The EPA is trying to ban modified cars - Help block this legislation!

Yep.  A lot of people need to sign this petition.  Talk about bureaucrats gone wild.  The EPA needs to be reigned in a little, or who knows what is next on their agenda.  And I don't even live in the U.S., but I know this move could spread to other countries.

Signed the petition today.  When the men in black suits and dark glasses show up on my doorstep they will be disappointed that I am out of town.  Blaaaaah!

I signed it last week, but I think I'm going to become a SEMA member.

Wow.

This is a bit less catastrophic then SEMA (of which I am a member) indicates.  Read this Road & Track article for more info: http://www.roadandtrack.com/mo...osal-actually-means/

Lane's got it right.  I'm grateful for the lobbying efforts SEMA makes on behalf of car hobbyists, but this does seem like a tempest in a teapot.

I read your link, Lane.  It doesn't reassure me.

I know we are in the golden age of high-performance production cars, but I don't care. The EPA's "clarification" just speaks to the intent: that people stop messing with on-road emission-controlled vehicles. It's the purpose of CARB inspections, and local and state inspections based on CA's inspection regime.

What they aren't saying is they'd really like to shut down the "for use on off-road vehicles only" (wink, wink) loophole that aftermarket companies are driving through. The EPA is pretty certain that people are (gasp) putting them on STREET CARS (the horror), and this must end.

You may agree that closing this (obvious) loophole is a good idea. I do not.

I'm generally a pretty middle of the road on most things political, but most traffic laws (which exist only as a revenue stream) and most EPA regulations (which exist primarily to shut me out of my car's mechanical underpinnings) make me pretty much a "live-free-or-die" garage-party radical.

It may be the tempest in a teapot Jim suggests. But if I were SEMA, this would be the hill I'd die on.

I know you're not naive, Stan, but I think SEMA is treating you and other devotees as if you are.  SEMA's press release is hyperbole, pure and simple.  I don't condemn this tactic, nor completely disagree with its purpose, which seems to be mobilization of support for SEMA.  The fact that such support usually engenders donations is also personally acceptable.  SEMA works in a political world, and they know how to play politics.

In a previous life, I actually spent a bit of time reading and analyzing such august tomes as the US Code and Federal Register.  Suffice it to say that it's not reading done for pleasure.  Indeed, the rumor is that there are cadres of drones who translate understandable verbiage into 'cratspeak, the undecipherable jargon of legalese that no one can understand at first blush.

Did SEMA exaggerate the intentions and purpose of the EPA legislation at issue?  Yes, it would appear so to me.  Did EPA respond with the expected push-back of a bureaucracy who witnesses its ox being gored?  Most assuredly.

The up side of such disagreements is what we are doing right now, on this site: discussing government involvement, giving our less-than-perfect analysis of what we think the facts are, and what we think the gummint is really trying to do.  That's what democracy is all about.  This is our back fence, like it or not.  If you can type, you can participate.  Democracies don't wither away because of incorrect or hasty opinions.  They only wither away when there are no opinions, due to apathy.

SEMA's "emergency" has served its purpose, as it has engendered opinions.  With the internet at our disposal, all of us can easily do what used to be difficult, i.e, get lots of info from lots of different sources, then make an informed decision on issues of the day.

I read the R&T article Lane linked us to. And I'm still glad I signed SEMA's petition.

R&T summarized their conversation with the EPA's Laren Allen:

The EPA remains primarily concerned with cases where the tampered vehicle is used on public roads, and more specifically with aftermarket manufacturers who sell devices that defeat emission control systems on vehicles used on public roads.

I have two concerns with Ms. Allen's comments.

One is "...primarily concerned with...." I don't trust language like that. Sure...primary concern is public road use.  How "primary"? 51%? Where is your secondary concern?Phrases like that are perfect sound bites. They sound open and above board. But they infer the spokesperson is hiding something.

I'm even more concerned with the second part of that sentence. The aftermarket manufacturers referenced here all include the caveat that their products are "Not intended for road use" or some version of that. Regardless, they are in fact, selling devices "...that defeat emission controls on vehicles used on public roads." And that could be used in attempts to shut those manufacturers down.

Here's the bottom line to me. The existing EPA regulations seemed to be working fine. The EPA is modifying those regulations. To which I ask, simply, Why?

And one other thing, SEMA's press release stated they they met with EPA staff. And the EPA staff indicated the regulation:

"...would prohibit conversion of vehicles into racecars and make the sale of certain emissions-related parts for use on converted vehicles illegal." 

Unless SEMA is lying through their teeth, which I doubt, doesn't that comment concern you?

They'd flay me, I'm sure: I took a super-polluting, un-emissions-controlled engine OUT of my car and replaced it with a computer-fuel-injected, modern-type engine, including a catalytic converter. 

It'd be interesting to survey the hot-rod & hobby-racer world to see how much pollution it makes now vs, say, a decade ago.

More interesting to me would be, "how much pollution are these modified cars actually adding?" not on a per mile basis, but in gross.

A guy with a "special car" doesn't drive it very much. He spends a lot of time, effort, and money making it work "better" (as defined by the guy himself), then parks the thing in the garage because it's a special use item. It's not polluting when it's not running.

The "tempest in the teapot" (to my mind, at least) is the incredible effort the EPA, the CARB, et al seem intent on expending to rid the world of a group of make-believe miscreants who are  (in reality) not adding much of anything to any problem we may (or may not) have. A group who, further,  are mostly paying taxes, supporting local businesses, and staying out of trouble (and bars) because they're always puttering on something or other. Goodness knows I've kept the wheels of commerce turning with my particular illness. 

It really does seem like there are other fish to fry. Bullies tend to pick on the guys who they think won't fight back, or at least who they think they can beat. I'm sick of the war on grease-monkeys, and maybe that makes me blind to the scale of the actual threat here.

The government seems intent on behaving like a bully in every circumstance. Henry David Thoreau knew it a couple hundred years ago ("that government is best which governs least"). I really do think the founders would go into another full-scale rebellion if they saw what has become of the republic.

I'm no tea-party whack-job. All I know is: I really hate bullies.

... and just a suggestion, since the EPA seems to have enough time to dream of tricky ways to rifle around under my hood:

How about engaging in something useful... like ensuring the water in major cities is fit to drink.

*cough* Flint, MI *cough*

Stan...you have a bad cough there.  Feel better

More detail from SEMA

https://www.sema.org/sema-enew...p;utm_campaign=eNews

I worry about anything the EPA tries to do.  There agenda is not ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION.  We all know that.  There record for overstepping and going after people and companies with little or no reasons but there own is as bad as it gets, and the EPA has as much power with no accountability as the IRS. 

My opinion, any time the EPA wants something, the answer is simple, NO.

Over the years I have supported numerous environmental organizations.  I have a problem with the long arm of the EPA overstepping into areas where the return on (their) investment is small and the results of their legislation onerous on a small group of people.  They are a hobbyist's nightmare!

I signed the petition and will hope for the best.  If all of the special-built "race cars", our Speedies included, were summed up, my bet is that the fraction of the total atmospheric load for "pollutants", however you choose to define them, in the US of A would be so small as to be immeasurable.  That said, if there are companies building devices that will go on regular cars and thereby cheat or otherwise circumvent pollution controls on modern vehicles (class, can you say "Volkswagen"?), then they ought to be stopped, or restricted in some rational way.

Here is a tough one;  Hypothetical situation: let's suppose you have a late-model Mustang GT or similar and that you could put a chip or other sort of device in it that would drop the pollution control aspects of the power plant, and would allow you to race this car on race day at the track.  This device switches on or off, at your command.  You swear to use it only at the track.  But it is just too much fun, and so you only use it when you have to go in for your emissions test.  Again class, can you say "Volkswagen?"  My bet here is that we have the folks at VW to thank for all of this and the only trouble with it all is that we can't actually thank them because we can't find them, because they have all been fired.

Such devices already exist, oh Frazzled one, and it is just such things that Big Brother would like to put an end to. It's not a tough one at all for me-- I get as sideways as a 2nd amendment  gun nut over this stuff. If Jefferson were alive today, I'm 100% certain he'd chip his 5.0.

I think we agree that this is a solution in search of a problem, though. One volcano fart throws off more pollutants (real or imagined) than every hopped up car in humanity's history combined. 

If the EPA really cared about the environment, they'd go after real polluters, instead of straining out gnats so they can feel good about choking down those camels. They'd insist on stack-scrubbers for coal-fired power plants. They'd throw up tariffs on Chinese and Indian goods until they got their stuff together.

It's easier to blame the dude in his garage. They never liked him anyhow.

Nearly 40,000 signatures over the 100K minimum on the petition to reach the second threshold as of this afternoon.

I agree on the collect all the information you can from as many sources as possible then make up your mind!

I just signed it ! I think I have the same cough as Stan ;-)

*cough* Flint, MI *cough*

Jim

Hey }cough{ guys? Guys?

Hey guys: Do you really think there is any chance that this is going away anytime soon?

Because, if so, I'mma cook up a whole big batch of bullshit to sell you--real cheap.

I don't get it.

There's very few things I ask of the government. I'm not wild about wars of expedition or corporate welfare, so I'm not a good "R" team player. I'd like government to protect the weakest members of society- the people that don't have the means to advance their own cause or fortunes- so you'd think I'd lean left.

I'll happily pay my (byzantine) taxes, and shovel my neighbor's drive, and donate my time and money to those less fortunate. I'm sick to tears of people acting like they pulled themselves up from nothing, when we've all benefited greatly from everybody working together.

But I know, deep in my heart, that even though that's what government should be about, that's not what government is about. Government loves, loves, LOVES to worm their way into every situation and boss people around. (Truly) conservative guys like me (not fake ones, like are running for president) really don't like somebody else's mom telling us to eat our beets. I don't like beets, and I don't like somebody else's mom telling me to eat them for my own good.

I'd pretty much just like to be left alone.

There are real laws: the ones that protect society and hold us together, and there are laws that exist only to grease the machinery of government, And then there are regulations that exist pretty much to justify the existence of this bureau or that agency. If the EPA was keeping lead out of the rivers, and pesticides out of the water table, I'd be in favor of their activities.

*cough* Flint, MI *cough*

But that's clearly not what they are about. They are about tamper-proof engines, and mandated fuel economy, and "trust me-- I know what I'm doing and you don't". They aren't congress: they don't write laws (but congress is scared of them, and follows like bleating sheep). The EPA makes regulations, the implications of which far outstrip laws (which are voted upon, and signed by the president).  Somehow, every regulation they write ends up having the force of law behind it.

The EPA can't write real laws, but they can create the punishments to enforce their regulations with the full weight of the federal government. The EPA is not even a Cabinet Department, it's an "agency" (sort've like those "other" agencies I shouldn't worry about-- the NSA, and the CIA)-- but the administrator is customarily accorded a Cabinet rank, along with "real" Departments like defense and labor (as well as a couple of fake ones like energy and education). It operates with a very liberal interpretation of it's mandate to protect the environment. It's fingers get into pretty much every pie imaginable. Wetlands? EPA. How warm to keep your house? EPA. Fuel economy standards for your car? EPA.

The EPA has elbowed its way into the Cabinet, under my hood, and into my life. I don't like beets, and I don't like somebody else's mom telling me to eat them for my own good. It's said that when the only tool one possesses is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail. This sums up the philosophy of the EPA pretty succinctly.

I know this isn't a new regulation, but it was a warning shot into my garage that the EPA intends to enforce it's (onerous) existing regulations more seriously. That it was already a regulation does not comfort me.

To Ed's point: GM makes and sells crate motors as a service to build their brand. They didn't do it in the 80s, and they likely aren't making a dime on the program right now. If the EPA tells them to cease and desist, they will cease and desist, post haste.

VW created a work-around so their diesels got a bazillion mpg, had good power, and didn't stink. I'm told (again and again and again) that they are low-life scum who must be fined $50B for breaking the EPA's standard. That the cars themselves were cleaner than anything sold before 2000 is immaterial. They were bad, and must be punished. This does not auger well for a guy wanting to chip his Chrysler 300. CA guys have had to accept that, but the rest of us have not.

I don't like beets, and I don't like somebody else's mom telling me to eat them for my own good.

Resistance, they tell me, is futile. You will be assimilated. They are the Borg. 

For all you folks who live in colder climes, remember when lawn mowers and snow blowers had little Hi/Lo mix adjustment screws on the carbs?  With snowblowers, we all took them to the tune-up place in the fall, to be ready for the snows to come when the weather turned cold.  The tune-up guy set the carb up in, probably, 60-70 degree weather so then later, when it got really cold and you needed it to run a little richer, it didn't - it was set too lean but all you had to do is tweek the lo jet a 1/4-1/2 turn and, Bingo!  It ran lots better - the way it should and you could blow snow all over the place.

THEN, the EPA decided that snowblowers were contributing to pollution in a mighty way because everyone was messing with the mixture screws all the time.  No matter that that's all part of running air-cooled motors in all sorts of different temperatures - they were POLLUTERS, by God, and they had to be regulated.

So, they pressured the motor manufacturers and service centers to put "tamper-proof" plastic tabs on the screws to prevent them from being turned and THEN, when they found that normal people were prying off those anti-tamper caps so they could get their machines to run right, they pressured the manufacturers to eliminate the adjustment screws altogether.  THAT's why, in some states like NoCal, people's lawn mowers sometimes run crummy in temps below 50 or so.

So what happens?  Every winter, over half of the blowers in my neighborhood are running lean and have no guts in heavy snow while MY blower, built in 1983 or so and having no such EPA nonsense about it (I don't even have safety interlocks on the auger/impeller) chews right through anything in front of it.......Snow, Ice, Rolled up Newspapers, dead squirrels, plastic plant pots that blew around the yard, the occasional puppy toy, anything.

Ah....the good old (Pre EPA) days.  And don't get me started on OSHA.......

Apparently we're not the only ones who think the EPA is going too far.

Four US Representatives feel the same way:

http://blog.hemmings.com/index...as-reach/?refer=news