconstructed as places where cars belong [..] Until then, streets were regarded as public spaces, where practices that endangered or obstructed others (including pedestrians) were disreputable. Motorists’ claim to street space was therefore fragile, subject to restrictions that threatened to negate the advantages of car ownership.
Coming up with a fact that roads existed in the ancient times is not a gotcha. Most of the roads today did not exist back then. 99% of the roads I have driven on did not exist before cars.
If noise made your bike safer, you’d get an insurance discount. People say such things so that they don’t come off as sociopathic, not because it is true. Don’t parrot them.
Coronado Island (San Diego) loves giving tickets to all the Navy personnel driving through with too loud of vehicles. We try to warn people transferring there but many don't listen and end up with tickets.
To be fair (to those who think that's excessive), they also (on two occasions) chased down and cited/arrested people who tried to run me off the road on my bicycle there (commuted via bicycle for years), and I've had many other great interactions with them.
Grow up with alcoholic parent who loves to max out their high wattage sound system at 3am all the time and you’ll see it enforced often. Most house parties are shutdown due to noise complaints.
Where I grew up, an automotive noise citation was easy to beat in court because the law incorporated a complicated and exacting standard for measurement.
Most citations can get off on technicalities but that involves missing work, appearing in court, mounting a defense, and the gamble of owing the fine + additional court costs if you lose, and they probably, literally, bank on the probability that most people just pay the fine. Speeding tickets can be thrown out if the radar wasn’t recently calibrated, just have to ask about it in court. Window tint is the same deal, when was it last calibrated and documented to be within spec? Etc.
At least in Canadian cities, both bylaw officers and police can enforce these things. Bylaw officers tend to have less discretion on doing their job (and uhhh, fewer other crimes to claim to be busy with)
Though sometimes this double-responsibility just means finger-pointing instead of action.
I've never heard of bylaw officers being a thing in the US. There are some code enforcement people in the US, but they mostly deal in very specific areas (fire code, building code, etc).
This is true. Although, there have been sporadic recent creations of community safety teams and units that deal specifically with the unhoused populations or mentally ill people, as a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Who is going to enforce these rules other than cops?
I mean yeah if they never get complains about a given area and they get one call about a loud car driving they're not going to come in lights and sirens to search for them. But if they consistently get complaints it will absolutely guide their decision-making around where to patrol, how often, etc.
Of course this assumes that the political leadership in your municipality hasn't decided that cops don't need to enforce laws (rare outside of a few large cities) and they're not busier with much more serious crimes, underfunded and understaffed, and just not able to spend time on noise complaints (rare but a common talking point).
These rules are usually used as probable cause to target someone the police officer was already targeting. "Profiling" is the better word for it maybe.
If I chop the muffler off my car and run around revving the hell out of my engine I’m not going to say I was targeted or profiled after I’m pulled over in the vehicle that’s calling out to nearby police to take notice of me, regardless of what I’m ticketed for in the end. The squeaky wheel gets the grease as they say. You don’t want to be “targeted” or “profiled” (which isn’t what that would be anyway), then you need to blend.
I wish it were simply just strait pipes. The biggest buffoons are the ones running "pops and bang" tune where the clown car's engine dumps fuel into the exhaust to make it pop, bang and gurgle. Makes the car sound like shit but these mental midgets think it makes their already ugly slammed trashcar somehow sound cool. The kinds of people who do this usually have very little going on upstairs.
You can (indirectly) blame World Rally for this. Those car started doing this 15 or so years ago - the engineers found that dumping raw fuel directly into the turbo (IIRC, they had a 5th injector in the exhaust manifold) kept it spooled up during shifts and throttle lifts.
Yeah, I was thinking that the guys who are adding "anti-lag" to their street cars probably first encountered it watching WRC. Or maybe touring cars.
What's crazy to me is I hear it on cars that aren't even turbo - they're just running super rich with no muffler/resonator, so it pops/burbles more than normal. Can't be good for the car (the catalyst in particular, assuming they've bothered to keep it).
My dad bought a truck with aftermarket headers installed and dual aftermarket glasspack mufflers. If you were going down a hill and let off the throttle, it would "popcorn" like you described, but not obnoxiously. It was loud when you accelerate quickly, though. Scared a horse once when he pushed the clutch in and revved the engine.
I'd personally rather have a fast, but quiet vehicle. Most vehicles people make loud don't really have enough displacement to warrant that much sound so it's usually loud AND slow lol
I looked it up and the 1987-1991 Ford F series trucks came with some carbureted trucks and some EFI trucks, so it definitely could have been a carb helping too :)
You could try phoning the police about the issie. Be sure to record the call log.
Then, review your town's ordinances and see if there's anything about passenger vehicles requiring properly maintained and baffled exhaust system.
Then, write to your city coun, mayor, and police chief (all in one email) asking why this ordinance isn't enforced? Can it be struck from the ordinances if it will never be enforced?
Finally, ask them whether or not citizens should be able to enforce the code or ordinances amid willful police negligence to do so? If not, why not? If not, csn they add "City X does not issue tickets to noisy vehicles" to their marketing material.
Ask if you have fewer rights than someone who knowingly bought or modified a vehicle to disturb tens or hundreds of people all around them at any given moment during the day without recourse?
Ask them to provide at least two good points on why a passenger vehicle should be allowed to have a noisy exhaust system.
If they can't provide a solid solution, then ask them all to step down.
(I'm on your side, btw. Not sure if that was clear from my post.)
I am very annoyed by the decision of the EPA to start cracking down, because it's made it impossible to import parts for my track/race cars, even though it's completely legal to do so. Like many things, the market for enthusiasts supported availability and reasonable pricing for the more hardcore enthusiasts.
From TFA: “The DOJ’s suit comes after the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said that emissions defeat devices would no longer be a top priority for the agency.”
So literally the EPA did the exact opposite of your complaint. Or you meant to say DOJ.
It's funny you say that, since last year the EPA went down a who's-who of those that make exhaust components and sell exhaust components in the US. One of the first, most basic things, that you do is to replace the exhaust to open up flow and improve performance when you're building a race car (and reduce weight). Additionally you do tuning of the engine management system, which the largest provider of was a company called EcuTek that also had an enforcement action. https://www.epa.gov/enforcement/national-enforcement-and-com...
I mean... if you're building a race car, which is offroad use, and legally allows you to defeat emissions devices, but the EPA has taken enforcement actions against everyone who makes them or sells them, where are you supposed to buy them? I can do my own exhaust work, but I can't sit down and build my own ECU programmer that bypasses the encryption that the manufacturer puts into their product and debugs their proprietary CANbus protocol to reconfigure the fuel system mappings. I mean, I probably /could/, but we're talking about years of dedicated work on my part, and I'm sharper than the average racer when it comes to technical things. Typically you get at most 4-5 months to prep a race car for the following season.
The PR twit at the EPA can say whatever they want, but the proof is in the pudding and actions speak louder than words. The EPA fucked over everyone who does amateur motorsports in this country, point-blank.
A small number, perhaps, but most of these are likely components that enable more aggressive tuning to increase fuel and airflow for more horsepower and performance.
Depends how broadly the devices covered under this lawsuit are.
As cars get more advanced, sometimes you’re just overriding a sensor that broke and there was nothing wrong with the vehicle or its emissions. But fixing the faulty sensor would be a $$$$ fix and a defeat device is far cheaper.
coal burner is really a neutral reference that makes a note of race. Your interracial group of friends could say "she's melting snow" or "burning coal" with just a smile, no slur. I've only ever heard the term used in a friendly way. People frequently giggle about sexual matters.
Of course, if a racist makes any racial reference, it's generally racist.
You only have to go after the largest volume folks, and then put bounties on reporting the small frys (both sellers and the trucks running this gear). Leverage where most efficient.
At first I couldn’t care if someone bought this equipment to mod their vehicles. It’s readily apparent if you see someone driving a diesel like that. However here in Southern California I’ve seen countless vehicles driving the freeways belching smoke and police ignoring it.
Maybe they will also go after eBay for the sale of high power lasers, pesticides, lasers sold as laser pointers that have much higher output than 5mW, non-CE tested electrical appliances, use of lead metal in products, and lots of other dangerous stuff. Amazon too.
Does author of this article https://www.thedrive.com/author/chris-rosales "focused on the technical side" "Previous work experience: GTChannel, track day photography, drifting coverage, and odd jobs. Once worked in an Italian restaurant" "AA-T in Communications" really think Hondata is being used to skirt emissions and is the aim of DOJ action? Reuters news piece is cited verbatim except for the important part:
>The Department of Justice said eBay illegally allowed the sale of at least 343,011 aftermarket "defeat" devices that help vehicles generate more power and get better fuel economy by evading emissions controls.
"sales of defeat devices for certain diesel trucks after 2009 and before 2020 resulted in more than 570,000 tons of excess NOx and 5,000 tons of excess particulate matter (PM) over the lifetime of the trucks."
"defeat" devices are not aftermarket ECUs for your eighties Honda, they are DPF/EGR/SCR deletes for Diesel trucks.
Additional issue I see there is the customers are being ripped off. $1500 for a device that can only do specific programming sets and depends on remote access? I think they are taking people to the bank on cheap devices. This seems like something that could be done on a $100 general purpose OBD device.
On newer vehicles I would expect it to be possible to upgrade the infotainment system to have all this built in to change on demand. Fuel efficiency mode. Smog inspection mode shout-out to VW. Whistlin Diesel Mode For rollin coal and melting tires. All of this should be an open source USB image file that also strips out any remote telemetry and remote control capabilities from the vehicle and unlocks all subscription services giving ownership back to the owner.
There are aesthetic, performance, financial, and ideological reasons for people to evade many regulatory requirements for cars. For emissions in particular, you may miss out on some vrooom or roar from your car, or you may find yourself tasked to make expensive repairs in order to keep it on the road.
Often times it's the removal of a complicated system that is failure prone - less filters to get clogged and stuff like that.
Edit: people generally don't do things for the "sole purpose of polluting more" it's often functional. Many diesel drivers don't like others who roll coal as the image is bad in general - heavy equipment will often produce black smoke because the engine is being worked for a purpose and it's literally just being given fuel.
This is correct. One of my two modified cars came from CA at some point and had emissions equipment that was standard there but not on 48 state cars. Removal of it didn't impact emissions and the car actually runs cleaner modified than it did when bone stock. But you see a lot of people here who just assume modified == killing baby penguins with emissions or something. Trust me even the car guys don't like the straight piped VQ revving at the car meets.
There's a multitude or purposes. Improved power being one, improved reliability being another. Modern diesel emissions equipment fails regularly, often in hard to diagnose and repair ways.
If you spent $100k on a truck, and you could spend $2k more to 'delete' some emissions equipment to prevent $10k+ worth of repairs in the future, would you do it?
As a motorcycle rider, these people that dump black smoke when they accelerate are just pumping poison straight into my lungs. I hate it so much because there’s nothing I can do about it.
At least cars have cabin air filters. I get to suck it straight in unfiltered.
As a car driver without a cabin air filter, (are cabin air filters even effective against exhaust gases?) both diesel trucks and motorcycles require me to close my windows and vents because of the smell.
At least cars have smog equipment to reduce the emissions. Motorcycles mostly don't.
Most motorcycles made from 2017 onward have factory emissions equipment with cleanliness similar to cars (due to the Euro5 regulations from that year forward). Since most bikes have one configuration globally, even US models implemented Euro5.
I drive a 2013 VW diesel, and this year the warranty covered an EGR and a DPF, which is exactly the kind of thing deletes remove from the vehicle.
That's about $6K in work on a vehicle I paid $14K for a couple of years ago.
Next time, when it is out of warranty, should I take the car to the junk yard? Or delete them and never have another issue? Which is really better for the planet?
Before anybody asks, no I do NOT want to roll coal. It's stupid and obnoxious. You can put a proper tune on a car and not have that issue. Soot is unburnt fuel, which means wasted fuel. You turned it up too high.
When Dieselgate was happening, my understanding is that you were offered a couple of options.
One was to sell back the car. The other was to keep the car, do the fix, and accept an extra 10(?) years of fairly comprehensive warranty. It transferred ownership, which made them fairly attractive as a used car, which is why I have one.
Has saved me literal thousands at this point, but after owning it a couple of years, I understand why everybody was happy to sell them back. They're junk, and the dealership experience leaves something to be desired too.
Some of these warranty claims have had me running back and forth to the dealership. My record is 7 trips before they got it right.
Another dealership left it spraying fuel all over the engine bay. That was a good time.
Well, a 3500 diesel is all of $100k today (if you're getting 4 door, dually). I personally wouldn't spend that kind of cash unless I needed such a thing (like, to pay my bills with, not pull an RV or something). And if I was paying my bills with it, I'd make sure I keep it one the road, one way or the other.
There are many examples. Many SUV's in the US these days are only able to meet emissions requirements by automatically turning off the engine at stoplights or whenever the car comes to a stop. Many people find it annoying because there's a delay when you press the accelerator to go and then you press harder and the car then jumps. Most cars allow you to disable it, but you have to do it every time after you turn the car on. No one likes it. You can sometimes modify the car or access hidden computer settings to disable the setting. Technically, it's illegal to do.
IMHO such start/stop is a fraudulent way to meet MPG targets. Almost everyone I know presses the button to turn off the feature the moment they start their car.
Because in a non hybrid there is a very noticeable delay as the engine starts.
I remember turning it off in Europe because trying to start from a dead stop with the engine off in a stick shift is a whole new world of fun I didn’t need.
Unlikely. This isn’t a problem of education. The primary benefit of hybrids is fuel efficiency. People who buy large SUVs have already decided that fuel efficiency is not a high priority.
Well, if you do it right, you put it on your race car to make it go faster and only drive it at the race track.
Otherwise, you do it to make your street car faster (and maybe also pollute more), or worse, just generate a bunch of diesel soot to annoy other people with.
One motive is that it's cheaper to delete the emission system vs having to replace/repair the unit. Diesels have much more sophisticated emission devices vs gasoline engines, so it's more costly.
One does not roll coal from e.g. an EGR bypass or delete, though! The only way to get thick clouds of black smoke are too much fuel (turn up the pump) or not oxygen (bag over the air filter in the simplest case).
Many states and localities have "visible emissions" rules, where even if your vehicle doesn't have to pass emissions tests, you can still get pulled and cited for actual smoke. I've never been pulled for it (smoke means you're wasting fuel) so I don't know if it's an inconsequential fine or just not enforced generally.
In my lived experience the folks who intentionally want to roll coal are younger guys (something to do in high school) - "matured" diesel owners want little/no smoke for the higher performance
Sometimes to avoid costlier mechanical work like changing O2 sensors, where often cars still give a check-engine-light if you use an aftermarket one (dunno why the aftermarket ones are so poor that they cause emissions problems or if the car’s computer was deliberately/unintentionally so sensitive to force people onto OEM parts).
Oh my gosh, I've had to run a new wire for an O2 sensor because mine gave out and it was a PITA but I couldn't afford the labor at the time and it was putting my car in limp mode which disabled cruise control. so not only was it $150 sensor, but also 5 freaking hours of me watching youtube and get cuts on my hands underneath a car.
Usually increased performance. ECUs that will happily dump an increased amount of fuel into the engine, for example. High flow exhaust parts that remove catalytic converters, for another example. Both are being sold on eBay.
> Section 203(a)(3)(B) of the Clean Air Act makes it a violation for any person to manufacture or sell, or offer to sell, or install, any part or component (i.e., “defeat device”) intended for use with, or as part of, any motor vehicle or motor vehicle engine, where a principal effect of the part or component is to ...
So, I guess I can see how ebay is at fault. But if that is literal text then it seems that both the end users (buyer and seller) are also at fault and should be parties to this lawsuit.
Anything to avoid regulating real change right? Why save huge amounts of emissions by mandating slight changes to over the road trucks and commercial users when you can instead harass regular (well asshole) drivers?
The big problem is the lack of emissions regulation (or even proposed) on the commercial vehicles. However, that isn't something the legislative branch can do by themselves (either EPA or DoJ), requires congressional action.
Its so sad realizing how we have all these fixes available to the worlds problems, but the fact they depend on the stakeholders in question to take a loss means they won’t be implemented without a protracted legal battle that might never meaningfully resolve. All this technological progress ossified by the profits gained from the status quo.
The rules are in place, but not enforced at the degree to which the government prefers. So they are litigating moderation policies under the Clean Air Act. This seems a novel application and, to me, a likely overstep.
Haven't looked for a while, but it used to be fairly common to be able to find them on both Amazon and eBay, usually listed as "lawnmower mufflers", with pretty un-subtle hints:
"This lawnmower muffler fits a 9mm exhaust and you can bang around your back yard all morning without disturbing your neighbor."
It was a thing for a while, less so now though. To be fair, while they're illegal if fully finished (it's complicated, the ATF changed the rules recently), they're not exactly a threat to anyone. They just make weapons less concealable and only minimally decrease the audio signature. They're not like the movies. Congress and the ATF have been pushing to deregulate them because the paperwork burden required to make/buy them legally is gumming up the works at the ATF and they're unregulated in a lot of the commonwealth/European countries.
Suppressed firearms are still quite loud, typically 120-150dB, vs 145-175dB unsuppressed. It's enough to reduce hearing damage but still sounds like a gunshot.
The sound they make in movies couldn't be further from reality.
1) In most of this country it's entirely legal to own and use a suppressor - so there's plenty out there "in the wild" and few if any are used for crime.
2) These listings are usually predatory BATF Honeypots (designed to catch only the dumbest among us) - but even if they aren't, there's still little if any crime committed with them. So, why even worry?
Is this similar to the brass knuckles, I mean “belt buckles”, they sell in shady gas stations? Or the tobacco shops who sell pipes for anything but tobacco? As long as they don’t say it’s for illegal use it’s a gray area.
I remember the time I was looking shaggy and walking out the door of a supermarket from the wrong direction with a large open-topped bag (and no stolen goods) and the manager of the store, who looked like a detective from a 1970s movie, followed me out on my heels holding a big clipboard which I suspect he would have whacked me with if I'd given him any trouble and later would claim that he was just holding a clipboard and I got hit my mistake.
Not sure why you're being downvoted, that's a legitimate question. The ATF spends a lot of time going after illegal silencers (usually sold as 'oil filters') but they generally focus on end users who buy in quantity or the manufacturers who 3d print them. Have not heard of them going after marketplaces like eBay, but then again marketplaces generally bend over backwards to maintain compliance with firearm regs because they don't want to see a headline like 'mass shooter bought weapons on ebay'.
Other than in Hollywood movies, is there any crime that is enabled with a suppressor that isn't enabled with just the gun itself? Is everyone collectively harmed by one person possessing one?
Lots of gun owners think the rules around suppressors are silly, because the reduction in noise is a huge quality of life improvement for everyone around you -- and a glance at the police blotter in any major city should show that gun crime isn't exactly hindered by the lack of suppressors!
and... most importantly... a suppressed firearm is still not quiet! - and is not hearing-safe to fire indoors!
Hollywood and video games have convinced the population a suppressor is impossible to hear and you can shoot people in public without anyone knowing. Ridiculous, to say the least.
Even then, it's still obvious a gun was fired. The John Wick scene in the subway is so laughably absurd, but so many people think that's what happens when you screw on a can.
More to the point, there's nothing that can be done about thread adapters for oil filters. There are any number of legitimate uses for a 13/16"-16 to 1/2"-28 adapter.
Because the devices aren't illegal, and have legal uses, but eBay is being held responsible for the illegal ways end users use these devices.
The only real violation that might have occurred here is not removing listings for these devices where they are explicitly marketed for illegal purposes. Short that, they need to actually justify passing a law outlawing these devices, or they need to enforce the existing laws against deceptive use of these devices.
AFAICT it is up to the EPA whether or not to exempt noncompliant nonroad engines/equipment that are intended solely for competition. I don't think you need to explicitly market a product for illegal purposes for the EPA to determine that it is not unlikely to be used contrary to the intent.
> New nonroad engines/equipment you produce that are used solely for competition are excluded from emission standards. We may exempt (rather than exclude) new nonroad engines/equipment you produce that you intend to be used solely for competition, where we determine that such engines/equipment are unlikely to be used contrary to your intent.
Is that different from any other retail store that has to choose what products to carry based on the local laws? Just because eBay crowd sources their product acquisition, doesn't materially change the fact that they are, ultimately, a retailer selling products. I go to a store and buy a product, and the only difference is in the retailer's perception of my relationship to the origin of the product, but it's a distinction that only exists on paper and ultimately has no difference from the outside. That distinction without a difference shouldn't create a loophole to bypass all liability.
Emissions tests are a poverty tax that play a strong role in punishing people trying to buy affordable old cars and either pushing the demand curve for new cars, or pushing poor people into illegality or carlessness.
I recently took a trip to Seattle and the light-rail was so cool. You could walk anywhere, without even the need for a bike or scooter. And I'm someone who usually never leaves bed so that was a surprise for me.
Under current economic conditions almost any tax that doesn't explicitly target high earners and high net worth individuals is a poverty tax. Fixing economic inequality is the appropriate place to deal with this problem, not reasonable taxes like emissions tests.
Literally. I'm sure the purpose of all these regulations (including the EU banning petrol cars) is that in a few decades poor people won't allowed to drive their own cars.
The Canadian government has some secret spat with Xiaomi cellphones and got eBay, newegg and Amazon to stop their sale. They weren’t approved for sale in Canada, but I suspect some other reasoning for targeting a Chinese manufacturer in particular and not all the other unapproved products.
However, eBay just blocked anything with “xiaomi” in the title, so their scooters, vacuums, android TV hubs and everything were no longer available for sale.
I had an old Mi Box (TV hub) listed for sale that became shadow-banned: after it didn’t sell for a while (duh, nobody could find it), I went to lower the price and it gave some vague error. I called eBay and they said it was due to gov regulation but had no further info, so I just took “xiaomi” out of the title and voila!