I used to belong to Reddit's r/Diesel subreddit. I own a 40+ year old car with a small Diesel engine, and I hoped to trade advice, parts sources, tips, and so on.
A good number of the posts are about people squalking about "freedom" to "delete" the emissions systems, about how they have a "right" to pollute as much as they want, and some of them even think rolling coal is cool and is OK to do.
I personally take good care of my engine, and in spite of the fact that it predates most emissions solutions by decades, it's well tuned enough that I can't see smoke out the back even if I floor it and wind up the engine. After all, a properly tuned engine is one that properly burns all the fuel you put in to it.
So I left that subreddit, and I'm glad for it. That stupid worldview where we are intentionally ignorant of our impact on the rest of the world is uniquely ugly.
Now on to motorcycles: all those motorcycles with no mufflers or with mufflers that don't do much to quiet their engines piss me off. People claim the noise makes them "safe", but that fails to address the fact that if there were lots of motorcycles on the road and all of them were super noisy, the noisyness would lose all value. In other words, it's a solution that can only help a small number of people to the detriment of everyone else, and can't be applied fairly if more people did it. It's selfish.
Also, gasoline engines run better and burn fuel better with a proper amount of backpressure. All those motorcycles that idle like shit are wasting fuel and polluting the air, even if they don't put out black smoke like deleted Diesels do.
It all sucks. I just wish people would be a little less selfish and less self centered.
A good number of the posts are about people squalking about "freedom" to "delete" the emissions systems, about how they have a "right" to pollute as much as they want, and some of them even think rolling coal is cool and is OK to do.
I personally take good care of my engine, and in spite of the fact that it predates most emissions solutions by decades, it's well tuned enough that I can't see smoke out the back even if I floor it and wind up the engine. After all, a properly tuned engine is one that properly burns all the fuel you put in to it.
So I left that subreddit, and I'm glad for it. That stupid worldview where we are intentionally ignorant of our impact on the rest of the world is uniquely ugly.
Now on to motorcycles: all those motorcycles with no mufflers or with mufflers that don't do much to quiet their engines piss me off. People claim the noise makes them "safe", but that fails to address the fact that if there were lots of motorcycles on the road and all of them were super noisy, the noisyness would lose all value. In other words, it's a solution that can only help a small number of people to the detriment of everyone else, and can't be applied fairly if more people did it. It's selfish.
Also, gasoline engines run better and burn fuel better with a proper amount of backpressure. All those motorcycles that idle like shit are wasting fuel and polluting the air, even if they don't put out black smoke like deleted Diesels do.
It all sucks. I just wish people would be a little less selfish and less self centered.