Emissions--See This

[lindenengineering]

Guys
This came out in the Guardian for Sunday reading
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... cut-target
Dennis

[Dreadnought]

Latest from this side of the pond (regarding legislation that they are trying to sneak in by the back door etc) The latest from the DVLA (Swansea UK) (They handle all of the vehicle licencing for England, Wales and Scotland) is that they now require an engineers report if you change an engine say from Petrol to deisel. At the moment, little more than a few words on headed notepaper from you local garage (repair shop) will do, but as with all things this will escalate and it will have to be signed by someone with letters after their name and that will cost. (Last time I had a medical to renew my Heavy Goods Vehicle Drivers Licence, my Doctor charged me £125 and only asked a few questions and barely looked at me!!!)Some say it is to bring us in line with France where they have now banned all engine changes and upgrades on the grounds that there have been a couple of road accidents caused by amateurs changing small light petrol engines for heavier diesels, in cars, without upgrading springs/brakes/tyres etc. (Their were calls for these kinds of bans on 'custom cars/hotrods etc in the 70, and the regs. were tigtened up a lot in the 80,s) Soon enough we will be banned from taking a spanner (wrench) to our engine or even changing the oil.

[lindenengineering]

Dreadnought,
Over here we have a what seems to be a flexible approach in Colorado to Diesel conversions, but there are some checks and balances in the mix.

When dealing with vehicles made before 1981 the 2 gas test for gasoline (petrol) engines are conducted by authorized private shops--like in the UK a free acceleration test for one minute at idle, then to 2200 for one minute then to idle one minute. Simple enough!

ALL diesels are tested by the same type of private shop but subjected to a rolling road test and accelerated to full output measuring opacity etc. If it complies you get a pass. (again more stringent than the UK test for light vehicles)

So in practical terms if you have an older vehicle that was once Petrol and now is diesel there is little to prevent you from doing it. We have done more than a few of these on LR's etc with great success.
So to sum up the practical problems are few up to 1981--(pre OBD1&2 stuff and the mil lamps.)

Now once we pass that threshold, all petrol powered vehicles tested by the State on a rolling test checking for 5 gases called the (enhanced) Its more stringent than the UK test by far and even tests "evap"systems/gas caps. The Calif one is even tighter, since they have a different testing infrastructure. The onboard computer is coupled to the State computer through the mil (diagnostic) plug during the tests to check for mil light operation and OBD2 compliance where applicable.
Up to 1994 and before, the Fed mandate on standardized mil diagnostic connectors doesn't apply, hence this "plug in portion" of the test is not conducted for obvious reasons so there is some flexibility on emissions testing. For that reason you can convert I suppose because the State doesn't do diesel tests so you are now back to the private test sector as previously mentioned.
If there was record of petrol testing for that vehicle and now its become diesel the State will know about it but few have been challenged as to the engines' suitability (i.e Fed import approval).

Now if we take a late say LR Discovery with a 4 litre V8 petrol and convert it to diesel, then we really fly in the face of regulations. Firstly we could I daresay "easily" (misnomer that! ) put say a 1981 to 1985 Merb OM617 into the frame or even a later OM616 (mid nineties vintage ) and get it to pass on gas emission and even by using a quick cobble up make the Mil lamp go out.
BUT these engines have NO emission controls that equate to a similar say Dodge/Ford diesel engines of the same vintage --so they are not compliant in short they technically don't pass.
Questioned on this the State authorities are very tight lipped, simply because they don't have a clear mandate, but I am convinced they would try to find a "get-out". So if you were to present them with a late model vehicle conversion, the "litmus tester" would be to convert a Euro OBD2/3 Landrover to diesel and then see if they would pass it.
The most likely result would be, since then engine was never approved for import by the Feds its not compliant so "It no pass Mister".
An exercise to conduct in the first place is risky from a financial aspect, even if you could get the whole lot pass the US customs in the first place--so few but Bravehearts would try that.
Dennis
Brave hearts!!!! Not the Hollywood version --real life ones more like!

[Dreadnought]

I keep forgetting that you have state regulations and Federal regulations to comply with, I wonder what a nightmare it would be if Oxfordshire had different regs to Witshire and Gloucestershire or The Wirral!!!! complete insanity and anarchy must ensue??? but you seem to get by over there. I am soon to be moving to Poland, and have to get my Pinz with its Pinzmeister Mercedes 5 cyl conversion registered in Poland and just today took delivery of an Ex Bundeswehr Unimog 1300L (Which is registered as an agricultural vehicle here - Zero Road Tax - same as Historic - last time I drove a tractor (Fordson Major) it was something like £5 per year!!! So I will report on the bureaucratic hoops I have to jump through and things I have to comply with in Poland....though I hear that the MOT is nowhere near as stringent as here in UK, I love taking pre - 1972 Diesel vehicles for MOT tests, the apprentice duly starts up the smoke test machine and I say "its OK you won,t be needing that, the official line by the book says that the vehicle smoke 'must not obscure the vision of following drivers'!!!"

[lindenengineering]

Dreadnought
Try to imagine the USA as an "earlier EEC", a bunch of States all operating under one Fed Gov. Tony Blalr had visions of being "Presidential" when he forerun the "Broon" years with GWBush & the Poodle stance! And as you saw tried it again recently in a bid for the "real thing". Emperor had no clothes that time!

So each State has at present the right to overrule Fed standards and implement their own more stringent levels. California is famous for that.
So in this case, Colorado has counties just like "zee ol' country" and some counties have E controls and some don't. I suppose you could envision Surrey. London Boroughs, Greater Manchester, and the lowlands of Scotland having to have an E test because of urban connurbations and higher tail pipe emissions, whereas the more Ag based counties like my native Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Herefordshire would be exempt from e examinations. In this respect the UK is ahead of the USA on E tests as they are universally mandated.
What is slated to happen is that ALL of Colorado will be mandated to have emssions testing, just like the UK after 2010.
How far this will go is anyones guess and if there are tacit promises made by the US in Copenhagen, auto tailpipe emissions could be easily targeted in a nationwide sweep. States that have no current E testing could easily be running foul of Fed madates very soon.

I follow all this more closely than some perhaps because on your side the general perception is that the USA is wanton polluter, when in fact it isn't, its just the size of the place that makes it emit more emissions than other countries where monitoring is conducted

In any case from a repair shop stance this is all good news because it forces vehicle owners into a set E compliance standards that must be adhered to if you want it licensed. Currently from my records an average 5 gas E repair runs about $1300 to obtain compliance valid for 2 years if the vehicle is post 1981. Those manufactured before that date are valid for one year. A failed Landrover or Pinzgauer costs about $500 on average to obtain compliance and often a DIY owner prior intervention costs more to put right, simply because more gets messed up in the "mix and find" reasons for poor running!
A surprise to you might be that Hybrids are now very prevalent on the roads on this side and many are now falling out of dealer capture. These present good repair & revenue prospects as more of these units are becoming prevalent and need repair.
For me an exciting time to be in this industry and all its challenges. As a foot note I remember the 1960's E test for diesels in the UK; floor the pedal and hold a sheet of white paper a foot away from the tailpipe. If it sooted the paper it was a failure! What a change from those good old days and Hay trucks like Leyland Comets!
Cheers Dennis

[Dreadnought]

Hi Dennis always a pleasure to converse with you, I,m only a few miles from from at least one corner of Gloucestershire here in Swindon and am originally from Banbury in Oxfordshire. Imagine a smoke test on a 1960,s Commer TS 3!!!!! back in the 80,s when I was a trucker, I used to own a 24 Ton Ford Cargo with a beautiful Deutz Air cooled V6 Diesel, (about 10 Litres) everybody used to say it sounded just like a Detroit Diesel two stroke? after they built mine circa 1986, they could only put the V6 in 'plant ' because it wouldn,t meet emissions criteria, you could see mine coming from a mile away by the plume from the stack!!!!! But back to my Unimog, I find that it must be Swiss not Bundewehr as it has no fuses, just a big row of circuit breakers in a pod behind the instruments, the giveaway should have been the same little rotating map reading light as the Pinzgauer, it is in roughly the same place screwed to the Mog,s glove compartment lid. I wonder if the States and their counties will be like the EU eventually in the same way it seems to work for some countries and not for others? For instance it works for the French, Italians and Greeks because their culture is to enforce the parts of regulations that work for them and just discard anything they don,t like, so emissions regulations which they didn,t like or would have had the motoring public up in arms were just turned a blind eye to. But if the automated and countrywide interlinked system we have here now, whereby you could get an MOT one day in Gloucester Fail it, drive to Inverness. and have the vehicle tested again and the tester will be able to tell you exactly what it failed on several hours and hundreds of miles away, is ever instigated across Europe, then a testers job will be made so much easier. (There are still anomalies like my Pinz still being on the system as a Petrol engine, but the tester changed it at the point of test.) (he also politely asked me to cover up the Chassis Plate with its gross vehicle weight of 3,100kg which should put it in the class 7 MOT bracket? Big Campers etc.. Though I am still hoping that in Poland..... A. I can register my Mog as a tractor same as here (NIL roadtax) and no MOT, or B. roadtax is cheap and the TEST is a bit less stringent than here.

[lindenengineering]

Dreadnought
You mentioned that Commer 2 stroke engine---As an apprentice in the 1960's it was known as Tillings Diesel and the timing arrangement was by chain in the timing cover behind the flywheel (a la Pinzgauer). Prone to jumping it would throw the pump timing out----and then you really did have an insect fogger on your hands!

The mod was to convert it go gear drive which meant the injector pump then drove backwards and you had to do an injector pipe mod---cross the front injector port to the rear injector and "vickey verkey" for the rear!
If only repairs were that simple these days.
Take care
Dennis

[Dreadnought]

Dennis, that saying 'vickey verkey' is pure Northern Irish Belfast, and Protestant to boot.......last person I heard saying it was a Drill Sergeant in 1975. Near to Swindon there is an old Airfield called Wroughton Aerodrome, in the Hangars are all the vehicles and pieces of engineering that won,t fit in the Science Museum in London, they have all sorts of things, from early computers, to complete aircraft, to an engine from a Focke Wulf 190, same from a TSR 2 and the only Commer (Tillings Stevens) TS4 which was an advanced TS3 with many modifications for more power for its size. (They also have one of my favourite vehicles in the world!!!! A Rotinoff Atlantic, if God were a truck, that,s what he,d look like.)

[lindenengineering]

Dreadnought
Strangely I heard the expression from a British Army bomb disposal expert when I was studying "methods and instructional techniques" at a course in Welwyn Garden City during the early 70's.

We got under his tutelage the methods of dis-arming a bomb (ex WW2) (diffused of course) under his instruction. In turn, I demoe'd the method of installing and timing a distributor etc. We also learned about stringing a tennis racket from some nice gal from Dunlop sport equipment in Brum etc,etc.

One thing that struck me about this Sgt Chadwick was that he seemed to have the confidence of a dog with two dicks--but then you would conclude he probably needed a measure of self confidence when dealing with some types of IRA bombs and such.

When discussing teaching methods the course instructor mentioned that all teachers should allow their students to make controlled mistakes as part of the learning process. Our Sgt Chad I remember chimed in with.
Quote:- "Well with all due respects Sir---But in bomb disposal you can't allow any mistakes simply because you and the student will end up with our rectums (explicative) half a mile away from the tip of your (explicative) nose!
Lovely
Dennis

[Dreadnought]

It always amazes me how the people who work with high explosives become so casual when handling them? (familiarity breeds contempt).?