“This could include retrofitting modern vehicle control systems on older vehicles, or transplanting newer powertrains. Oh, wait. The reason this isn’t done more often is that the government makes it illegal to “tamper with a vehicle pollution control system”, even if you are making it more efficient or effective than what the OEM provided.”
Yeah, this one really bugs me. I can’t fit a programmable ECU to my car because “it isn’t the original equipment,” even though I could tune it to make the car use LESS fuel and burn that fuel more cleanly. I also can’t advance the ignition timing because “it’s not within factory spec” even though I see big improvements in both power and fuel consumption.
You’re right on there ,, give me a EGT guage and a programmable ECU and I can get 20%+ better mileage out of almost anything.
I’m not, in general, an advocate for federal funding, but...
Instead of spending a $billion for this stupid clunkers program, how about spending a fraction, say $1million. Get Hot Rod, Car Craft, etc. on board, along with a bunch of the people at SEMA and set up a “manhattan project” to disseminate a set of best practices and proven product combinations that could bring a huge portion of the pre-1990 vehicles halfway up to current emission mileage standards.
There’s some bang for your federal bucks.
Maybe a year or two later, do the same thing with 1990-1995 vehicles, then 1996-2000, by then, it will be time for 2000-2005.
Set up a contest to see who can get the best mileage and/or pollution reduction for each of the top 10 most popular vehicles sold in a given period using more modern technology.
I’m sure a company like Edelbrock would practically give their knowledge away if it resulted in doubling their fuel injection system sales. Ditto with Holley. Heck, let GM participate - they’ve got a huge amount of knowledge of their own vehicle systems.