Jeff Mohler said:
> The Supra Mailing list has a -very- large population of users
who
>pass EPA sniff tests under all sorts of testing procedures (from
state to
>state).
Those are not the same as the EPA test cycle, and that does not
mean that the cars are in compliance with Federal limits, only
that they have passed an abbreviated test cycle and that they met
the standards set by the state (or city or county), which aren't
necessarily the same as EPA's.
> Convertors only work in a relatively narrow temperature rance.
They
>don't work well cold, and don't work well when too hot.
Yep. And the EPA emissions standards are more lenient during
warmup. And provisions have been made in the design of the car to
prevent their overheating.
>They are for cars
>that are NOT maintained well, do NOT run well, or are inherently
bad designs
>and dont burn as clean as they could.
This kind of argument has been around ever since I worked as a
mechanic, and that's long enough to qualify it as an OOWT
(Official Old Wives' Tale). The line has always gone something
like "I maintain my car, and it's a (BMW, Porsche, Toyota, etc.,
etc.), so it's a GOOD design (as opposed to all those BAD designs
everybody else drives). MY CAR doesn't pollute, and there's
nothing wrong with me taking off my smog stuff." Back when you
couldn't keep an emission-controlled car running more than 20
seconds after a cold start, it backfired whenever you applied too
much throttle, and it would diesel indefinitely after cutoff
until you put it in gear and let out the clutch (you were screwed
if it had an auto) 8<), this reasoning had some justification.
Nowadays, it just doesn't hold water.
See my post re CVCC. NEW cars, even ones with well-designed
engines running exactly as designed, are not generally capable of
passing the EPA emissions standards without catalysts. I can't
imagine that every automotive engineer in the world is looking
for an excuse to incorporate a platinum (or is it
platinim-rhodium?) part in all of his designs.
This is starting to sound a lot like the "50 horsepower chips"
for NA cars that we've heard so much about.
Jay "ever hear of the Fish Carburetor?" Mitchell
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