#749 Intake Exhausted

If I were to ask you, which is the greater polluter, a giant gas guzzling SUV or a little two-stroke motorbike, you’d probably say the SUV.
Me too. I mean, just in terms of gas consumption alone, you’d figure the carbon footprint of an SUV has got to be a 14 quadruple E.
But guess what? The little two-stroke may be a midget, but it’s got humongous carbon feet. A single two-stroke engine produces pollution equivalent to 30 to 50 four-stroke automobiles. The 100 million motorcycles in Asia, half of them being the two-stroke variety, produce about 2.5 billion cars worth of smog.
Two-stroke engines aren’t just in Asia. They’re here too, in snowmobiles, jet skis, and outboard motors. As usual, the problem is short-term economics versus long-term damage. The thing is, two-strokes are cheap. And since they’re small, even though they burn gas inefficiently, they burn less gas per mile than a big honking SUV, so poor folks in developing countries like ‘em.
And rich folks in snowy woods and hog riders on the waters either don’t care or don’t have an alternative.
Enter Bryan Willson with an invention that’s putting out a good vibration. His company Envirofit sells a cheap retrofit kit for two-stroke engines. It reduces hydrocarbon emissions by 90% and increases fuel efficiency by 35%.
The problem with two strokes is they burn fuel inefficiently because it gets mixed with engine oil. That mix gets drawn into the cylinder as exhaust gases as expelled out and some of the uncombusted stuff is expelled out too. You can actually follow snowmobile tracks and see that oil on the snow. Oil that seeps into the soil and the water table. Polluting some of our most pristine areas.
This carbon footprint is the messy kind you literally track into the kitchen of your mountain cabin.
Willson’s retrofit kit replaces the carburetor and directs fuel directly into the cylinder. And it might actually catch on. Because it will pay off quickly enough in fuel savings for poor Asian cyclists to want to use it.
Let’s hope they don't use the extra money to save up for a giant SUV.
America, ya gotta love it.