Bikes 'dirtier' than cars.

[onearmedbandit]

From a report in this mornings Press from the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research says that two-wheelers are worse polluters than cars, with hydrocarbon emissions 16 times greater, carbon monoxide emissions 3 times higher disproportionately high emissions of other pollutants. A motorbike used in the city is said by the lab to emit up to 49 times more hydrocarbons than the average car. It goes on to say that in urban conditions that bikes and scooters are even worse due to their engines being particularly inefficient when accelerating quickly. They tested Yamahas, Piaggios, Hondas, Suzukis and BMWs with engines from 50cc to 1150cc.

Anyone here able to draw on their knowledge of engine efficiency able to back up this report or dispute it. I would've thought it would've been the other way, but it seems I am wrong.

[DEATH_INC.]

I'm not really surprised,most bikes are tuned for performance , not emissions....
One thing that has always amused me is the practice of injecting air into the exhaust to cut emissions which of course it doesn't,but it thins it out so it looks good on paper.....

[Motu]

I've said it here before but got ignored or poo pooed,a typical response.Bikes are very dirty by nature - hook one up to a 4 or 5 gas analyser and check out the readings,then hook up a modern car,there'll be no comparison.A carbed bike has short individual inlet tracts,it's the vacuum in a heated inlet maifold that helps vaporise the fuel,bike inlet tracts are low on vacuum,volume and heat.The needle jet on a bike is hopeless at atomising the fuel,so is the main jet,the big droplets of fuel are then harder to vapourise.This is all before we get into combustion chamber design and ign system - bikes use a CDI,these have a very short burn time,less time to completely burn the fuel,fixed advance curves....the list goes on,bikes are very,very dirty.You're better off in a diesel Pajero like me.

[onearmedbandit]

Wow, all in the aim of greater performance then eh? So as the report said 'compared to an average car.', what would we expect to see if we hook a Ferrari 360 or Lamborghini up to the gas analyser. Would the difference between a car of 'comparable' performance intentions be closer to a performance motorcycle?

[Motu]

Depends in which market the Ferarri is being sold - if it's for California it will meet all the same standards as the ''average'' car,and be gutless,if it's coming to NZ it has to meet no standards,so look out bikes!

[Ixion]

Surely everyone knows that bikes are horrible emission-wise ? I thought that was universally accepted. And we care because ? Get them to hook Petal up to their analysers , and watch them all have heart attacks on the spot !.

[R1madness]

Depends in which market the Ferarri is being sold - if it's for California it will meet all the same standards as the ''average'' car,and be gutless,if it's coming to NZ it has to meet no standards,so look out bikes!
Your onto it motu. Bikes have got away with it for years and noone noticed. Cat converters are here now, fuel injection is comonplace. I can see a reduction in Hp for a year or 2 while the companys sort it out and then they will have to go to their drawing boards and devolip a proper engine and make it to decent standard. Hp and torque will follow as long as we dont buy the crap restricted shit they pass off as superbikes. Either that or someone new enters the market and sells a hydrogen powered bike capible of 300mph. Now i would buy that yahoo.

[froggyfrenchman]

So, do any of us care we are killing the world then?
I dont. Give me that extra 5hp anyday

[hazard02]

We use much less precious precious petrol though, so efficiency shouldn't be such a big issue.

[onearmedbandit]

Surely everyone knows that bikes are horrible emission-wise ? I thought that was universally accepted. And we care because ? Get them to hook Petal up to their analysers , and watch them all have heart attacks on the spot !.

Geee, um, surely not.

[miSTa]

Interesting, but I would've thought no worse than a car, just goes to show.

What about in the rural environment (100kmh in top gear), any ideas? I would guess much better?

[Swoop]

Slight error in their report everyone... they left off the "r" at the end of the "bike".:shit:
Apparently biker's are dirtier - because of diesel powered road whales...;)

Please take my contribution of "killer" emissions and direct them to the japanese whalers for "scientific study"!!!:rofl:

[Deviant Esq]

Is that information so hard to swallow? Because it's true...

But then, how many hundreds of thousands of cars are humming around on our roads (not to mention the beat up delivery vans belting out smoke everywhere) compared to the few thousand bikes around the place?

[Motu]

That's because bikes are now leisure vehicles,not primary transport like they were only a few years ago.Blame the people who buy them for their ego and not for function....bit like 4x4 drivers eh?

[oldrider]

That's because bikes are now leisure vehicles,not primary transport like they were only a few years ago.Blame the people who buy them for their ego and not for function....bit like 4x4 drivers eh?
My bike is definitely a leisure vehicle as much as I prefer it to anything else it is not our primary means of transport.
Guilty as charged I suppose. Does that make me an egotistical areshole?
I did buy it for it's functional capabilities though, does that count? :confused: Cheers John.

[Mental Trousers]

Either that or someone new enters the market and sells a hydrogen powered bike capible of 300mph. Now i would buy that yahoo.

Doesn't have to be hydrogen powered (if you mean combustion efficiency). Just injecting a little bit of hydrogen into a hydrocarbon internal combustion engine magically raises efficiency to 100% (that's fuel burnt).

It does that because the usual petrol combustion raises the heat and pressure enough for the hydrogen to ignite, which then raises the temperature and pressure somemore and burns off anything that's left over to burn (remember a bike engine will still be spewing unburnt hydrocarbons out the back end no matter how its tuned).

[jahrasti]

When i go for a ride today, I will be so worried about the emissions report that I wont be able to concentrate and will have to pull over and then to save the world i will just push my bike home.

[inlinefour]

I need to get another high preformance 2-stroke in my shed before Uncle Helen bans them completely. Pretty pointless carrying on about the pollution levels. There are so many major companies making industrial pollution that make motorcycle pollution look irrelevant.:bash:

[The Stranger]

Question for you Motu.
Does the analyser test under an accurately simulated load for a bike?

One of the reasons trains are so fuel ineficient is their massive weight per passenger cars are better in this respect. Bikes are carrying less weight per passenger again. I would have thought this even if the bike motor is real bad it would have a big advantage in this respect.

[SARGE]

Surely everyone knows that bikes are horrible emission-wise ? I thought that was universally accepted. And we care because ? Get them to hook Petal up to their analysers , and watch them all have heart attacks on the spot !.


me too... the leaded race fuel i run would fry the machines ... hehehehe


im such a dirty bastard.,..

[Motu]

Question for you Motu.
Does the analyser test under an accurately simulated load for a bike?
.

No,most tests are done at idle - this is the main reason the proposed emission testing was dropped.Any engine is running at it's most inefficient at idle,and an engine spends more time idling than any other mode,except diesels of course.More time is spent tuning an engine for idle,because that's the most common complaint....drivers and riders are very fussy about their idle.As the motor speeds up then you will see all the monitord levels drop radicaly.But full analisis can only be done using a brake dyno where a reading can be taken every 500rpm of the rev scale - brake dynos are very expensive and not common,you won't find a bike shop with one that's for sure.They do exist - I was at a demo evening at Possum's when he was still alive and they were running a dyno for bikes that could be used as a brake dyno or an inertia dyno,pretty impressive....then Possum showed us his 4x4 dyno,that's how he developed the Possum Link.

[parsley]

...with hydrocarbon emissions 16 times greater, carbon monoxide emissions 3 times higher disproportionately high emissions of other pollutants.
Does the report say this is by the hour, by distance or by amount of fuel? I would have thought bikes would come out better purely because of the amount of fuel they use as compared to the average car.

You have to look at the bigger picture. Bikes cause far less damage to roads than cars (and a hell of a lot less than trucks), require less space for parking and storage and alleviate traffic problems by being more manouverable and taking up less space on the road than cars.

I reckon if the proportion of cars to bikes on the roads were reversed there would be less pollution and traffic.

[Motu]

Does the report say this is by the hour, by distance or by amount of fuel? .

Disproportionatly is your clue....you can't compare a 125cc bike against an 8,000cc car,the exhaust gas analyser doesn't care what size the motor is,it just reads what comes out the exhaust pipe.

[thehollowmen]

but on top gear.. didn't they work out the total emissions of the electric trains in london and find out they were worse carbon-wise than cars per head traveling on them?

[oldrider]

but on top gear.. didn't they work out the total emissions of the electric trains in london and find out they were worse carbon-wise than cars per head traveling on them?
That would be with reference to the coal/gas fired power station emissions not the electric trains themselves! They would only have carbon brushes or brake pad emissions to worry about. Or am I just stating the obvious. Cheers John.

[erik]

That would be with reference to the coal/gas fired power station emissions not the electric trains themselves! They would only have carbon brushes or brake pad emissions to worry about. Or am I just stating the obvious. Cheers John.
Don't they have diesel generators to drive the electric motors?

[parsley]

Don't they have diesel generators to drive the electric motors?
No, those are diesel trains. Electric trains get their power from the third rail or overhead lines.

[oldrider]

You are both right, the official classification for those type are "Diesel Electric" and are independent of the national grid.
The diesel engine drives a generator to power the electric motors that power the driving wheels.
The setup is almost identical to generator sets on board ships providing their internal grid with power.
"Electric" train engines draw their power from the national power grid via an overhead line or an electrified third line. Cheers John.

[crash harry]

There's something missing from these measurements though.

An exhaust gas analyser measures percentages of HCs, CO, and lord knows what else on the fancier ones than our one... but that's the key - percentages.

An 1800cc engine idling at about 3.5% CO is pumping out about 3x the amount of impurities that a 600cc engine running at the same percentage is (actually probably not quite 3x, cos the larger engine will not require the same cylinder fill to achieve idle RPM). More if it's an auto cos the engine is doing more work at idle.

However, as Motu points out, our bike engines have more in common with race engines than street engines in the automotive world - even cruisers. No heated manifolds, no vacuum advance, no exhaust gas recirculation, individual carbs, headers, etc. None of the standard automotive economy devices. Bikes have not been subject to the emission control standards that cars have for a number of years in many countries. I believe that is changing now.

However, with the advent of fuel injection this is changing. Cats are becoming more common, and lean-burn injected engines are probably more efficient than ever before. Until we get hold of them with a Power Commander that is...

So I doubt that the bike engines are any worse in general on total volume of pollutants emitted, but I can see the case for them not really being much better either.

[Madmax]

Just give me a dirty big two stroke
i Love em
:angry2:

[thehollowmen]

I'd agree with all that.. our volume of emissions could be lower if we idle at similar RPM but our %gs maybe higher because not many bikes have catalytic converters

I wonder how this compares on a per-occupant basis though?