In this case, marine diesel engines which used to be famously long lived. The Detroit Diesel engines of old were famous for running 20,000 or 30,000 hours before a four day rebuild at the dock set them up for another 20,000 or 30,000 hours. You couldn't kill these engines. Rather, you would leave them to your kids in your will.
That's over now, and it's because of the EPA. Over a span of 15 or 20 years, they ratcheted up the emission requirements for these engines to the point that Detroit Diesel would be fined millions and millions of dollars for selling their old (famously reliable) design.
And so now you have to rebuild after 10,000 hours, and you have to replace three times as many parts. Plan on a month, rather than four days.
This is a very interesting video on the subject. While I'm not an expert on diesel engines, it certainly seems solid from an engineering perspective.
Here are the main points.
1. Pressures have gone from 10,000 psi to 30,000 PSI for a bunch of EPA-imposed constraints. This shortens the lifespan of parts used in the engines.
2. The higher pressure means that engines are much more vulnerable to bad diesel fuel: water particles or tiny flakes of rust now essentially sandblast the pistons, valves, and cylinders. This didn't used to take place at the old lower pressure. This sandblasting effect shortens part life even more, which makes engine rebuild and cost even higher.
3. Because parts will fail much more often now, manufacturers put all sorts of sensors in place. The sensors themselves can fail - the high seas is a notoriously unforgiving environment and salt water will get into the engine room. This causes corrosion, which triggers sensor faults. The engine's computer (itself a new thing, with software of questionable quality) will detect the fault and sometimes put the engine into "Limp Home Mode" - not allowing it to go above, say, 1000 RPM. A ship in a storm may find its engine dangerously under powered, putting at risk the lives on board and the safety of the ship itself. If a ship sinks in a storm under these circumstances, the fuel oil in the tanks will pollute the environment.
4. Not pointed out in the video, ocean-going vessels do not have to worry about emissions. From a pure regulatory perspective, that is. However, finding a new engine with all the design "upgrades" discussed here is the challenge. I don't know what EU regulations are, so maybe a MAN engine doesn't have to deal with this. But I'm nasty and suspicious and think that EU regulations could be even worse than EPA's.
Thanks a whole lot of nothing, EPA. You're supposed to protect the environment. Oh, and not get Americans killed.
The only thing I think is unfair about the video is the title. Engine manufactures design their engines to fail after 10 years because the EPA forces them to.
You could roll back all the environmental regulations since 1990 and shutter the EPA and this Republic would be a whole lot better off.
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You could roll back much more than all the environmental regulations since 1990 and the Republic would be even more better off!
It's been so long since I've thought about this that I had to try to research it, but here goes.
I believe it was Deming (W. Edward Deming) who came up with algorithm for solving problems that rescued Japanese production after WWII. First, list all of your problems, rank them in terms of seriousness, find the worst five problems and go after them. Re-rank them regularly, and when the worst problem drops out of the top five go after the next worst, and repeat.
The idea is to reduce these problems until they're not problems any more, and keep doing that until the problems are so small that it costs more to get rid of them than just live with the cost of the scrap.
All of this to say that EPA should have been shut down decades ago. They're so far down the list of how serious those problems are that they haven't done anything worthwhile in memory. The easy example is they started regulating internal combustion engines in something like 1970. Now, they regulate engines like lawnmowers that get used for an hour once a week, as if they were long haul trucks getting used all day, everyday. Regulating boat engines - not the big diesels in the giant tankers, but the small outboards that get used once or twice a week if the owner is lucky.
And that's ignoring things like some of the rules being based on absolute junk science.
I knew a man that had a Detroit engine in his shrimp boat. He didn't like the way they "slobbered", but knew things were getting critical when the slobbering stopped. He swore by the longevity of the engine, and how well it performed in rough seas.
CARB -> EPA -> Crappy engines in everything.
I've rebuilt Perkins, haven't had a chance for a DD. The old 4-53 looks like it'd be fun to rebuild.
At this point the EPA exists to perpetuate its existence, plus they are still in thrall to the ALARA princple which *requires* continuous improvement because "Reasonable" functionally means ZERO for whatever bugaboo is in their cross-hairs.
Polio was controlled decades ago but the March of Dimes still collects money.
The EPA and the demons infesting it are pure distilled evil. The entire agency needs to be ended and everyone part of it eliminated.
That goes for MANY MORE parts of the US government as well!!!
Agree with SiG on this one. We had a pair of DDs in our Hatteras cruiser, over 10,000 hours when we bought it, 20,000 when I bought out. Never had a problem with them!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsZs0x6zbj0&t=155s
Every diesel engine on earth is named after the WRONG man.
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