Shane F. Ingate writes:
> As explained by Investigative Reporter Karen-Lee Bixman, Guest
>Speaker, on the Lee Rodgers & Melanie Morgan Talk Radio Program aired
>on KSFO Radio 560 AM (San Francisco), Saturday, July 20, 1996 (please
>see their website at:
> http://www.iwe.com/ksfo/
>for all details and references), that.........
>
>FACT: The new EPA Phase II Law is designed to ban all gasoline and diesel
>cars, trucks and vans in California that are ten years old and older. Also
>to be banned are two stroke engines on motorcycles, outboard engines,
>chain saws, lawn mowers, etc.
Followed by more hysteria. Check out
http://www.webcom.com/car/CONSUMER/toc.html
It has the text of a bunch of newspaper articles on this, as well as
an official response to various claims from the CA Dept. of Consumer Affairs.
From what I can tell, it sounds like some radio announcers are
being major demagogues, and majorly bending the truth or out-right lieing,
to fan hysteria and increase listenership. Yellow journalism of a bad sort.
Not that there isn't anything to report, but they're doing the typical
talk-radio bit of claiming that the evil black helicopters are coming to steal
your car from your garage at gunpoint. (Only mildly exaggerated.)
The amount of anti-government hysteria coming out of talk radio
(especially in the West) is amazing to me - and I'm a libertarian.
>Voluntary submission of vehicles to EPA for "crushing" and monetary
>payback apparently is available only for the next 2 years, after which
>there will be no monetary payback.
There is no buy-back program currently; it's merely been discussed.
It's also not the EPA.
Thomas Howard writes:
>Allready in California; Fail your smog test and get a waiver.... A one
>time waver! Now you have a car that can't be sold and soon will not be
>registered and not driven. This is in place now.
Or you have to fix it, or sell it out of state. I've always thought
that the "pay $x for 'repairs' and get to ignore the emissions" bit in CA
was pretty wierd, especially given the amount of pollution there (I remember
flying into LA being like diving into a bowl of brown soup). This is like
arguing that you shouldn't have to fix the brakes, or the wipers, or the
windshield when you have it inspected. Not to mention there are several
extensions and the waiver (if you have to get one) gives you 2 years to
fix it.
>Yes one can spend the required money to "bring the Gross P into compliance".
>What of the avalilability of parts?
Almost all are available one way or another. Something that requires
that cars actually pass emissions tests will probably increase the
availability of remanufactured and rebuilt smog parts. The people who lose
the most are those that have made internal modifications that make it
impossible to pass, like hot cams, very high compression engines, and cored-
out air pumps, cats and the like. Gross polluter requires (I believe) that
the car fail with double the allowed emissions.
Collector cars that haven't been heavily modified will probably all
pass with fairly minimal work, since they actually are maintained. Some
people might have to replace or re-hook up some emissions parts. If you're
paranoid, have it checked _before_ you go for official inspection to make
sure it's not in the Gross Polluter category, and then deal with it.
--
Randell Jesup, Scala US R&D, Ex-Commodore-Amiga Engineer class of '94
Randell.Jesup@scala.com
#include <std/disclaimer>
Exon food: <offensive words no longer censored - thank you ACLU, EFF, etc>
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