Super heated catalyst converter burns up everything until it get clogged.
Coasty
Used to be oil pumpers could be spotted two blocks away, belching blue
> smoke. These day they are e x t r e m e l y rare indeed. Why?
>
> I know oil compounding has improved and so have oil and air filters. Even
> metallurgy may be better than in the "old days" of the '50s through '70s,
> but can all this account for cleaner exhausts? I almost left out law
> enforcement of pollution regs which may also have helped. Anything else > or
> have I covered all bases?
>
Then there are people like me who when we see smoke belchers, we call it in to the telephone number that our state emissions program has set up for this purpose. (since in this state it's illegal to have visible smoke)
I figure that by God I pay the money to make sure my vehicles are clean, everyone else on the road can do the same.
It's disgusting to see a car belching blue smoke and clogging up the air for the rest of us. Driving a car, as necessary in today's age as it is, is a privilege and not a right. If a person wants to operate a car on the road, he needs to keep it in a safe, clean, workable order; if not for his own concerns, then for the rest of us. If not, then get the damn junk off the road.
That's right. Get those poor folks off the road that can barely afford a car at all, let alone a new one that burns no oil. Better to have them sitting home on welfare than driving an old smoking car to work.
Well, perhaps they shouldn't be spending that welfare money on a home that is 10 miles away from their job, don't you think? Maybe if they moved within bicycling distance, and rode a bicycle every day, not only would it save them a lot of money they don't have, but it would give them some needed exercise and that might help them to feel better about themselves.
The local government here extracts a noticeable percentage of my tax dollars to fund one of the largest and most extensive mass transit systems in any major city on the West Coast. Our bus and rail lines are as extensive as the NYC subway system and surrounding rail lines, factoring in the smaller area of course. All the buses have bicycle racks, making it rediculously easy even for the lazy to ride a bike to the bus stop, take that to another stop close to their job, then ride to that job. I could even do that myself, although admittedly I'm not in the shape to do it nowadays.
And in any case, it's not like I was born with a silver spoon either. I went through that period of time in my 20's that I was making so little money that I was lucky to have $20 a month left over after paying for rent and food, fortunately at the time I worked in a hotel that had an attached restaurant. Yet I managed to tough it out on the bus system when I couldn't afford gas, and I also learned to fix my own damn car. I have never, in fact, driven a vehicle for any period of time that failed emissions, I learned to repair them. So no, I really don't have a lot of sympathy for that line of argument.
Frankly, I really don't see that being poor is all that noble. Poor people are generally a drain on the economy and someone who is poor should have as the entire focus of their life, either learning how to live within what small means they have without depending on the rest of society paying their way, or they should be focused on bettering themselves so they can make more money and not being poor any longer. The only exceptions are the sick or the disabled, and the handful of people who have truly committed themselves to serving the greater good of society, such as the people who spend 16 hours a day, every day, volunteering in the soup kitchens, the people who go to Africa to help build water systems, etc. etc. etc. Motor vehicle ownership really does not help most of these exceptions, it is rather more baggage holding them down.
I am always amazed that the vehicles we own pass with wide margins on emissions parameters. Yet everyday, I seem to get behind some oil burning stinky vehicle (not just diesel). It sort of burns me that I must pay $15 every two years to get emissions tested, yet I end up driving behind so many 'clunkers' that foul the air. Of course there is sort of a game in our area to own a car and not have that vehicle licensed within the city or county, in order to avoid taxes, fees, and other vehicle testing mandates.
In rec.autos.makers.chrysler on Sun, 14 Aug 2005 22:10:03 +0200 (CEST) Nomen Nescio posted:
Not only does the catalytic converter burn a lot of the oil that would otherwise pollute, but it means that when one is buying a used car, he can't rely on the absence of exhaust smoke or oil in the tail pipe to mean that the car isn't burning oil.
If you email me, please let me know whether or not you are posting the same letter. If necessary, change domain to erols.com.
Directions are given as if you know nothing. There's a big range here but I don't know who knows what.
Depends on where you live and what you do for a living. I live in rural northcentral PA and it simply isn't possible for everyone to live next door to their job, especially folks who tend to have jobs that come and go and may work on one town one year and another town the next. I grew up this way and know whereof I speak. You city boys can say this, but you haven't a clue what it is like outside the city. And most smoke belchers I've seen are in rural, not urban, areas. Actually, I think if you live within 20 miles of a city with a population of 50,000 or more, it should be illegal to own a car! :-)
That's real nice. Where I live, the nearest subway system is a 5 hour drive away. I think the nearest commuter rail is a similar distance. There is some bus service in the larger towns, but the nearest of those is 20 miles away. And we have winter here, real winters. We're not like you folks that can ride a bike year round. Ever try to ride a bike at -20F with a blowing snow?
You have no sympathy and you have no clue.
I never said it was noble, but for some people it is a reality and one they can't easily escape. I'm lucky in that I was able to escape, being the first person in several generations of my family to attend college. And I paid my way through college myself. I now make a very comfortable six figure salary and don't worry about money much at all, however, I still live near where I grew up and I haven't become arrogant like you and forgotten where I came from. I know people that simply weren't blessed with a great intellect and simply can't do jobs much above driving a truck or throwing lumber at a sawmill or throwing bails on a farm.
An interesting point. However I don't believe that the catalytic converter will continue to burn large amounts of excess oil for very long. While oil will burn off in a catalytic converter, the result is that it burns off leaving carbon deposits (the remainder of what cannot burn.) Eventually these deposits will coat the core of the converter and, as the deposits continue to accumulate, the pores in the catalyst will become restricted and block exhaust flow through the exhaust system. The resulting increased backpressure will result is a loss of power and overheated engine components. Possible causes are "worn piston rings, faulty valve seals or valve guides, blown head gasket or intake gaskets, or warped engine components."
I would also imaging that burning oil would effect the secondary O2 sensor as well either by becoming coated or setting a code because the converter is no longer able to react with the byproducts and throw off the oxygen levels through the converter.
In rec.autos.makers.chrysler on Tue, 16 Aug 2005 12:21:03 -0400 meirman posted:
BTW, I;m just going by what a host on a radio show about cars said. Not sure who, but it might have been Pat Goss. I'm sure CC's can become overloaded and performance can drop eventually, depending on how much oil it has to take care of, but he was saying that when performance hasn't dropped yet, leaking oil through rings and valve guides won't be disclosed by looking at the exhaust or the tail pipe.
If you email me, please let me know whether or not you are posting the same letter. If necessary, change domain to erols.com.
Directions are given as if you know nothing. There's a big range here but I don't know who knows what.
At which time the vehicle ends up in the bone yard - without having left a noticeable trail of smoke in it's wake.
When buying a used car, either run it through the emissions test before purchasing or make the deal conditional on it passing. Then you know if it is an oil burner. Lots of REAL nice looking cars are ending up in the scrap yards for the simple reason they don't pass the E-Test and people are unwilling to gamble on what it is going to take to make them pass.
They can escape it if they want. Hundreds of years ago there were many mass migrations to the cities to escape this sort of thing, you can read up about them in your European history. And these were pesants who still thought that the Earth was the center of the Universe.
I know a lot more of my own family history that goes back much further than I think many people do and I know that you have just bought off on another myth - the myth that poor white trash has always been poor white trash, or poor black trash has always been poor black trash, or some such.
You go back far enough in anyone's family history, no matter how poor they are and your going to find ancestors of theirs who were considered educated and well off in their day. And you keep going back further and you will find poor ancestors, then rich, then poor, then ordinary, you will find geniuses, morons, you name it.
These people are NO DIFFERENT than the VAST MAJORITY of people in the United States or otherwise on the face of the Earth. Work in retail in any city where you deal with large numbers of the general public every day and you will understand this. The MAJORITY of humans are NOT blessed with a great intellect. Why do you think that ideas like scientific creationism still exist?
In fact one of the only reasons that the US leads the world in innovation is that we happen to have a society that -doesen't get that badly in the way- of the people in it that ARE blessed with a great intellect. MOST cultures and societies that mankind has invented have -deliberately- done as much as possible to smash out any spark of genius or of intellect that any of their members displayed. From the Jews ostracising members who question the teaching of the rabbi's to the Chinese shooting students in Tiannamen square, to modern day Arabs in certain countries who stone women who ask the basic question of why should I wear a burka when none of the men do, most societies do as much as possible to get all of their members to not be able to do jobs "much above driving a truck or throwing lumber at a sawmill" They don't want intelligence since it's a political threat. In the US, the founding fathers wisely setup a government that institutionalizes idiotic and stupid bureaucrats, so as a result the government isn't afraid of intelligent people since all the bureaucrats know that intelligence isn't a requirement to get their job!
The only difference between your poor redneck farm hand who is as dumb as a post, and the typical city councilmember of any major city, is that the city councilmember owns a suit. But I would bet you I could take any of the dumbest farmhands you could find, stick them in a suit and plunk them down in any governmental city councilmeeting, and nobody would notice the difference. In fact, the farm hand might even be better off since he's already an expert at handling bullcrap!
Basically he is saying that government needs to be created with an inherent inability to organize around some single goal. He talks about 'defect of better motives'
Many can. Maybe even most can, but not all can. You live in a dream world. At least you are enjoying the feeling of superiority that your dream gives you.
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