Uh oh ,watch those tuning "improvements"

[Josh B]

I hate those tuners and not just because of the black smoke that rolls out when they accelerate hard, the extra stress causes blown head gaskets and customer complaints. For a while we had to get prior approval for warranty head gasket replacements and as soon as the FSE saw evidence of a tuner the claim was denied. Then the customer who modified his truck would chew me out for not covering the repair.

Total ditto Mr Walt, who do they think they are, doing that to everybody else

 

[G8orFord]

All tunes do not "roll coal". In fact, none of the good ones do. That's just wasting fuel.

 

[scotts90ranger]

Yep, I plan to get injectors and a mild tune for my '97 F350 but my goal is just over 300hp with good drivability and safe for towing... I have zero desire to "roll coal", I just want to get to the power level of a stock early Duramax... it's just like everything, the few ruin it for everyone, but then again a lot of people want everything to the extreme where I just want to get things done...

 

[stmitch]

All tunes do not "roll coal". In fact, none of the good ones do. That's just wasting fuel.

Yeah. Unfortunately, there are many harmful things that come out of a tailpipe that can't be seen. So even if they're not rolling coal they're still putting out tens or hundreds of times the legal limit of other pollutants that you can't see. Diesel is a dirty fuel by nature, and modern diesel aftertreatments are good enough at removing/neutralizing pollutants that powertrain engineers can actually run dirtier* combustion (more power, better fuel efficiency, etc) and rely on the aftertreatment to deal with all of the harmful stuff coming out of the combustion chambers. That dirtier* combustion (and the emissions controls that allow it) are why we can buy stock pickups with a factory warranty that make over 1000ft-lbs, and tow over 30k lbs while emitting less than 5% of the pollutants that older trucks did. But when you delete or disable the emissions controls (even without tweaking fueling or anything else) you're left with much dirtier* combustion than an older pre-emissions diesel.

* "dirtier" in this context means all pollutants, not just the soot that can be seen with the naked eye

 

[JohnnyO]

Diesel pollutants breakdown into two general groups:
1) Smog forming pollutants like NOx and Ammonia stay in the region they're produced. They negatively affect air quality and hurt people with breathing issues like asthma or COPD. US regs focused on NOx reduction over GHGs. This lead to cleaner air, likely at the expense of the environment.
2) Greenhouse gases like CO2, Methane, etc rise higher into the atmosphere and spread more globally than the smog forming pollutants and have more environmental concerns. These are the focus of climate activists. For a long time European regulations focused on GHG reduction over NOx and the air quality in their cities suffered a bunch as a result and humans suffered. (US and Euro regulations now have much more overlap focusing on both smog forming and GHG emissions).

Europe's priority has always been fuel economy over emissions. It's why small diesel engines are popular there while we don't get them since they don't pass emissions standards here.
VW lost millions in a lawsuit for fooling emissions tests so they could sell their diesels here. My next door neighbor had one and after he took it in for the recall he said the power and fuel economy were much worse. Essentially VW programmed the engine computer to know when it was being tested and put out less emissions, the rest of the time no so much.
European Rangers are all diesels and you can get a stick.

 

[stmitch]

Europe's priority has always been fuel economy over emissions. It's why small diesel engines are popular there while we don't get them since they don't pass emissions standards here.
VW lost millions in a lawsuit for fooling emissions tests so they could sell their diesels here. My next door neighbor had one and after he took it in for the recall he said the power and fuel economy were much worse. Essentially VW programmed the engine computer to know when it was being tested and put out less emissions, the rest of the time no so much.
European Rangers are all diesels and you can get a stick.

More or less. And because of all of the diesels and their focus on reducing GHGs instead of NOx the air quality went to shit. So now they're trying to deal with that through tighter regulations, while parts of their larger cities have limitations on ICEs to try and improve the air for the people that live there.

Their latest Euro VI emissions regulations are much more strict for all pollutants, and align better with the US than they did in the past:

https://theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/ICCT_Euro6-VI_briefing_jun2016.pdf

These regulation choices and the subsequent fallout are also a huge reason why they're promoting EVs with zero tailpipe emissions.

 

[19Walt93]

Europe's priority has always been fuel economy over emissions. It's why small diesel engines are popular there while we don't get them since they don't pass emissions standards here.
VW lost millions in a lawsuit for fooling emissions tests so they could sell their diesels here. My next door neighbor had one and after he took it in for the recall he said the power and fuel economy were much worse. Essentially VW programmed the engine computer to know when it was being tested and put out less emissions, the rest of the time no so much.
European Rangers are all diesels and you can get a stick.

That's a charitable way to look at it. VW didn't "fool" anything, they deliberately engineered a cheat device into their diesels and should have been banned from selling vehicles here. If the failed compliance was an error, that would have been different, the only way to avoid making a mistake is to never do anything. Deliberately cheating the requirements wasn't a mistake, it was fraud at best. Once their engines were emissions legal they got lousy mileage and had no power.

 

[ekrampitzjr]

The feds went after the diesel tuners that enabled "rolling coal" first, several years ago. This latest enforcement effort might or might not be more of the same. I was surprised it went on as long as it did, as anything similar would never be allowed from a typical gasoline-powered vehicle.

 

[JohnnyO]

Honestly unless you regularly haul or tow heavy stuff and/or put on a crap-ton of miles, I don't see the point in having a diesel.
The mpg is a little better but the option costs $10k, diesel costs more than gasoline, and I've read that the payback period is around 200,000 miles.
Ford offered I think a 5 cylinder diesel in the F-150 for about ten minutes but you had to get a Platinum or fleet order to get one. I don't see it on the website now.
When I was in Italy 11 years ago I saw a diesel Escort, a diesel Chrysler minivan, and a whole lot of diesel Jeeps. With petrol (or "benzina") at $8 a gallon, like I said, fuel mileage is their emphasis. Since Fiat bought Chrysler most of the American cars you saw there were Chryslers and Jeeps.

 

[Roert42]

Ford offered I think a 5 cylinder diesel in the F-150 for about ten minutes but you had to get a Platinum or fleet order to get one. I don't see it on the website now.

That was bullship and there was no way there were trying to sell those engines with a move like that.

I understand they don’t want to sell options piecemeal anymore, but that was just stupid.

all the big 3 did the same thing too. 3.0L diesel, but you can only have it if you spend $70k+. Oh no, no one bought these engines, I guess we’ll just discontinue them.

 

[stmitch]

That was bullship and there was no way there were trying to sell those engines with a move like that.

I understand they don’t want to sell options piecemeal anymore, but that was just stupid.

all the big 3 did the same thing too. 3.0L diesel, but you can only have it if you spend $70k+. Oh no, no one bought these engines, I guess we’ll just discontinue them.

A gas hybrid (like the Powerboost) gives you the same or better performance and fuel economy for less money. It's also much easier to meet emissions regulations with a gas hybrid than a diesel.

 

[G8orFord]

But who wrote the standards? Pretty sure it wasn't any right wing consortium. How much research was done on the long term effects of DEF? How many times has the government had to cover up stuff they pushed on us and later found out it was worse than what it was supposed to fix? You city dwellers have my sympathy, but I'm pretty sure the thousands of trees I can see from my front and back porch are more than capable of handling what my little community throws at them. Not sure how they'll handle all of the ammonia and whatever else comes from the horse pizz I have to run to clean up my clean burning diesel though.

 

[stmitch]

But who wrote the standards? Pretty sure it wasn't any right wing consortium. How much research was done on the long term effects of DEF? How many times has the government had to cover up stuff they pushed on us and later found out it was worse than what it was supposed to fix? You city dwellers have my sympathy, but I'm pretty sure the thousands of trees I can see from my front and back porch are more than capable of handling what my little community throws at them. Not sure how they'll handle all of the ammonia and whatever else comes from the horse pizz I have to run to clean up my clean burning diesel though.

Many times automakers are heavily involved in the process of drafting legislation like that. The Obama fuel economy standards for example were supported by pretty much every automaker:

President Obama Announces Historic 54.5 mpg Fuel Efficiency Standard

Consumers will save $1.7 trillion at the pump, $8K per vehicle by 2025

obamawhitehouse.archives.gov

"President Obama today announced a historic agreement with thirteen major automakers to pursue the next phase in the Administration’s national vehicle program, increasing fuel economy to 54.5 miles per gallon for cars and light-duty trucks by Model Year 2025. The President was joined by Ford, GM, Chrysler, BMW, Honda, Hyundai, Jaguar/Land Rover, Kia, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Toyota and Volvo – which together account for over 90% of all vehicles sold in the United States – as well as the United Auto Workers (UAW), and the State of California, who were integral to developing this agreement."

Modifying or removing emissions components on engines has been illegal since the beginning of emissions standards with the Clean Air Act in the 70s. With one notable exception, the trend has been to tighten the standards through every political regime in the White House or Congress for the last 50 years. It's just that it wasn't enforced very well until VW cheated the system and highly visible coal rollers became prevalent. Now they're cracking down on everybody (gas or diesel) that makes or sells hardware or software capable of increasing emissions. The big companies all stopped a couple of years ago. Now they're cracking down on the ones that didn't get the message.

Trees are great. They provide all kinds of benefits, including consuming CO2. But again, there's a ton more that comes out of a tailpipe than CO2. Trees aren't going to do anything to reduce the impact of particulates. They can't clean up NOx and other smog forming compounds. When you delete a diesel, you're hurting anybody that breathes the air around it regardless of whatever amount of CO2 is emitted or cleaned up by trees.

A lot of times people seem to approach stuff like this with the expectation that a new alternative has to be perfect in order to be used. That's not true at all. It just has to be better than what is currently being done. Are the emissions systems perfect? Is DEF harmless? Of course not. But that doesn't mean that it's not a massive improvement compared to what was being done before. Progress almost never occurs all at once. It takes time and a thousand incremental improvements.

 

[19Walt93]

Many times automakers are heavily involved in the process of drafting legislation like that. The Obama fuel economy standards for example were supported by pretty much every automaker:

President Obama Announces Historic 54.5 mpg Fuel Efficiency Standard

Consumers will save $1.7 trillion at the pump, $8K per vehicle by 2025

obamawhitehouse.archives.gov

"President Obama today announced a historic agreement with thirteen major automakers to pursue the next phase in the Administration’s national vehicle program, increasing fuel economy to 54.5 miles per gallon for cars and light-duty trucks by Model Year 2025. The President was joined by Ford, GM, Chrysler, BMW, Honda, Hyundai, Jaguar/Land Rover, Kia, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Toyota and Volvo – which together account for over 90% of all vehicles sold in the United States – as well as the United Auto Workers (UAW), and the State of California, who were integral to developing this agreement."

Modifying or removing emissions components on engines has been illegal since the beginning of emissions standards with the Clean Air Act in the 70s. With one notable exception, the trend has been to tighten the standards through every political regime in the White House or Congress for the last 50 years. It's just that it wasn't enforced very well until VW cheated the system and highly visible coal rollers became prevalent. Now they're cracking down on everybody (gas or diesel) that makes or sells hardware or software capable of increasing emissions. The big companies all stopped a couple of years ago. Now they're cracking down on the ones that didn't get the message.

Trees are great. They provide all kinds of benefits, including consuming CO2. But again, there's a ton more that comes out of a tailpipe than CO2. Trees aren't going to do anything to reduce the impact of particulates. They can't clean up NOx and other smog forming compounds. When you delete a diesel, you're hurting anybody that breathes the air around it regardless of whatever amount of CO2 is emitted or cleaned up by trees.

A lot of times people seem to approach stuff like this with the expectation that a new alternative has to be perfect in order to be used. That's not true at all. It just has to be better than what is currently being done. Are the emissions systems perfect? Is DEF harmless? Of course not. But that doesn't mean that it's not a massive improvement compared to what was being done before. Progress almost never occurs all at once. It takes time and a thousand incremental improvements.

Close but not quite. The auto makers didn't "support" the standards, they said they could meet them- at an estimated additional cost of $9000 on each vehicle. When the average new car cost around $25,000.

 

[19Walt93]

I don't like diesels, I don't like the way they sound or the way they smell. If you carry or tow heavy loads long distances, diesels work great. We had customers buy diesels to tow their camper during the summer and they did that job well. The rest of the year they used them to commute, often only 3-5 miles to work and the problems started. Turbo vanes would carbon up and stick. The "drive to clean exhaust" light would come on as they were almost home, instead of driving for another 20 minutes they'd ignore it and shut the engine off so they wouldn't be late to supper. Soon the DPF would plug up. 6.4's cleaned the DPF by overfuelling the engine to make the exhaust rich and the oil level would rise as a result. 6.7's used DEF and people would dump it into the fuel filler and ruin $10k+ worth of fuel system. Diesel engine are an $8000 or more option and diesel oil changes cost 2-3 times what a gas engine costs. Most people who buy them should not have.