dezl, What state are you in? Sounds like some of the BS they'd pull around here.

 

one can make plenty of smoke with completely stock exhaust! anyone just out of law school could get you off of the defective exhaust charge. my 4" straight pipe and 5" tip are not a factor in the exhaust equation.

 

That's what people need to realize, that the gassers DON'T know that the smoke coming from our tailpipes, while visible, is less harmfull than their gassers invisble emmisions. Problem is they CAN see it, and they think it's more of a bad thing.
Some would say that the particulate matter contributes to cancer, but I won't go into that.
While I could stop traffic on 3+ lanes if I wanted to, I try to keep my smoke to a minimum since it just leads to complaints, and smoke is lost power. I try to get the twins spooled before I really let into her.
Same reason I don't do burnouts, because the audience doesn't have to buy the tires.

Chris

 

amen on the mack truck, we have an older (late 70s) mack fire truck, and it smokes like crazy.

 

My mom's dead stock 03 Dmax will put out a pretty decent puff as will my bosses dead stock 05 Dmax. I don't know. I can see both sides and I agree with both sides. On the one side, if your making huge clouds of smoke for no good reason other than to do it, then yes, I think it's reckless and endangering other drivers. But if you just let out a quick blip of the throttle at a fellow diesel owner and a little puff comes out then no, I don't think that's reckless and your not endangering a single person. Or if you can't see the roof of the small car behind you and you give them a nice cloud to say "back off", then no, I have no problem with that. But if you are intentionally trying to black out an intersection just because you can then yes, I have a problem with that.

 

I completely agree with this statement. I'm a hardcore diesel enthusiast, but I'm not turned on by huge clouds of black smoke out the tailpipe.

 

<flame suit on>

I absolutely hate a smoking diesel. A smoking diesel is wasting fuel. Period. It is polluting the environment with microscopic unburnt hyrdocarbon chains that cause no end of problems.

People who smoke their diesels for the fun of it are just compensating. I'm in awe of big rigs running 5-600 HP up mountains cleanly. That is the way a good diesel runs. I have very little respect for people who drive <intentionally> dirty diesels.

In the 60s and 70s a smoking diesel was a sign of power. There was no fuel control. Injection was lazy. Turbos were too small. Combustion chambers were ill designed. Today a smoking diesel is a sign of something wrong. Not enough boost. Poor injection spray patterns. Plain old over fueling.

People can say all they want about other cars polluting and cops having nothing better to do, but we live in a fishbowl known as earth with a finite amount of fresh air and oil. A smoking diesel does nothing but waste precious amounts of both of them and for no good reason to boot.

I think it is high time that some teeth were put into diesel environmental laws.

Let the flaming begin.

 

I live in the Republic of Kalifornia and here they urge the motorist to turn you into the SCAQMD (Southern California Air Quality Management District) if they see any smoke from your truck.
I have had 2 letters from them while I had my 1992 6.2 chevy. I had a bad injector and I was pulling a good hill while pulling a load and it was not smoking that badly, but it was a good haze.
The letter said to the effect: You have been reported by your fellow motorist to be emitting excessive smoke. Bla/Bla/Bla...

Also here I have seen trailers set up at freeway onramps and they have what looks to be a camera set up low and using a laser they are checking for tailpipe emissions.
We have pretty nasty laws here and if we smoked like you guys do we would be ticketed long ago and probably impounded for a defective or tampered emission system.
For right now there are no inspections for a diesel but it will probably change..
I hope not.
I do not like smoke personally, I would rather see flames…
But you do what ever is your thing and as long as it does not put my family or me in harms way I do not care.
Blowing smoke is probably a manly thing and you are relating your rig to one of the beasts used in the sled pulls.
It looks ok in its place except when you are on the receiving end.

Just how I feel.
Jim

 

I agree with we live in a fish bowl. And because of certain types of people alot of things we like to do has been banned. I feel that is because alot of people just want to sit back and let the GOV or lawmakers ect, do what they want when they want and most people just want cry about it or put there tail between their legs. I am not all about that. I can see the point about enviroments, endagering other peoples lifes ect, but c'mon now if you want to go enviromentalist on me i think we all know that light duty diesel truck are from from creating health risks in the near future. I have seen big trucks go ythrough my town and belch out clouds as big as mine. I guess the bottom line is different strokes for different folks but i am sticking by what i say i will blow smoke. I dont try by no means to endanger people's lifes or anything else.

Bottom line is nomatter what you do there will always be people that dont like it and laws against it. That isn't right in my eyes. So i guess do what ya want to do nomatter what people think. Thats just my .02$

 

I think everybody is on the same page (for the most part) if your towing, really giving it fuel, or passing somebody a little puff, or some smoke (grayish in color) is ok, you know your making power. However like a super stock pulling tractor that turns the noon sun to night, nah, that's not for me. One if I put that much out I'm gonna have some big thing on the end of my pipe to collect the unburnt fuel and recirculate = ) And your right, I'm stock and mine will smoke, if they try to ticket I'll question what did I changed and take it to an inspection station for them to check (they wouldn't take the time to check for injecters let me tell you)

I'm a huge ATV'er and love to ride. Do i think that my fourwheeler changed the mate'ing habbits of the red toothed pink pelted green tail bever that lives in rocks. No, I don't. But you get one bad guy to give you a bad rep, it's all over.

Basically it comes down to responsibilities, if you do it when you should, your good to go, if you do it here, good. A story from a friend on another site, his brother died in a car crash (tire blew, over heated). he was in a Z28 camaro hit a tree doing 160mph. It was a back road, at night, tires were not Z rated, no 5 point harnest, no helmit, no this, no that. If he was at the drag strip, or track, he'd have verred off and hit the wall but still went straight. Time and place for everything.

I'll never endanger anybodys life as I value mine and my wife's just as much. She carry's a thing of mace and the officer at the place she works asked why I didn't register it (they know everything up here in RI) and I told him cause I figured that was better than her carrying my gun. He didn't think it was too funny, but man was I laughing my butt off inside.

 

time out

 

Like everything else in the world there's a limit. Problem is people find the need to surpass it. I can't say I've never blacked out a tailgater or two or done a full throttle run down a country road, belching soot the entire time. But I've also seen people (young and old) go through a busy downtown intersection where people are trying to turn left across a busy street and black the entire thing out so NOONE can see ANYTHING. Just because another truck with stacks is going by. Everyone has their likes and dislikes but people are stupid enough in traffic as it is, and making it so they can't see 2 feet in front of them doesn't help matters, so although the diesel salute as your buddy is driving by in the opposite direction is cool, downtown at a busy street is not the place to do it. If someone deserves a lesson, fine, but theres smarter places to do it than in the middle of town where traffic is congested and your typical moronic driver has enough trouble not pulling out in front of me. Personally, if someone blacks out an intersection and I'm going through it while someone else blindly turns in front of me and I hit them,,,who do you think I'm going to be reporting to the police when they arrive??? Restraint,,,if we practice that, noone will have anything to complain about.

 

That is somewhat true but it is the not so near future that you need to be concerned abought. Imagine yourself in 1940s or 50s Los Angeles. I am not old enough to recall but I would have to imagine that there probobly was no such thing as SMOG back in those days. Maybey, but I dought it. People back then were not woried abought emisions, as you are not. Look at it today. You can see the crap in the air. I mean how much more of a reason do you need to volintaraly clean up your exaughst. If we continue on SMOKEING as we see fit just because we feel that we have the rite to, we will do nothing but continue to make problems such as SMOG worse, not better. I live in rural Iowa and have truly clean air to breath(unless your down wind of a hog house or cattle lot). I couldent imagine living around or in a large city where SMOG is a way of life. I realize that this is a strech but imagine that we are 50 years down the road and emision laws never changed from the 50s. I would imagine that even the air around here in the middle of no where would be hazy due to engine emisions. I couldent emagine what LA would look like. I have to drive threw Denver Co on my way to my moms house and the SMOG there is crazy. i dont even want to take a breath wile going threw town. I can smell the nasty crud in the air like I can smell smoke on a smoker even hours after they have had a cigaret. My wife and I want to have kids and have a world worth leaving behind for them to enjoy. I realize espesaly on older diesel engines that smoke is unavoidable and am not going to get into an argument over how much is normal or alowable but there is absolutly no point in making a already dirty(emisions wise) vehicle dirtyer. If you modiffy a truck to blow BIG clouds of black smoke and you do it on the road for no reason other than to try and impress someone with a pointless display of overfueling(Notice I dident say power), then you should get every ticket they can conjure up to give ya. If you deliberatly black out 3 lanes of trafic as people claim they have done then, if cought doing so they should make you pull over and park it and have the truck towed to a shop to remove whatever modifications caused the excessive smoke before alowing it back on the street. Wilfully blacking out trafic is a seriouse trafic hazzerd to say the least. There is a place for everything and large displays of smoke that cause trafic hazzerds dont belong on the street. I am glad you at least try to keep it to a minimume on the street but the cops have a job to do and if they think you are blowing to much smoke then you are screwed. We may not like the laws passed or agree with them but we have to obide buy them or what is the point in having them. If someone says that they dont agree with the laws that prohibit slavery so they are going to have a slave just cause they feel they have the rite to, we dont just say "oh, ok I guess you can have a slave in your house but the rest of the country still has to obide buy the law". We would punish them for breaking the law. They may complain but the law is the law. Break it and you can expect to be punished if caught. Imagine if slavery had never been made elegal, or if everyone just chose to say no I think I will keep my slave because I feel I have a rite to do so and the govement alowed them to get away with it in mass numbers. Change is progress. Some will apose it but unfortanatly that is the way the world works. Change with it or get left behind. Emision laws are getting tighter and the old ways of blowing smoke to try and get people to balive you have a powerfull truck are all but gone. Now days all they see is a huge cloud of black polution and think less of you and your dirty diesel than they did 5 seconds before. We dont need any negative publicity, america already feels that diesels need to ga away as it is.


oops almost forgot to put my flame suit on before posting this one.

p.s. sorry to be so long winded, just thank God I had to type this all out or it would have been much longer. I agree that it seems to me we are all mostly on the same page. A place and time for everything and not to over do it on the street.

 

Well i have to say, I guess alot of you are right black smoke means no power. I guess Schieds,Enterprise,Haisley, trucks are all powerless because i know i seen plenty of black smoke. I guess that was just my imagination.

Like i said it doesnt have anything to do with i will blow it cause i have the right. I am saying whats next. Cant run over stock sized tires? I am sure there would be plenty of people that had reasons why they agreed with that also.

Me myself can understand laws and consquences however i think there should be a limit. Like i said i dont black out intersection or try to blind some sunday driver, so i say leave me alone. It has nothing to do in my mind with whats going to happen 100yrs from now rather than just a display of athority in my mind. If i would tell some of the B.S these cops has pulled i think there would be different opinions. Not that i think cops are bad there are alot that are respectable people. I am the type of person that if i am respected i can give respect, I WILL NOT however give respect because a person has on a badge. Those people put there pant on one leg at a time like the rest of us. That is just my opinion.

 

Well. This is a very debateable topic.... My truck smokes plenty. Especially since the tighter torque converter i just put in. I can completley black out the road for the car behind me if i want, but i dont. I like having the smoke when i want it(and i do), but i can also drive without it if i want(especially if i get a Valet switch for christmas). The way i see it is, that if we arent causing traffic visibility problems, and its just a haze or decent puff, then whats the harm? I got behind a new D-max today. Stock exhaust, and motor. He got into the passing lane in front of me to pass a car. It put out a steady haze of smoke all the way till he let out of it. So tell me how you can prevent that. I just think that smoke shouldnt be ticketed for unless it is just a crazy amount, and is bieng used to smoke everyone out. Driving around town, i wish my truck didnt smoke any a lot of the time because if i have to get on it to get across an intersection, or pass/merge, it will smoke pretty good depending on how fast im going/what gear im in. Ill just tell you. Its VERY EASY for you guys with 3rd generations to talk about hating smoke. You guys can make 400hp with a stock turbo and almost no smoke. I promise that if you had a 12 valve, you would know what it was like to have smoke, and not be able to do anything about it. There is NO WAY to mod a 12 valve any, and not have any smoke. They just are always gonna smoke some stock or not, and if you have anywhere over 250hp(and maybe 200hp) there just isnt anything you can do to keep them from smoking some. Its just a fact that all mechanically injected engines are gonna smoke some when you are running them harder. I agree that gassers pollute just as much as diesels, but you just cant see it. I think they should pull over every gasser there is when its cold outside because every darn one of them will white smoke(color doesent matter. Smoke is smoke), when my truck will start up, and not smoke any. Now i do have a buddy with a 95 CTD modded, and he just blows smoke from the time he gets in it to the time he gets out of it. That does aggrovate me because it does get old just smoking all the time. I cant really type what i think about this topic in a reasonable amount of space(as you can see), but smoking is just something diesels do, and it cant be changed. I just hope that doesent ever happen where i live. Guess if it does i will have to buy a 3rd generation that you cant hardly make smoke.

Eric