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Wired has published a long article about how the farming equipment manufacturer John Deere has just swindled farmers out of their right to repair their own equipment. Basically the manufacturer was allowed to write the agreement governing access to the firmware embedded in the farming equipment.
Farmers have been some of the strongest allies in the ongoing battle to make it easier for everyone to fix their electronics. This week, though, a powerful organization that's supposed to lobby on behalf of farmers in California has sold them out by reaching a watered-down agreement that will allow companies like John Deere to further cement their repair monopolies.
Farmers around the country have been hacking their way past the software locks that John Deere and other manufacturers put on tractors and other farm equipment, and the Farm Bureau lobbying organization has thus far been one of the most powerful to put its weight behind right to repair legislation, which would require manufacturers to sell repair parts, make diagnostic tools and repair information available to the public, and would require manufacturers to provide a way to get around proprietary software locks that are designed to prevent repair.
Motherboard also covered the topic about how farmer lobbyists sold out their farmers and helped enshrine John Deere's maintenance monopoly.
Earlier on SN:
The Right to Repair Battle Has Come to California (2018)
Apple, Verizon Join Forces to Lobby Against New York's 'Right to Repair' Law (2017)
US Copyright Office Says People Have the Right to Hack their Own Cars' Software (2015)
Jailbreak your Tractor or Make it Run OSS? (2015)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 21 2018, @06:40PM (3 children)
> I suspect farm equipment contributes a negligible amount to total air pollution problems.
Just an AC here without any hard data. But, current car engines (gasoline) with closed loop control and catalysts run amazingly clean. One old uncontrolled car makes the same amount of the regulated pollutants as hundreds or even thousands of modern cars. This is what happens when the regulators double down on an easy political target--car manufacturers--and nearly forget about all the other pollution sources. Little lawn mower engines spit out much more nasty stuff than any current car, but the lawn mowers are barely regulated. [Personally, we got rid of the smelly mower and do fine with a 40V battery electric.]
What I don't know is how well controlled the big ag engines are...so no way to tell how much worse they get if the emission control systems are defeated. Unlike car engines, these working engines operate continuously at high load and there is a lot of fuel running through them (car engines normally operate at a fraction of peak power).
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday September 22 2018, @06:04AM (2 children)
This is an area I know well, but I'll try to restrain my book-writing here.
Generally you don't "defeat" emission controls anymore. Before engine computers, in the late 60s to late 70s, there were things like air injection, EGR, inefficient catalytic converters, and a few others that people could / would defeat. When fuel injection / computers started in the late 70s, if you mess with anything the ECU / PCM knows and flags a dash light and you won't pass inspection, and it might likely run very poorly. There were aftermarket "chips" (ROM) that would usually improve performance and efficiency and therefor often reduce emissions, even though they're technically illegal.
Hot rodders / tinkerers have figured out that you want efficiency- you get power, better fuel mileage, and lower emissions, and they're all working in that mode.
A well-tuned "conventional" engine with a carburetor can be made to run very efficiently and clean. Long story short: 25 years ago I had a 1990 medium-sized car (V6) with of course electronic fuel injection, catalytic converter, etc. I also had a late '60s muscle car with aftermarket carb, modded ignition, mild but stronger than stock cam, headers, intake manifold, etc., and it did better in the measured tailpipe emissions tests than the 1990. Mind you I was (and still am) a tuning freak, and at the time I was not able to do anything to mod / tune the 1990 car. I tune my lawn tractor such that the exhaust has no bad smell.
An interesting (and frustrating) unintended consequence of the idiots forcing ethanol into gasoline: the ethanol wrecks havoc on small engine carburetors and fuel lines- many of the plastics and rubber parts are very incompatible and swell, crack, leaking, not working, and the net result is horrendous emissions, if the engine will run at all. The govt. should A) require manufacturers to make ethanol compatible parts, maybe paid for by govt., B) require E0 (ethanol-free) gasoline to be available for small engines. I'd be okay with a quota system. There are additives which are supposed to protect the vulnerable parts. I use it but I haven't done an A vs. B comparison to see if it works.
Electrics are great- I love them, and I've installed a few PV systems. It's definitely the way forward.
(Score: 1) by Muad'Dave on Monday September 24 2018, @01:19PM (1 child)
Part of the emissions from carbureted cars comes from the carb itself - when you turn off the car the fuel in the carb cooks from engine heat and evaporates, making hydrocarbon smog.
I recall there some car manufacturer claimed that their (fuel injected) car "polluted less running than (carbureted) car X not running".
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday September 24 2018, @02:20PM
This is very true. In fact some carburetored cars could be hard-starting when hot, called "hot soak", where that fuel vapor displaced too much oxygen and it took quite a bit of cranking to get it going. Of course most people would pump the throttle, pumping more fuel into the intake manifold, thus "flooding" the poor thing.
https://definedterm.com/hot_soak_emissions [definedterm.com]
https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyPURL.cgi?Dockey=P10021ZD.TXT [epa.gov]
Not all carburetored cars had a big evaporation problem. And some cars had an insulator between the carburetor and (hot) intake manifold, and a heat-shield too.
I don't know of anyone doing this, but I betcha a pack of "activated" carbon inside of the air cleaner would help with this. Somewhere I think I remember seeing a hose running from an air cleaner housing to a charcoal canister but I don't swear to it. I surmise it was part of both purge and hot-soak remedy.
I would love to see the numbers on this. I'm all for clean air, but some things really are negligible, and the cost / effort / energy spent trying to fix it end up being worse overall. I understand the claim of "polluted less running than (carbureted) car X not running" but I'd have to see some numbers.