JLURD
Well-Known Member
You’ll never get a complete and honest scientific/political assessment of emissions mitigation costs vs benefits because the people pushing the regulations either don’t comprehend science or willfully abuse it in service of themselves...they’ll tell you it’s to save the world and either believe their own lies or have ulterior motives.Sure, EPA is federal, but who do they pretty much bend over and hand a jar of vaseline to? CARB. Aka California.
The GDE tunes were well known to increase mileage on the ecodiesel, increase longevity, and in most cases passed emissions too. Plus they took things like the throttle lag out as well as addressed some of the goofy shifting FCA put in place on the 8 speed.
I would really. Like REALLY like to see a genuine, unbiased, all encompassing evaluation of the diesel emissions eco system and see if all the rules diesel have on them is worth it. I mean would the fuel economy gain from unrestricted diesels outweigh the global emissions we emit just to restrict our new diesels and make them eat more fuel?
Think about it, just off the top of my head
I get there is an economy of scale behind these things, but no matter how I look at it, I can't agree that all the crap we go through just to lower some emissions at the tailpipe are an actual net gain for emissions globally. Especially when after all this crap is installed, the vehicle in question now looses an significant amount of efficiency and often has to have parts replaced.
- We created an entire economy: buildings, shipping, manufacturing, mining etc all to create, ship, install, maintain, and recycle additional items for diesel emissions. IE an entire economy that didn't exist as recently as 1998.
- We have to mine, manufacture, ship, install, and recycle DPF filters. Does all the emissions associated with making a single DPF filter outweigh the soot emissions of the one truck it will be installed on. What about when failures with clogged DPFs are considered, now the emissions just to put a DPF on one truck are 2,3,4 times as high depending on how often it happens.
- We manufacture and ship DEF all over the world to pour into a truck and cause a chemical reaction in the exhaust to have slightly better emissions. What about the shipping, manufacturing, labs for testing, buildings, warehousing etc? Does the slightly lower emissions outweigh all that?
- All the extra cabling, wiring, tubing, sensors, etc that have to go onto a new diesel just to make the emissions system "work"
- We put EGR systems on diesels that soot up the engines and cause additional failures. Same thing, does the emissions associated with recycling a failed engine plus the process of manufacturing them outweigh the minor emissions gains from feeding dirty air back into the engine?
Now let me be clear in stating that I in no way shape or form agree with rolling coal. Honestly those people are probably 40% of the reason we keep getting additional restrictions.
When tuned correctly and maintained, a diesel puts out a pretty minimal amount of smoke unless towing lots of weight.
If the EPA said hey we are banning tunes, but also removing the requirements for all the extra crap, I would be all for it. But it will never happen. The world has a vendetta against diesel. Its unfortunate but true.
Heck at one point, direct injection gas engines were actually more polluting than "dirty diesels" and yet it took years to finally put restrictions on those. Those restrictions are still cake compared to current diesel rules.
Here is one such study on direct injection gas engines back in 2013, when Def was introduced for diesel engines in the USA. Mind you diesel had DPF filter for around 10 years before this even.
https://www.transportenvironment.org/publications/particle-emissions-petrol-cars
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