Bonneville America Forums Forums Rider Safety Forums Legislation EPA Motorcycle Rules for 2006

2006 will be here before you know it. I like tinkering with my bike in order to get more power out of it. Uncle Sam's regulations will greatly impact what I can and cannot do to my ride.

EPA For The Layman

Bob

That's some scary stuff. The tree huggers and the safety nazis are winning it would seem. This will pretty much put the aftermarket people out of business.
I recently received my latest copy of the AMA magazine. It seems a county in California, AND the entire state of Connecticut want to completely ban all off road riding. No more dirtbikes, atv's, quads, etc. Each of these assaults on our rights (and yes, I mean our rights, no matter what the government tells you) brings us closer to the day when personal freedom will be no more.....

The really scary part is that all these regulations, and ones just as bad that bugger with other parts of everyday life, are being made by non-elected people. Has anyone ever tested the constitionality of this? They have added a fourth, unregulated branch to the government, and these commities and commisions are running amuck!!

"Uncle Sam's regulations will greatly impact what I can and cannot do to my ride"

Bking, that is already the case. Buying Bubs/Scepters/etc.., rejetting, modifying the airbox, etc... are all already covered under the existing EPA Rules, under Anti-tampering. All the mods such as AI removal that we talk about here are violations of the current law. 2006 won't change that.

"There has been no change to the “anti-tampering” provision of the Clean Air Act."

What remains to be seen is if the enforcement of the existing provisions is changed, so that local law enforcement agents actually start enforcing that statute.

More disturbing is the stuff about only being allowed ONE kit bike in ones lifetime, period, and not be able to sell that bike within 5 years of its purchase-PERIOD, under any circumstance!!! Or, owning a "custom motorcycle", and only being able to ride it to/from shows, and nowhere else!!! As far as the migration of bikes to fuel injection/catalytic converters, might as well give up on that fight! It is going to happen sooner rather than later. And even if it is delayed a couple years, most of us will live to see it. But you know what, there is already the same issue in the custom car area. My VW Passat has e-gas, an electronic throttle. That meant that basically, no one could modify the 1.8T engine (which has a HUGE HP output potential, almost double for less than $3-4000), because no one could crack the algorithms needed for the Electronic Throttle Assembly. But, just as with the advent of Laser speed detection and radar detector companies, people saw the need, and found a way to get around a problem, and now I can buy a new ECU for my car for about $500 that will take my HP from 150 up to about 180-200 with no other mods to the engine. Once the algorithms were cracked, the rest was cake! The same will happen with bikes that are fuel injected. The big question will then be cost. Guess we ought to plan on riding our bikes for a long time, or rush out and buy a new bike made before Dec. 31 2005!

Something that isn't often mentioned, if you modified an engine to run *cleaner*, it is still "tampering" and you will be fined. If you think the legislation is really concerned about the environment, remember that the peoples glorious democratic republik of Kalifornia had a law for quite a long time that said paying a rediculous amount of cash to the DMV would somehow make 49 state emissions systems run clean enough to pass inspection.
Also note that being a qualified mechanic with the proper test equipment does not make you capable of administering a smog check. You can only do a smog inspection if you pay the appropriate bribe, ahh..... I mean..... ahhh.... licencing fee. It doesn't matter if you have a clue as to what you are doing as long as you pay the officials.

Greybeard, you so much as even let me catch you THINKING about sneaking an air pump and cats on that bike Mister, I'll have your ****** turned into the KREAPO (Kalifornia Environmental Anti-Pollution Organisation) faster than you can say "I love AMF!"...


Probably never an issue because most people are trying to dump their EPA stuff, not looking for ways to put it on....

You know it's funny cause these EPA laws are really effecting the deisel passenger cars and trucks too. The irony being that simple "tampering" can easily double the horsepower and torque of say a Chevy Duramax AND get metter millage....

I'm sure our elected officials and the watchdog committees they have appointed know what is best for all of us....

ommmmmm, ommmmmm. ommmmmmmmmmm....

I think I saw that move on Lifetime the other day:)

Benny, what is screwed up, is that these idiots in the EPA have made it very undesirable to bring diesel cars onto the market. There are so many really excellent diesels that will run circles around these useless hybrids, and because of the regulations, it's not worth it to bring these cars in with diesels (the Euro-spec Passat TDI High Output is an excellent example). But I can go out and spend my hard earned money on a BUTT-UGLY Prius, Insight or a hybrid SUV all day long. And what are we going to do with all of these batteries that will have to be discarded after a few years. Yeah, that'll really be a boon for the ecology!

Being a VW driver all my life I couldn't agree more!! When I was in Prague I god to drive my buddy's Skoda which was the same model as a VW Polo (smaller than a golf) that had that motor in it. MAN it moved!! And probably got a lot better milage than my VR6 could ever dram of!! I get a lot of interesting perspective reading car mag editorials, usually the first few articles. Those guys live and breath cars and it's nice to hear actual opinion, ya know? And they all love the deisels. Plus the car and truck shows on Spike on the weekends are all over it too!!

The other thing I got out of one of those editorials is not everyone things of the overall efficiency of one fuel over another. Take hydrogen for instance, sure once you GET it, it's better than gas, but it takes energy to compress it and store it, and building the proper filling stations, etc. At the end of the day, all the electricity used up is more wastefull than the gas you would have used. And like you said, the batteries gotta go somewhere... There's always a trade off... "clean" nuclear power for instance has freakin nuclear waste! Can't win...

Then again, lots of those deisels can be made to run on bio-deisel...

Benny, I read a rag called European Car (sure you've heard of it as a VW fanatic), and their is a company with a tiny bit of tuning experience (i.e. they race in the German Touring Car championships, and many others for example), called Abt, that has developed a tuning kit for the VW turbodiesels that makes even the tiny 1.9l we get here scream (and still get good mileage). And I'm all about bio-diesel, finally give the farmers a way to make a decent living, and shut the door on our dear friends in Riyad, and Tehran!! Don't know why we are so darn slow to make a change that is so good for us and for our national security.

I've wanted to try out one of those Skoda Octavias over there, but never go to eastern Europe (so they won't rent me one), wish VW would take the front end from the Skoda, and put it on the Passat!(and lower the price of the Passat about $5-6k in the process!!!!)

Yeah I like the Skodas too. Another example of something that makes way too much sense in europe but our "american market" won't like, the Skoda version of a Jetta, forget the name right now, is a hatch back. The profile is almost exactly the same as the Jetta, but the rear glass goes up with the trunk. WOW is that so much better, I mean my trunk was huge, I could get 8' lumber in my car without even a window open, but it had to be narrow enough or not too think so it could pass thru the trunk opening, like my baritone sax would fit in there sideways, but you had to stick it in at an angle, etc... But man if that whole think lifted up out of the way, you could actually fit one large object the size of the trunk in there (a TV for instance) and not have to put it in the back seat or whatever. But Noooo, we're so so scared of words like "hatchback" and "station wagon" for that... My supre hippie friends up in Maine are all about the biodeisel:) Good stuff!

The EPA is a joke. They say they're trying to clean the environment but all they've done is screw things up. How about MBTE, oxyginated gas was their brain child. While we're cleaning the air we're polluting all our ground water with MBTE. The EPA could have made the oil companies use other additives but No!! How about coal burning power plants? They're causing acid rain and polluting lakes and ponds with mercury. God forbid we build nuclear power plants. People have no clue that fossil burning power plants have indirectly killed thousands of people with breathing problems and cancer. They also polluted the environment way more than any nuclear powerplant in the US ever did. Cananda is building low core nuclear power plants that are incredibly safe. People hear nuclear and freak. if they only realized the real dangers.

I hear ya Fisher... I actually went to a coal burning power plant in KY when I worked for a hydraulics comapany. We made the power units that controlled the valves that controlled the amount of steam going into a turbine. It was actually one of the cleanest industrial buildings I have ever been in!! I expected there to be a layer of coal dust on EVERYTHING but there wasn't. Even more amazing because they actually grind the coal into a fine powder and blow it into the furnaces. Not a billowing cloud of black smoke I expected either.

That being said, I'm sure there's stuff you can't see... Plus the hydraulic oil they used is nasty stuff... Ever wanna repaint your bike? It'll strip it right down for you. It's like anything, there's more than meats the eye, kinda like Transformers. You know hydrogen powered cars actually use more fossil fuels than cars because of the energy used to process the hydrogen? Crazy...

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And what are we going to do with all of these batteries that will have to be discarded after a few years. Yeah, that'll really be a boon for the ecology!

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Take hydrogen for instance, sure once you GET it, it's better than gas, but it takes energy to compress it and store it, and building the proper filling stations, etc. At the end of the day, all the electricity used up is more wastefull than the gas you would have used

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But the uninformed masses will believe they are doing better for the envirnment. Face it the big companies control the EPA. How many times has a company only gotten a slap on the wrist for spills or dumping s**t into the atmosphere? And when the are caught and reprimmanded who pays for the clean-up? Most of the time it's not them, the gov. picks up the tab. Here in NY they have started offering "green" power to us, but it costs us more to buy it. What incentive do I have to use it (other than not polluting the envirnment). If they truly wanted people to use it they would offer it cheaper than conventional energy.

You're right Tinman, nothing is free that's for sure. Shame really... One of the big reasons I think they should make it easier for european companies to offer deisels here is the fact they can run on biodeisel! Heck plenty of restaurants will pay you to take away their grease!! And you are right that the masses are generally uninformed. Fact is people like simple answers, so when an issue is complicated, sometimes they will hear something that makes sense or that they like and oversimplify an issue conveniently.

fisher, in all due fairness to the EPA, they are a government agency, which means they are answerable to Congress. Congress is answerable to Lobbyists and Corporations, therefore, the EPA is indirectly answerable to the companies that they might try and regulate, so it's no wonder that stupid decisions are made (like pushing hybrids) I personally have no problem with nuclear powerplants, but expect the regulations for running those plants to be as stringent as what we dealt with when I was involved with them in the Navy (which has the best safety record for reactors in the world, even given the much more rigorous environement that naval powerplants operate under). But, thanks to companies trying to cut too many corners and causing issues like 3 Mile Island, or sloppy engineering like happened in Chernobyl, people are skittish as hell about them. And frankly with good reason. I think nuclear power is one of the answers to the future, BUT, an accident at a nuclear plant is WAY more serious than even the worst accident at any conventional powerplant. If a conventional plant goes up, the worst case is fire/explosion and possibly localized contamination due to chemicals. A nuke plant goes up, and we've already seen the results in Chernobyl, where an area of several hundred (or thousand) square miles was made unihabitable by something as simple as a steam cloud being released, not to mention the people killed or forever poisoned by cancer, lukemia, etc...

Until the EPA is able to operate independently and not be answerable to big companies for making unpopular decisions (like trying to raise fuel economy standards) they will continue to be ineffective. Do they make mistakes, yes, but who doesn't? But as others here have said, pollution today is much better than the lowpoint of the 60's and early 70's, and that wasn't because companies decided to be nice guys and clean up there act. Cleaning up a chemical waste dump does nothing to help a companies bottom line, and costs money, but they did it because they were forced to.

E.P.A.(elephants pi@@ing on ants) lmao!!!! what a joke!!!! like my little motorsickle is the problem...PLEASE!!!! why cant we burn corn oil in power plants??? there has been talk of global warming since the 1800s and we are still here, nothing has changed really. govnt. and big biz wash each others backs and havnt shown me anything!! elec. powerd cars...please!!!! what a joke!!! biodeisel?? makes sense to me!! if they are serious, then why isnt every combustion engine mfgd. today running with syn oils?? big biz. thats why!! if we are so concerned with the air then why isnt every farmer told he has to grow an acre of hemp?? 1 acre of hemp does for the air what 4 acres of trees do!!! and clothing made of hemp will last 2 lifetimes, NO!!! gotta use syn. materials!!! and how do we make syn material?? you guessed it, you start with OIL!!! why not corn oil then??? why fossill oil?? it all boils down to OIL and big biz!!! i am in the A/C biz and you wont believe the changes that we are going through because of the al gores of the world!!! one space launch does more to harm the atmosphire than i and ten of my friends could do in a yr. dont get me wrong i am just as much in favor of cleaning the waterways and air supply as the next guy, and that is my point, i think we all feel the same about such matters. there was a time when nobody really knew any better, so things were done wrong but today i think people have been told and now for the most part we all know better so what needs to happen is for real ideas to come forward. not just lame ideas but real solutions. nuke power...not in my neighborhood!!!! there are much better ways and much more economical ways!!! its the e.p.a.s fault that we dont have enough refineries to keep up with the demand for more fuel to run our machines, thus higher prices(supply and demand)between the unions and the E.P.A. its no wonder companys like G.M, CAT, the steel industry and virtually all mfgs are moveing out of the country to build there products. oh i know we still have factories where final assembly is done but how come most parts are built out of the country?? E.P.A.!!! thats why!! and if they assemble it here then the tax breaks come. things like E.P.A. and PETA just get on my nerves!! unless they have real solutions then they need to shut up and go home!!!! imagine if govt. was only there to make sure our indoor plumbing was operating, i believe everyone in the world would have indoor plumbing, it probably wouldnt work very well but everyone everywhere would have it. of course there would be restrictions as to how often and how it would be used but we would all have it!!! they can just leave me and my little motorsickle alone, and go and pick on somebody thier own size.

Shoot, we think we have problems! Our ever popular HD brand will have to go to a V-3 just to have a cylinder to pump enough air through the exhaust to make 1975 standards. Perhaps they will have to patent a new sound it could sound like an old "B" John Deere.

In all reality, the majority of the tuning public (Tunners) have ridden this wave for the last 15 years. We too will over come but our learning curve has been eased a bit by our auto brethern. It will take a bit for the aftermarket industry to come on-board with "Gadgits" to make our fuel injected bikes run faster but it will happen. The nice thing of it is our rides may very well become even more reliable with better economy and the chance to adjust our fuel and spark curve on the fly. Who knows where it will stop, but I don't see it happening in the near future. We are all just a laptop and program away from the same horsepower Greg mentioned. Now let's all sing Kumbiah (is that spelled right?)

Trumpy