Good way to see things

And with the Air Injection System removed, there is one less component to fail and leave you stranded. Imagine that reed valve to become stuck open, the system would turn into an unintentional EGR device

 

yup


Like buying a season ski pass at my local hill. The first day is $225. After that, every day is FREE!

 

When I first got my bike I added a small K&N filter to the top of the hose coming off the reed valve plate thing. I didn't run good just leaving the hose open to atmosphere.

 

Marcelino the cam mod guy leaves his smog stuff on his bike btw.

A member in Asia recently said he'd be selling his 331 cheap in the near future

 

Sorry, I know it's counterintuitive but: (Federal Regulations off the Web)

Light Trucks (aka SUVs) Carbon Monoxide 6.2 grams/kilometer Hydrocarbons 0.5 g/km

Motorcycles Carbon Monoxide 12 grams/kilometer Hydrocarbons 5 g/km

Cars are: 2, 0.24


Cars and SUVs have; fuel injection systems with O2 sensors to limit CO and HC, careful cylinder head design to limit NOx, and cats to burn up all of the above. The stuff works well, so, as hard as it is to believe, an SUV puts out less crud than a motorcycle without the above controls. Car standards are tighter and there is pressure to limit SUVs similarly to cars (which is why Ford is trying to do something "voluntarily").
BTW, the motorcycle standards haven't been tightened in years, perhaps because EPA has bought the argument that there aren't enough cycles to matter (California and several foreign countries have doubts about that).
I'm _not_ saying cycles should be controlled more or that anyone's evil. Just don't assume you're doing better things for smog by riding a typical cycle instead of driving a car or even an SUV. Unfortunately, the opposite is true.

 

Panther, those are federal max regs, correct? I wonder what a given motorcycle is actually expelling in real emissions? With the advent of FI on bikes and other emission mods, I'll bet the motorcycle is generally closer to than farther away from today's cars/SUVs. I'd argue that it is true that the dreaded carbon footprint of true off road motorcycles is quite small in the big picture.

 

Since when have we begun bragging about the environmental impact of our motorcycles? I know this thread is about justifying the removal of emissions devices, but who bought their bike because of its low environmental impact? I'm sure many of us ride bikes to reduce the amount of fuel we're burning, which is more economic than environmental consideration. Has anyone seen a manufacture's ad touting the emissions of a particular model of bike?

It's also my understanding that the fuel injection system on recent motorcycle models is a much less sophisticated system than that found on modern automobiles, and thus less environmentally efficient. The FI on bikes does not include an O2 sensor or other sensors to adjust the system.

Also, referring to "other emission mods": Isn't that what this thread is trying to justify the removal of?

Agreed, our collective carbon footprint is small because the few motorcycles compared to cars, but an individual motorcycle may not be as clean as we'd like to believe.

Great topic!

 

Have to go to work so cant make too long of a post...mythbusters did an experiment dealing with the emissions and fuel efficiency o cars vs bikes. I think the newer model of bike they used was a fuel injected wr250r

http://motorcycles.about.com/b/2011/...-than-cars.htm

Here's a small article about it, google it and I'm sure the video will pop up

 

Moved to Tucson in 1997 with a 49 state 1994 KLR650. More than once when going in for the annual emissions testing the technician had to call his supervisor over to see if there wasn't something wrong with the equipment or his technique because he couldn't get a believable reading (and it wasn't because it was so high). So I have a hard time thinking that motorcycles with or without the CA stuff leave much of a footprint. Moved to a different county in AZ in 2003 where they don't do testing of emissions on vehicles, and sometime since that move they stopped doing emission testing of motorcycles in Tucson or Phoenix.

 

Maybe Tuscon couldn't find enough technicians that could operate the testing equipment properly so they gave up on motorcycles.

Just another theory.