Last week the United States Department
of Justice announced it was cutting a fine levied against
Harley-Davidson a year ago from $15 million to $12 million.
The motor company was cited last August
for selling high performance electronic fuel injection tuners called
Screamin’ Eagle Pro Super Tuners. The Environmental Protection Agency
called the tuners “illegal tuning devices that increase air pollution
from their motorcycles” and fined Harley $12 million. The pollution
police also ordered Harley to contribute $3 million to an EPA project
that will replace conventional wood burning stoves with cleaner wood
burning stoves. What has changed is that the motor company no longer has
to buy $3 million worth of new and improved wood burning stoves.
Suck, Bang, Blow
For decades, Harley-Davidson has met
government mandated pollution standards by making their air-cooled
motorcycle engines run less efficiently. The engine was designed in 1907
and its operation is usually described as suck, bang and blow.
Basically, less air sucked into the engine’s combustion chambers results
in a smaller bang, the release of less energy when the fuel air mixture
ignites, and a corresponding decrease in the exhaust gases that result
from burning gasoline.
Eventually, the only way the motorcycle
manufacturer could make that strangled, old-fashioned engine meet
increasingly stringent pollution standards was by discontinuing
carbureted motorcycles. Carburetors, for those who are new, were
mechanical devices attached to the intake manifolds of gasoline powered,
internal combustion engines. With a basic set of tools including a
screwdriver, shade tree mechanics could tune their carburetors to run
with maximum efficiency. Harley stopped shipping carbureted motorcycles
in 2005.
Carburetors were replaced with
computerized fuel injectors. Because they were electronic, fuel
injectors became virtual black boxes for home mechanics. But Electronic
Fuel Injection could be tuned with a lap top computer and a device that
could reprogram the factory settings.
Opening The Black Box
That’s what the Screamin’ Eagle turner
did. The device, when attached to a computer and the motorcycle gave
mechanics the “ability to view the bike’s air/fuel ratio, O2 sensor
readings, engine speed and temperature, RPM and vehicle speed, throttle
position, spark advance and much more.” Harley said the tuner was
“designed to simplify management of street-legal performance
calibrations as EPA-compliant performance modifications are made. It
easily allows the rider or technician to view and evaluate engine
operating parameters.”
In a press release issued after Harley
finally cried “uncle,” the EPA alleged “that Harley-Davidson violated
the Clean Air Act by manufacturing and selling about 340,000 devices,
known as tuners, that allow users to change how a motorcycle’s engine
functions, These changes can cause the motorcycles to emit higher
amounts of certain air pollutants than they would in the original
configuration that Harley-Davidson certified with EPA.”
Tuner Equipped Bikes
Although the tuners were not equipment
attached to motorcycle but simply a diagnostic tool to help owners
understand the inefficiencies mandated by the EPA, the government still
required Harley to “conduct tests on tuner-equipped motorcycles and
provide the results to EPA to guarantee that their motorcycles remain in
compliance with EPA certification requirements for emissions.”
In a section written by somebody who
actually understood what tuners do, the release stated “Since January
2008, Harley-Davidson has manufactured and sold two types of tuners,
which when hooked up to Harley-Davidson motorcycles, allow users to
modify certain aspects of a motorcycles’ emissions control system. These
modified settings increase power and performance, but also increase the
motorcycles’ emissions of hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides (NOx).
Hydrocarbon and NOx emissions contribute to harmful ground-level ozone,
and NOx also contributes to fine particulate matter pollution.”
“Exposure to ozone and particulate
matter pollution has been linked with a range of serious health effects,
including increased asthma attacks and other respiratory illnesses.
Exposure to these pollutants has also been associated with premature
death due to respiratory-related or cardiovascular-related effects.
Children, the elderly, and people with pre-existing respiratory disease
are particularly at risk of health effects from exposure to these
pollutants.
“By reducing the chance that
Harley-Davidson motorcycles produce emissions above their legally
certified levels, this agreement contributes to state and federal
efforts to meet air quality standards for ozone and particulate matter.”