EPA: 'Coal Rolling' Is Illegal so get your trucks fixed

[Ichingcarpenter]

TPM reached out to Liz Purchia, the press secretary for the EPA, about the changes. Purchia told TPM "the short answer is this is illegal."

Purchia pointed to two paragraphs on the air enforcement page of the EPA's website. One paragraph said:

It is a violation of the [Clean Air Act] to manufacture, sell, or install a part for a motor vehicle that bypasses, defeats, or renders inoperative any emission control device. For example, computer software that alters diesel fuel injection timing is a defeat device. Defeat devices, which are often sold to enhance engine performance, work by disabling a vehicle's emission controls, causing air pollution. As a result of EPA enforcement, some of the largest manufacturers of defeat devices have agreed to pay penalties and stop the sale of defeat devices.


The other paragraph said:


The CAA prohibits anyone from tampering with an emission control device on a motor vehicle by removing it or making it inoperable prior to or after the sale or delivery to the buyer. A vehicle's emission control system is designed to limit emissions of harmful pollutants from vehicles or engines. EPA works with manufacturers to ensure that they design their components with tamper-proofing, addresses trade groups to educate mechanics about the importance of maintaining the emission control systems, and prosecutes cases where significant or imminent harm is occurring.



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[Ichingcarpenter]

1. The correct term is coal rolling not rolling coal tpm

that being said I wished they would discuss the penalties and fines for doing this.

[HooptieWagon]

3. I think illegally modifying a vehicle can be fined $25K or more?

That number sticks in my head, but its from 25 years ago or so. I know you can't find a shop that will remove catalytic converters or disable emmissions controls... the risk and fine are far greater than the profit. Theres a few mechanics who might do it on the side, but not very common. Another possible action would be confiscation of the vehicle, which would be an effective penalty against the owners. Also, the manufacturers of the kits can probably be fined heavily if it can be proved they knowingly sold the kits for use on registered street vehicles.

[HooptieWagon]

2. Doing anything about it is gonna be tough.

The trucks aren't spewing smoke continuously, its an "on demand" feature. So basically, a cop has to witness a douche-bag at the exact moment they hit the switch. In most cases, this modification probably escapes detection by emissions inspection. Any action by an average citizen is unlikely to have a positive result, and probably will provoke a road rage incident. If it can be catured on video, especially with a tag # visible - great, post it on social media, perhaps give a copy to LEO ( but don't get your hopes up anything will happen ). Best thing to do is go after the manufacturers of the kits. They can be fined for selling unapproved uncertified modified parts that are installed on street vehicles (off-road pretty much exempt ). Vehicle manufacturers can be easily persueded to void warranties. And perhaps in the occassional instances where an owner is caught, they can be hit with a substantial fine and their vehicle confiscated... the message will get around quickly.
On the bright side, despite the hysteria this isn't very common. It costs a few thousand to modify the truck to do this, its not very good for the engine, its a few seconds of "laughs" for the owner that probably gets boring pretty quickly, and I imagine the soot dirties the truck and harms the paint. All in all, I think this idiotic fad will be fairly short-lived. Sometimes people are gonna be assholes. Get worked up over it, and they win. Def not worth provoking a road rage incident over.

[Duckhunter935]

6. All the manufacturer

has to to do is put a label on for off road use only to cover them. Yes there are some of these smokers, and they too in the long run will go away as this fad goes away. I would be more worried about the millions of vehicles running with check engine lights on, how many here have those on and ignore them?

[pipoman]

13. Yep....the reason so many ignore this is because of the

Extremely high cost of fixing it. Maybe the epa should require manufacturers to fully warranty emissions systems for the life of the vehicles they produce.

[HooptieWagon]

23. The vehicles in question have been modified.

Its not a case of a badly worn or out of tune engine. These are fairly new vehicles modified to billow smoke on demand. As noted above, the modification kits are usually marked "for off-road use only", but there is no follow-up enforcement. The manufacturers of the kits know darn well 90+% of them are installed on registered street vehicles.

[pipoman]

28. I was responding to the question in #6

[CreekDog]

42. check engine light is an automatic smog check failure

[pipoman]

8. I doubt most cops would do anything

Since this is a federal law probably not written into most state laws. California otoh probably has more teeth than the feds...

[HooptieWagon]

9. Generally, I'd say you're correct.

California, and some locations, they might do something. Probably most LEO won't do anything.

[MindPilot]

19. In California we have a hot line to report gross polluters.

If you file a report using the online form, toll-free numbers or text to #smog, the vehicle's owner will get a notice which basically says "fix it or else".

[Hassin Bin Sober]

36. I've seen people pulled over for execive smoke

Most states and municipalities follow federal law and make federal compliance part of their code:

← 9 VEHICLES, TRAFFIC AND RAIL TRANSPORTATION → 9-76 VEHICLE EQUIPMENT → § 9-76-140 Exhaust system. →
§ 9-76-140 Exhaust system.
HISTORY
This law was first passed in 1863. It has not been changed since.
TRUST, BUT VERIFY
If you’re reading this for anything important, you should double-check its accuracy on the official Code of Chicago website.
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Want to open your city or state? Click here!
a.

1.
Every motor vehicle shall at all times be equipped with a muffler in good working order and in constant operation to prevent excessive or unusual noise and annoying smoke.

2.
No person shall use a muffler cutout, by- pass, straight pipe or similar device upon a motor vehicle on a public way.

3.
No person shall operate any motor vehicle on any public way with any exhaust system or exhaust system component that is not labeled in accordance with Section 205.169 of Title 40 of the Code of Federal Regulations, indicating that the exhaust system or exhaust system component meets the applicable federal noise emission requirements.



For purposes of this subsection (a), the term “straight pipe” shall mean a muffler without baffles or any other noise inhibiting device.
b. The engine and power mechanism of every motor vehicle shall be so equipped and adjusted as to prevent the escape of excessive fumes or smoke. No person shall operate at any place in the city any vehicle which generates excessive visible emissions of smoke from the exhaust pipe; provided, however, this prohibition shall not include emissions of water or water vapor from the exhaust pipe which is created during cold weather start-up.

(Added Coun. J. 7-12-90, p. 18634; Amend Coun. J. 11-19-97, p. 57861; Amend Coun. J. 7-26-06, p. 81473, § 4; Amend Coun. J. 10-7-09, p. 73413, § 1)

[Go Vols]

38. I have gotten a few "excessive noise" tickets

over the years for running open headers on my '70 Cobra Jet Torino.
Never seen a coal roller get stopped.

[Hekate]

39. Is California that different from the rest of the nation? Here we take air quality seriously...

... and cops are supposed to ticket drivers whose cars spew black clouds.

[pipoman]

40. Yes

Most of the country is small towns and good ol'boys. Depending on how old you are, back in the late 70's through the 80's at least California had more strict emissions standards than the rest of the country. Vehicles were sold with or without "California emissions". California has been regulating this much more vigorously than any other state for decades.

[Hekate]

41. It's made a real difference from when I was a kid, I can tell you

I spent part of my childhood in San Fernando Valley, then moved to Hawai'i. Came back with my parents in 1965 and lived near Ontario in San Bernardino County.

When we first got there our new neighbors kept referring to Mount Baldy as a nearby mountain, very nice place to drive up and picnic in the summer, ski in the winter. I assumed I couldn't actually see it because it must be much farther away in Hawai'ian terms. Then one day I was wearing polarized sunglasses, looked up and saw this absolutely gigantic thing looming over the landscape. I took off my sunglasses, and it vanished again.

That was about an hour from LA, and there were some days it just hurt to breathe. My college friends and I would drive up Mount Baldy as far as we could, and we'd look down on all those dirty layers of air: dark gray, dark yellow-brown, just layer after layer of crud you could see. Mom said Cucamonga, where we lived, was 5,000 feet in elevation -- I don't know how high Baldy is, but it's huge, it goes much higher up. Everything below was awful.

I left after 3 years swearing never to return. There were a lot of reasons, homesickness for the Islands among them, but the SoCal inland air was certainly a factor.

When I returned in 1979, it was to live by the ocean on the Central Coast. In the mid-1980s I got to know a civil engineer who worked for something with the strange name of AQMD -- Air Quality Management District. Something had really changed in California. It's not perfect, even by the ocean, but it is far, far better than it was.

[CreekDog]

43. cops can stop for expired registration

if the registration can't be renewed because they have fault codes related to the emissions system and/or check engine lights, then they will be at risk.

also the presence of improper emissions equipment or a setup that affects the way the mandated emissions equipment operates can be the basis to fail a vehicle at emissions inspection.

[snooper2]

21. you don't have to "hit a switch" LOL, just drive a cummins around normal all day

Then at one stop light, goose the motherfucker-

Yes, black smoke will billow out....I forget we have a small number of automotive technicians around here

[HooptieWagon]

22. The trucks under discussion have been modified...

...and there have been several links to youtube videos of the trucks blasting smoke on bicyclists and other "enviromentalists", so the act appears to be deliberate and on demand. Yes, sometimes diesels belch out some smoke, either b/c of wear or sometimes just because, but that doesn't appear to be the case in the vehicles in question.

[snooper2]

24. I'm aware of EGR deletes and reprogramming injector timing but you can do it with any diesel

Give me a 1984 Rabbit Diesel I can do the same thing, stock-

[HooptieWagon]

26. Hah, thats normal for Rabbit diesels.

The back end of every Rabbit diesel pickup I've ever seen is permanently black. Part of the problem is they're too slow to outrun their own smoke.

[Hoppy]

4. If EPA cared, they could track the videos these idiots post.

[pipoman]

10. Lol....the feds enforcing laws....lol

They can't even be bothered to investigate the hundreds of people daily who are illegally trying to buy guns, and those people provide the fbi with their name, address, and phone number. ..plus provide them with a perjured document. ..

[liberal N proud]

5. They should sit in my neighborhood

Everyday, there are at least a dozen pickup that roll the black smoke when they take off from the stop light.

[Duckhunter935]

7. Most diesels

will produce some level of soot when you first accelerate, does not always mean they have been modified. A dirty air filter will make it worse.

[liberal N proud]

18. See my comment below - it more than a little.

[HooptieWagon]

12. One engine on my dad's boat...

... emits a little smoke when its throttled up after idling a bit. That's a completely different case from driving down the road, and blasting a load of smoke on a cyclist or vehicle being passed.

[HereSince1628]

16. Yes, when is diesel smoke point pollution and/or speech and/or a chemical weapon?

Seems like there are some court decisions needed.

The silliness of this very adolescent level of rebelliousness not withstanding, it's possible to see the emission of the smoke as any of those things.

But then it's also pretty easy to see the "culture" that cultivates this behavior licenses it as defense of 'life-style'.

Unsurprisingly within a nation born of, baptized and rebaptized in rebellion produces many citizens who see rebellion for rebellion's sake a matter of the essence of citizenship.

[HooptieWagon]

20. Exactly.

Although no claim of freedom of speech can be made for intentionally spewing smoke, proving such intent in court could be problematic.

[liberal N proud]

17. They are blasting a load of smoke

and it lingers in the area drifting into the house.

It is more than normal. A few of them even have added the vertical stacks to pour it out of.

[salin]

32. that is what I saw - the vertical stacks

[lonestarnot]

11. These things would appear to make good use for target practice.

[HooptieWagon]

14. Go ahead... escalate a road rage incident.

Its your skin. You also target an asshole that cuts you off? Me, I just figure assholes are gonna be assholes, and sooner or later their bad karma will catch up with them.

[lonestarnot]

15. Don't jump to conclusions.

[ohnoyoudidnt]

25. There's an idea.

Confiscate their vehicles and give them to military bases for target practice. That woul out an end to those stupid assholes doing this pretty fast.

[lonestarnot]

37. Yeah that and make them serve a few fucking years for the particulates they dumped in our fucking

air. Too bad we have to share it with those fucks.

[Bonx]

27. Has anyone here actually seen a pickup truck rolling coal ?

Not me.

[HooptieWagon]

29. Neither have I.

And I live in an area with a lot of pickup driving rednecks.
I don't think there's a lot of these modified trucks. Must have been a slow news day, someone wrote a hysterical and hyperbolic story, that then got a life of its own.

[salin]

31. I have been "coal rolled" - but didn't know it

I mean I knew the black smoke was spewing at my prius (and me in it), but I just wondered about the weird pipes coming out of the bed of the truck - and thought something was wrong with it (as in - that's gonna be expensive...) Didn't know I was being protested until I read the threads here last week.

Pretty dumb (and apparently expensive) way of broadcasting that one is a JERK while attempting to bully other people on the road.

[phleshdef]

34. I've seen 2 in the past few years.

[Takket]

30. The Feds to not arrest or fine people that might get angry with them

unless of course they are black

[Tetris_Iguana]

33. Meh

Our Feds have bigger fish to fry besides a few jerks. A crackdown would only serve to enforce Repuke propaganda.

[phleshdef]

35. Can local police be enabled to write people tickets and such?

Cuz you know if they enabled them to do so, they'd be all over that shit... cops love to write tickets and this is one time I'd love to set them loose.