By David Shephardson, Detroit News Washington Bureau

The Environmental Protection Agency unveiled sweeping regulations limiting emissions from small engines in lawn mowers and boats Thursday-requiring that most small engines have catalytic converters.
The new regulation applies to lawn mowers with a 25hp engine or smaller and will reduce smog-forming emissions by 35%. Recreational boats will see a 70% reduction in evaporated fuel and NOx emissions.
The regulations take effect in 2010 for personal watercraft with inboard or outboard motors and for lawn and garden equipment in 2011.
What a crock.

 

This isn't so bad. It is kind of odd that cars would need them, but boats wouldn't. Cleaner air is a good thing.

Never really thought about how much emissions a lawn mower puts out or any other lawn tool for that matter.

 

I'd rather have them require that boat engines run Ethanol. Cleaner emissions and it is a water soluble fuel.

Is this the death of 2 stroke?

 

With prices of platinum so high and likely to get higher with this ruling, I can see prices of lawnmowers and lawn tractors going quite a bit higher.

 

Boy, thats gonna be tricky on inboard motor boats, they use a water cooled exhuast to prevent the boat from going boom. I can imagine the headache installing a set of cats would present.

 

The article also states that lawn care and boat engines are major emitters of air pollution. The EPA said they account for about a quarter of carbon monoxide and other emissions. Small engines release up to 25% of the gasoline unburned in their exhaust. The EPA estimates the new regulations will save 190 million gallons of fuel annually as a result. They will cost the affected manufacturing industries $391 million a year, the EPA estimated.

 

Are emission controls states now going to require that you bring your lawnmower, weedeater, or any other gasoline yard equipment into an inspection statement on a yearly basis? Are code enforcement guys going to come around and do spot inspections on people mowing their grass? Will older units need to be retrofitted with cats? Just thinking out loud here.

 

Doubtful it would require retrofitting or that there would be inspections. They would just have to be sold that way and fines for taking them off, much like today's cars.

I doubt many people would be taking them off their lawnmowers.

 

What does the SPCA think about putting cats on small engines???!!! That's just mean.

 

10C

 

that's going to increase the costs a LOT

 

Yep - once we effectively eliminated cars as the major source of mobile emissions, a lot of other sources started to look very bad in comparison.

The same thing is going on with engines on the other end of the spectrum. The same sort of clean diesel technology that recently appears on highway diesels is going to soon get pushed into off-highway and marine applications. And in these applications, you'll likely see retrofits forced onto the older existing engines, since you can't count on them being removed from operation in a decade (just look at the number of older tractors and contruction equipment still in use).

As the resident treehugging libertarian, this is a very frustrating topic.

 

So can you puts cats on a 2 stroke?

 

we will start to see alot more electric powered equipment soon.. by stock in any li ion battery company...

 

I can't imagine that something like this would be retroactive. I assume it will only mandate new products to carry the cats.