Okay, here's my input from a mechanic's standpoint.
Guys like me keep you driving. Jed, this includes you,
and I have worked on Prius' (Prius's? Priuses? What
DOES that name mean?!?) before.
1. Applying emissions restrictions to new vehicles is
not that big of a deal, as far as I am concerned,
meaning, I am not really opposed to it. Call me
indifferent on this matter. AS LONG AS:
A. It is done smartly, not the bandaid on bandaid on
bandaid etc ad tedium ad nauseam that is placed under
the hoods of cars made now. The WORST for this are the
imports. Asian and European manufacturers have no clue
how to build an EGR system. They are lost.
B. Does not significantly impact the price of the
vehicle, read, burden on the buyer. You'll help the
economy this way, by encouraging people to buy better,
cheaper, cleaner cars.
C. Obama should encourage GM and so on to do B.
D. Liberal lawlovers stay out of putting more of their
beloved garbage into the process. Leave it to the
engineers, let them and us mechanics do our jobs. It
CAN be done and SHOULD be done.
2. If these restrictions are to be gran'daddied onto
older cars, I and others like me will beging
immediately looking for ways to help the 'little guy'
such as myself, who cannot afford a new car right now,
to cheat the test and 'pass'. Dumping the right blend
of denatured alcohol into the engine, replacing the
spark plugs RIGHT BEFORE the test, and a few other
tricks can accomplish this with pre-1996 vehicles.
With later than 1995 cars, OBDII becomes an issue, but
there may be ways around that which I don't know of.
I'm not much of a computer guy, to be honest. There
are also tricks to permanently reduce emissions of an
OBDII vehicle, but it causes the computer to
misunderstand what is happening, and fail the vehicle
even though it is cleaner than before. This kind of
blanket coverage has to stop, and now.
3. You want to make a Great Society: The Next
Generation? Okay. We can do that, and I'll even help.
But, Obama, Terminator, and all you bigshots out
there: you must not be lazy about it. How do I mean
lazy?
A. Zero tolerance policies are for losers and lazy
bastards. It just means you don't want to take the
time to REALLY think things through and cover the
situations that don't fit the cubby hole. Such as,
OBDII failure, but with tailpipe emissions that make
Emperor Penguins oh-so-happy.
B. Liberal democrats should HATE zero tolerance
policies. After all, they adore clogging the system
with unneeded crap, tagging junk onto bills whenever
possible, why wouldn't they love going through
convoluted permutations?
C. Conservative republicans do the same thing these
days. See a pattern?
4. You want a cheap electric car. Fine. You want it to
plug in and shift the carbon upchuck somewhere else,
or if we use something else, not put out carbon at
all. Fine again. But we don't have the electric
infrastructure to handle the load in many places, like
L.A., as mentioned.
...
I really don't see the problem here. If we could put a
man on the moon nearly 40 years ago, why are we
arguing about this? Stringing some lines, adding
transformers, building a few more power plants, that
is no big deal compared to Apollo.
Except liberal controlled organizations won't let us
build nuclear plants, even though they have little to
no carbon footprint. Now, if we are to believe that
Obama is going to give us change we can believe in,
let's see this:
Mr. Obama, direct the U.S. to construct enough new,
safe, nuclear power plants using modern designs, to
both reduce carbon emissions, and to take the first
step to electrifying our roads. While you're at it,
tell the EPA and the greenieweenies to go screw, as
there is a war on, the war on energy, you see. We
don't have time for anything but the most cursory of
'impact statements.'
Well? Change? We are waiting.
--Kyle, who has more change in his sock drawer than
you can shake a stick at.
