The EPA doesn't have to OK any tech. As long as a vehicle meets EPA and CAFE standards when sold it's good to go.
I have to dispute that comment. EPA does follow-up testing on in-use vehicles to make sure the emission controls are still working properly. When I ran a municipal fleet, they contacted us a couple of times to get vehicles to test. This quote is from a story about Cummins recalling 500k medium/heavy truck engines in 2018"
At the fleet level they may do "follow up" but that doesn't mean they had to OK the "tech" before it was sold. The goal of OBDII was to insure emissions levels stay near the limits the vehicle had to meet when tested new.
I agree that there's no "approval" by the EPA. The second sentence is incorrect. From the EPA website at:
Link"Vehicle, engine, and equipment manufacturers are required to design and build their vehicles, engines, and equipment to meet emission standards for the useful life of the vehicle, engine or equipment specified by law."
They define useful life as 7-8 years and 100-150k miles. Back on subject
Referring to the bolded statement above, I suppose the MFR's can claim the service is "required" maintenance. but we all know that as a vehicle ages the ' required maintenance is likely to drop off as well. Which would make me think it would be a bigger problem than is being addressed, or is what I'm reading blowing things out of proportion to sell the service, chemicals etc.
My question is still, how big of an issue is this and how often should this be done?
Do the Aerosols down the intake at every oil change actually do any good or is every 2nd 3rd or 4th change adequate, or is it snake oil as well?
I would think with the number of years this technology has been out there they would have devised a solution and mandated implementation as well as retrofitting.
I have read some MFR's are shooting a small amount of gas into the intake to "wash" the valves while adjusting the injectors to compensate for it
Repeating the followingPlease keep the responses coming as I am totally uniformed on the maintenance required and am not sure if what I've reading is fact or fiction, IE: marketing by the chemical companies. I just read an article this AM that said 75K miles before needing the intake off cleaning. That does seem a bit more feasible
