conundrum
Well-known member
Same but Feb...
|
|
|
No more drive clean!
- Thread starter LePhillou
- Start date
Same but Feb...
Trials
Well-known member
:| because historically public transit vehicles Were exempt from requiring pollution control equipment that was being forced on all of our personal vehicles. How did I first notice? ... by sitting behind a TTC bus when it was taking off and having to wait for the fumes to dissipate, so I researched it and that Was my finding.
Last edited:
Whatever pollution controls municipal vehicles may have, I see TTC buses belch soot on the regular. Same goes for schoolbuses and garbage trucks (public+private). Delivery trucks vary, some seem quite controlled. I remember the terrible smog not too long ago, especially when Lakeview spooled up. You could smell the sulfur and see a yellowish haze, with a brown line along the horizon.
I82l8
Well-known member
Depended on the code your car set. My last car was setting the evap code regularly (typically set when you don't tighten the gas cap).
I reset it waited just long enough for it to be cleared from the ECM and got my e-test passed.
Light came right back on a day or two later.
The OBD2 test will pass if there are no error codes stored, and will allow for one monitor to be in a not ready state. The evap monitor, in most cars, is the last one to set. You had your car tested with a not ready evap monitor which allowed it to pass.
A cheap OBD2 reader/bluetooth plugin will let you clear codes and check monitor status.
Well as a licensed Truck and Coach Technician I can tell you that public transit vehicles are not exempt from emissions requirements or equipment.
They don't have the same requirements as regular on highway applications, but they are not exempt. Fire apparatus have the loosest standards.
That TTC bus belching smoke was more than likely one of the old 60's GM buses with a 2 stroke 6v71 Detroit in it. They still have a bunch of those on the road. They have no emissions equipment.
Particulate matter although highly visible is really the most minor of all the emission concerns. NOx is what is being cracked down on. They do this by lowering cylinder temperature during ignition, but the lower temp means more PM.
Also have to look at the way those vehicles are driven as compared to a delivery truck. It's full throttle take offs all the time with buses and garbage trucks, not so much with a p+d truck.
Cars are more sophisticated now and can't be fixed with a monkey wrench and a can of STP. Back in the 50's and 60's a lot of rust buckets were kept on the road while burning a quart of oil in a hundred miles. Mosquito control.
The cost of keeping a car on the road once it's past its prime can get really expensive so they get junked over suspension and accessory issues more that a beat out engine.
Here's my question - with the test and associated costs gone, will we see a drop in our plate sticker costs?
I'm not holding my breath.
This is in good part because of the fact it was common knowledge that a check engine light on a car wouldn't pass. Back when people had to pay for the test people would get things fixed before bothering to spend $30 on the test only to get a virtually guaranteed fail.
Have cars improved? Absolutely. Are there still not cars on the road that are polluters in between tests? Yep. Will there be cars that will now, forever, be polluters? Yep. My son's Saturn (hate to say it) is going to be one of them - the thermostat has been stuck open on the car since he bought it. His Birthday is in July however and he always lucked out and even with the thermostat stuck open...the engine got hot enough for long enough to actually get the engine to run in closed loop mode long enough to turn the light off...conveniently shortly before his test was always due. As soon as the weather cools down the engine doesn't heat up properly...and is often running in the much more inefficient (IE, polluting) open loop mode. I know for a fact now he'll never fix it, he doesn't care.
So, there's just 1 example for ya.
Lets remember that a car need not necessarily have visible exhaust (IE, white smoke) coming from the tailpipe to be a polluter. To the contrary, some of the worse pollutants are invisible.
Fair argument to some extent, but the idea of the program was to help control pollution (and the resulting haze and smog days we all remember) in big cities where there's as many vehicles in a 10 square kilometer area as there might be in a 1000 square kilometer area to the north. The logic made sense.
Older vehicles needed the tailpipe test as OBD was too rudimentary (up until the last 10-15 years) to provide all the details needed to provide solid data on which to make a pass/fail requirement. Now, with modern ECM's measuring virtually every metric it was no longer needed.
Modern class 7/8 trucks built in the last 6-10 years (since the introduction of both DPF and DEF) should emit ZERO black smoke. The tractors I drive every day at work have exhaust stacks that are still silver inside even after a year (and 100,000+KM) of operation. If a modern HD truck is emitting black smoke there's massive emissions issue with it...which will eventually cause the truck to go into a limp mode...and if they bypass it and continue driving, it will eventually destroy some very expensive emissions equipment which will be a failure at test time.
Last edited:
Supposedly those TTC buses (GM New Look?) have all been taken out of service due to accessibility shortcomings. It's weird to know that now though... the sound of that motor sang me to sleep (or at least to a state of calm) many a time
Yeah I think the TTC only has a couple of them left and only uses them for historical purposes. All the main transit routes use low floor buses, so those old GM and Flyer buses are gone; they all had stairs to get into them. There was nothing that could match the sound of that Detroit Diesel 6V71N two-stroke.
I think all buses and heavy-duty on-road trucks built after 2010 or thereabouts have particulate traps, so there should be no smoke from those. There are still a fair number in service from before that.
I think all buses and heavy-duty on-road trucks built after 2010 or thereabouts have particulate traps, so there should be no smoke from those. There are still a fair number in service from before that.
|
|
|
|
|