What's new
By:
Ram Heavy Duty Forum

Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

EPA's 5-year investigation results on diesel pickups

Distillusion

Distillusion

Well-Known Member
Messages
342
Reaction score
362
Points
63
If you haven't seen it in the news recently, the EPA just completed a study on diesel truck emissions. The study covered medium and heavy duty trucks, 8,500 - 14,000 lb GVWR. The investigation is fallout from the 2015 VW Dieselgate.

Findings published indicate that over half a million tons of excess N2O and thousands of tons of particulates are being released into the atmosphere because of owner mods - deletes, tunes, emissions defeat devices. Official estimates are that 557,000 pickups in this range have been fitted with emissions defeat devices, and that may not count deletes. Emissions of this half million or so vehicles exceed the emissions of 10 million similar trucks that remain compliant. Texas alone is believed to have over 60,000 of these vehicles.

I've seen articles on these results from 5 different media sources already. It looks like another wave coming, mostly calling for enforcement and punishment. Also some are calling for increased enforcement funds from the federal government to the states.

Normally this sort of thing might slide several years. But politicians love to have something (someone) else to point at and this pandemic has created a lot of anger the pols would love to redirect away from themselves. I wouldn't be surprised to see some changes coming. Probably more emissions tests, bigger fines, or worse. The huge difference from Dieselgate, - the truck makers aren't the problem. It's pretty clear from the report itself that the EIPA considers truck owners as the "culprits." And the media has picked up on that, and is aware that truck owners get some of their tuners and mods from commercial sources.

This may impact some of you down the road. Best of luck.

This is the first article from several days ago about the EPA report.
www.nytimes.com

Illegal Tampering by Diesel Pickup Owners Is Worsening Pollution, E.P.A. Says (Published 2020)

An E.P.A. investigation has found that the owners of more than half a million diesel pickup trucks have installed devices to defeat emissions controls and boost pollution.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
 
After the Ram EcoDiesel lawsuit by the EPA and CARB, the EPA has been going after US tuners and shops selling tunes, block off plates etc. Many of those places were fined heavily and no longer sell such items. Now the search for tunes takes you out of the US to other countries. A popular source for the EcoDiesel tune now sells an EPA compliant tune.
 
Exactly. And the EPA is already wise to this. Part of my concern that not only the feds, but also the states will start enforcing harshly on owners. The CLean Air Act made it illegal to tamper with emission controls in 1963. Owners typically haven't been too concerned due to the lack of enforcement. But this political push might result in a big kick start of enforcement against owners.

Even dealerships can be hit for an owner's actions. They're supposed to be insuring that DEF systems are at factory default operations when they resell vehicles. That can impact a trade-in deal if they discover they have to fix a disabled DEF system, which can cost several thousand dollars on some equipment. (This same concern is going to hit farm and industrial equipment owners and dealers.)
 
Hopefully this thread stays more civil than every other iteration I’ve seen of it...

That said, I can’t imagine how this even gets enforced. I used to live in a state that did annual inspections and parts of that state did emissions (Virginia). That process had good intentions but was entirely abused by shops over time (they are capped at how much they can charge and it takes way longer than 20 minutes to do a good job so shops made **** up just to charge you extra). Emissions tests consisted of plugging into the OBD2 port and checking codes (made no sense).

I agree with pursuing the companies selling defeat devices but finding every one of them in the wild and forcing fixes is likely impossible and a waste of resources. Cut the snakes head off (manufacturers and sellers of delete kits) and it fixes itself over time. Enforcement would need to be more passive (failing future inspections or catching the delete as part of service work or something). Just my 2 cents.

OA
 
Thanks to Mopar duping me into a CP4 I think the Hummer EV will be next. I can tune that thing however I want and no body can say ****.
 
It feels like the end is near for deletes. Sure they will always exist, but IMO the writing is in the wall. My next truck/new truck will remain emissions compliant

Not gonna lie, I’ll miss my big loud stinky deleted diesel
 
Perhaps this will also force the manufacturers to build more reliable emissions equipment? Many people delete because it simply stops the truck from working and cost of repairs is not
realistic. Too many vehicles are being scrapped because of an expensive part or two while the rest of the vehicle is in great shape.

I no longer trust any government agency to perform proper investigations and have valid results.
 
Last edited:
Brutal_HO said:
IMHO, this all started not only with the VW fiasco, but the tools that rolled coal on bikers picked the wrong crowd for their BS. Much like the 2A crowd, we can't have nice things.
Click to expand...
Bikers or bicyclist? I know what would happen if someone "rolled coal" on me or most of the folks I ride with.
 
This was always going to happen eventually. The fact that 3/4T and up trucks aren’t even EPA rated at this point completely stuns me.

As a cyclist formerly of Colorado I can say that yes, the coal rolling tools definitely chose the wrong crowd. There’s a lot of money in the cycling world, and a lot of politically powerful people involved.
 
Squatch said:
Not many thing worse than a pack of roadies. I’m a life long mountain biker, and have plenty of bad experiences with those tools to last me a life time. I’m sure there are good ones out there, but being d-bags is like a right of passage for these spandex clad fanatics. I give them my social finger every time I get the chance.
Click to expand...

I do not respect many in that group.
 
DontSlamMyRam said:
Thanks to Mopar duping me into a CP4 I think the Hummer EV will be next. I can tune that thing however I want and no body can say ****.
Click to expand...
This brings up food For thought: although an EV doesn’t pollute in operation, the manufacturing and decommissioning does. If we up the performance via programming on these vehicles, doesn’t that in itself, result in even more “pollution” via need for more power generation, via recharge? “Energy is neither created, nor destroyed”, it is merely changed from one form to another. I, for one, am sick and tired of bs regs, testing, inspections, etc., from toilets to cars to hvac, etc.
 
jsalbre said:
This was always going to happen eventually. The fact that 3/4T and up trucks aren’t even EPA rated at this point completely stuns me.

As a cyclist formerly of Colorado I can say that yes, the coal rolling tools definitely chose the wrong crowd. There’s a lot of money in the cycling world, and a lot of politically powerful people involved.
Click to expand...
Good old tool on tool action.
 
This is coming and you can thank every dipshit who takes a brand new truck and makes it looks like a 65 kw or Peterbilt going down the road.
 
After 5 Cummins trucks, and 1 eco diesel, this is why I went back to a gas engine. The writing is on the wall for diesel fun.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top