On Sat, 19 Sep 2015 16:28:20 -0500, "." wrote:
On 9/19/2015 1:35 PM, wrote:
On Sat, 19 Sep 2015 12:57:04 -0500, "." wrote:
In the early years of safety checking, at least in Ontario, the
initial passs rate was quite low - and the requirement that a cat pass
a safety check when changing ownership took a LOT of dangerous crap
off the road.
If only there were any documentation to support that claim.
Well, as a mechanic back then, I can assure you I failed a LOT of
dangerous cars, repaired many of them, and scrapped almost as many.
As is and would continue to be done innumerable times everyday
by mechanics despite any lack of vehicle safety testing as has
historically been required by the states. Personally, I cut back
turning wrenches considerably in '76 and by '80 had discontinued
the practice entirely (I still tinker) having landed an engineering
position with a distributor of major heavy equipment and industrial
engines.
Annual safety checks in Ontario only affect commercial
vehicles - and again there is a pretty high failure rate - and since
selective enforcement has been in place the number of wheels coming
off commercial vehicles and killing drivers of other vehicles has
dropped SIGNIFICANTLY. Enforcement is the key.
My comment referred only to individual owned passenger cars.
Which here in Ontario only require safety checks for transfer, or if
older than a certain age, depending on the insurance company, to get
or maintain insurance coverage.
As for emission testing - in the early years it had merit. There were
a LOT of "gross poluters" on our roads - and it was very simple to
defeat emission controls and change the calibration of an rngine (by
adjusting timing, rejetting carbs etc)
It still is.
Tell me how the average hack can adjust the timing on his 2002 Ford
Taurus 3.0 32 valve V6??? Or even adjust the mixture?
Fuel additives and larger injectors can defeat the effectiveness
of emission controls, not that they'll necessarily increase power.
Bigger injectors will just be dialed back by the computer as the O2
sensors report a richer than optimum mixture. Too big and the engine
will go into "limp mode" because the engine remains too rich even with
the calibration at lean limit. Power will suffer.
Pull off any number (EGR, PCV, Sensor ...) of wires, hoses,
or lines; one could also easily have multiple devices either
fail or disabled (that don't prevent the engines from running)
and significantly decrease the efficiency, and increase the
pollution output, of the engine.
Yes, but it will turn on the CEL and in many cases prevent the engine
from starting, even if it will run after starting. ANd it will run
like crap when it runs. NO incentive to do it.
so that what left the
manufacturer and what was on the road were not necessarilly the same.
And those that in any manner overrode emission controls were
an insignificant percentage of the motoring public.
You would be surprised how many Olds 350 rockets back in the mid
seventies had the timing significantly altered to eliminate
overheating when pulling a trailer, or how many "super six" mopars had
the carburetion and timing adjusted off-spec to get rid of
"driveability problems" - and how many "lean burn" mopars were
"converted" to non-lean-burn without changing the camshaft (which was
required if you were going to be anywhere CLOSE to passing emissions)
and how many AIR systems were removed from GM engines - and how many
EGR systems were disconnected ---- just for starters. (under the
mistaken idea that they could get better mileage by simply removing
them)
I'm only surprised at the length of your run-on sentence.
I worked tune-up and electrical in '74-'76 at a Mopar dealer.
Remember the red, sometimes off white, idle mixture limiting,
plastic stops that covered the screw heads on Carter's (which
also had an issue with warping, requiring a retro-fit brace)?
Periodic rough idle complaints on new cars were sometimes
addressed by first subjecting such engines to a full Sun Scope
(on a rail) diagnostic. Were no issues found, I would remove
them, as emissions testing was neither available nor required.
Never once had a comeback or complaint.
Used to remove the limit caps, adjust to spec (or modified spec) and
then replace the caps, as required by law. We did the adjustment using
the exhaust gas analyzer that was part of the Sun, Allen, Marquette,
or Rotunda diagnostic scope I was using at the time. Quite a few were
off spec from the factory. AMC,Chrysler, Mazda and Toyota
dealershipsduring that time period, as well as independent repair
shops
The numbers WERE significant.\
No they were not. "Cleaner air" evolved from unleaded fuel,
catalytic converters, fuel injection, and overall drive train
computer management of hundreds of millions, not the
hobbyists' thousands, of vehicles on US roads.
It wasn't hobbyists - it was "hack mechanics" who didn't know
anything about emmission controls and defeated them in an attempt to
"solve" problems. - some real and some immagined.