I bought a lawn mower about 2 weeks ago & it was printed many times on the box & literature "NOT FOR SALE IN CALIFORNIA" I think they only allow 4 stroke motors these days.

 

This probably should have been done years ago. There should also be some options to grandfather in some boats and machines if the upgrade costs more than the boat/machine is valued at.

Personal watercraft should also be moving to a more ecofriendly fuel than gasoline/oil. There is almost no way not to spill or mix fuels with the water.

 

Sears is gonna be REALLY busy New Years Eve 2010...

Don't cats require significantly more precise fuel metering and spark control?

 

ethanol and boats is a no no. ethanol attracts moister.

the 2 stroke is pretty much dead in the boating world.

Yamaha has been using catcons (which is a catalytic converter) in there 1200/1300 2 stroke jet skis for a while. the problem with them is they take a huge beating from the jet ski bouncing around and break down turn into a ball of crap and burn the motor up so most people remove them.

 

Maybe next year they will require cats for cows. Can't keep letting all that methane in atmosphere.

 

but not in the yard machine world

 

Honestly adding cats to a lawn mower is not really going to quiet it down all that much, most of the noise you hear is from the blades spinning under the deck, not the engine itself.

EDIT: at least on multiple blade decks, there is a lot of noise from gearbox assemblies, belts, etc, depending on if the deck is an interference deck or not. belts are quite a bit quieter than gearboxes though.

 

I don't think so. You can easily figure that out by playing with an electric mower.

Having said that, the thin-walled aluminum cast blocks that make up most lawn mowers radiate lots of noise, so a quasi-muffler-cat isn't going to kill all the sound.

I recall that Cali has stated that nearly 40% of emissions in the state are from off-road sources. Seems overdue. Cars are clean enough- we need to let catalytic tech advance while holding emissions limits, to allow lean-burn for economy, for instance.

 

This is a great idea for lawnmowers.

1) I don't like smelling like no cat gas after mowing the lawn.

2) Quieter. Why hasn't lawn mower technology gotten any quieter in the last 50 years? A new dishwasher has a spinning blade but makes as much noise as a coffee maker. Yet a lawnmower sounds like a construction site.

3) As it is now, I can drive my car for 6 hours and pollute less than 1 hour of mowing the lawn. Something seems wrong when you have 300HP pushing 3500 lbs of vehicle for 6 hours yet a 5HP non self propelled 40 lb lawnmower spews out more pollution in a single hour.

If only I could hook a lawnmower blade to the bottom of my car, I'd be laughing.

As for boats. I don't know if new engines are any better than when I used to go boating 15 years ago. But back then it was nasty. Outboard engines just reeked of fuel.

 

My Kubota uses a rear-mounted deck, so you can figure out pretty quickly where the noise is coming from - and it ain't the engine! Spinning three blades that 20" in diameter and each have a tip speed of 200-300 FPS creates quite the unique acoustical signature, and a 1/4" of steel between that moving air and your ear is not going to quell the racket (especially not when there's a couple square feet of opening at the rear of the deck).

My wife wears hearing protection when she's on the tractor (as you can tell, she's smarter than I am), and sticking all the mufflers you want on the engine wouldn't change that.

BTW, that Kubota was already compliant with EPA and CARB rules for sub-25 HP engines (even though it makes 32 HP), so you can run that thing all day long without smelling like diesel. It might puff smoke for a second or two when it's sub-freezing, but I let the thing warm up in the barn while shoveling snow away from the door and it doesn't create any obnoxious fumes.

If you can figure out how to quiet down lawn equipment, you won't get Joe Six-Pack to buy it because he'd still rather spend $200 on a POS MTD than $500 on a Lawn Boy or Honda that'll last half his lifetime, but professional greenskeeper might very well be interested. It seems that the folks who pay big bucks to live alongside a golf course would prefer that the effort required to maintain that golfcourse be neither seen nor heard. The first is covered by a schedule that starts at 5AM, which then creates a bit of a problem for the second demand.

 

see EDIT.

And when we have to meet decibel standards on our equipment, it is always the decks/blades that are tweaked to try and make quieter. Unfortunately there's only so far you can go in terms of modifications before it starts effecting the cut of the deck.

 

This is going to be tricky for any boat! I for one would NOT want something that hot in my engine compartment

 

A buddy of mine has an air compressor in his work van that's powered by a 5.5 HP Briggs & Straton engine. You can easily talk over it while it's running - and it's basically inside of a big metal box. I'm going to have to agree that it's not the engine that's the problem.

 

in a tribute to this thread I went outside yesterday and used my weedeater around my driveway I'll probably mow the yard today.

 

So how come both my largest size available Vornado fan as well as radiator fans can spin fast but quiet, but a lawnmower for some reason has to be loud?

I wonder if I wrapped my lawnmower in sound deadener, it if would make a difference? I doubt it. Seems like the engine is the overriding noise maker.