You guys think this stuff just dropped out of the blue with the prius crowd, but it didn't. It started a VERY long time ago, before many of you were even born.
I remember living in Los Angeles in the 60's when teh air polloution was so bad that you couldnt see a half block through the brown crud and a couple of generations of people grew up with various respiratory diseases ( and who knows what else ) . You can *almost* see the sky out there now( the locals think they can, but there's still a heavy brown tinge to it to those not used to looking at it all the time
showing that a few decades of emission control regs have actually worked., if they hadnt bit the bullet and done it, that entire area would be uninhabitable by now, along with a number of other major cities, and smaller cities would have been taken out as well.
Even with the current emission controlls, here in middle america, we now are seeing what they loving like to now call " ozone action alert' days, which is a fancy way of saying SMOG ALERT, without admitting that your city has a smog problem
I moved as far away from civilization as I could get to Arkansas where everything runs a good 20-30 years behind the rest of teh country( which can be good and bad in some cases ) and it took a long time for the smog to catch up here, but sure enogh, when it gets good and hot and teh traffic gets heavy, we get it. If the wind isnt blowing hard enough to dissipate it, it will stagnate and wham bang, big city smog, and if it keeps up, we dont have any kind of inspections now, but if folks keep taking advantage, we WILL end up with inspections, all it's going to take is one state senator cruising along with his window down and getting smoked by some joker who thinks it's cool to belch out a cloud, and WHAM, it's on the docket next session, and these guys WILL vote in ANYTHING that one of their buddies puts out before them, just so their buddies will vote for their crap ( Ive watched them in action, its frightening )
I know there's guys blasting around out in the middle of nowhere north dakota saying, ***, its not bothering anyone? but where do you think that stuff goes??? the smoke fairies magically make it go away? Anyone ever take a good look at all the sidewalks and old buildings in the midwest and norteast? Guess what gives everything that puke black colour? It's soot. Granted , most of it came from factories, but it's soot all the same, and no soot fairies came and got rid of it.
If we dont regulate ourselves, they WILL regulate us. Most of teh states that are testing the older non computer controlled engines use a snap test, where they tromp your throttle to the floor ( i.e governer ) and back off with a smoke opacity meter poked in the tailpipe ( basically a fancy o2 sensor in some cases , in others it actually registers how much light the smoke blocks out) In * most cases* so far the allowances have been fairly liberal in regards to stock engines as they would allow a fairly stout puff on the stomp down so long as it cleared, but if the vehicle continued to belch or stream along, then it would fail
I'm not up on the slushboxes on these things, but make darn sure that if you have one, it is OK with being revved high in park on neutral without damaging the trans, if not, make the testors provide a dyno to run it in gear, or make them give you a wavior . We ran across this with certain european diesels with zf slushboxes that cannot be revved high out of gear without destroying them.
If you have a truck that was originally an N/a, then that is how it is registered and would be tested ( even if an aftermarket turbo is in place) and would be allowed a higher percentage than one that is registered as a turbo from the factory as a factory registered turbo is expected to have more air available to burn the fuel under hard acceleration
For those with turbos, I can strongly suggest hypermaxes smoke puff eliminator, so you can finally have a stanadyne pump that works as efficiantly as a Bosch pump ( and will give you all the power you want without the big puff when you stomp it and make passing a breeze )
We went through this whole thing with some diesel cars a few years back when they first started testing diesels ( except the cars basically run clean to begin with unless they are on their last legs, and we at the time didnt run across any that didnt pass, I'm sure its happened since though )
Dont get me wrong. I like having insanely fast vehicles... I also thoroughly enjoy looking out my window in the morning and seeing wild birds and skunks, deer, *****, rabbits, possum, heck, you name it. The two don't have to be mutually exclusive
