Historically the EPA had said that race cars didn't fall under the purview of the law, but changed their interpretation last year. The EPA has now resumed its assertion (belayed last year when the US Congress entertained amending the clean air act to fix this) that the Clean Air Act does not exclude production based race cars from the rules forbidding any alteration of any emissions equipment on the car. Hopefully you begin to see both the ridiculousness of such an attack, as well as the danger it represents to any enthusiast. And furthermore, while Evans Tuning is a corporation, they have personally attached Jeff Evans to the fines, meaning even if Evans Tuning goes bankrupt, he is still liable for them personally. Evans sold products, available on the market today, that _could_ be used to bypass emissions controls on vehicles. The vast majority of these penalties were not related to Evans' tuning of various vehicles, but rather because Evans sold products to end customers that could be used to bypass emissions rules. The net penalty is somewhere in excess of US$1 million. In it, Evans was told that the EPA had identified no less than 298 violations of the clean air act, and each violation was subject to a fine of several thousand dollars. They asked for a conference call with Jeff and his attorney. After Jeff met the EPA demands he did not hear from them again, until just a couple weeks ago. It had to be submitted in an EPA mandated format and it was _not_ optional. He has a very loyal and happy customer base, and was named one of the top 20 tuning shops in the country.Īfter Cobb Tuning (and other ecu/flash tool makers) were raided last year, Evans Tuning received a demand letter from the EPA giving him one month to submit all his sales and customer data from the proceeding 3 years. Jeff is a nice guy, talented and well respected in the business. In particular, they have proceeded to come back to Evans Tuning with a ruling and fines that are, well, tyrannical might be too nice a word.Īs a refresher, Evans Tuning is a mom and pop operation run by Jeff Evans (the tuner) and his wife. Well, apparently they have some confidence back, because they have resumed their assault on the automotive aftermarket. There were fears of budget cuts and many EPA employees weren't sure if they'd be employed in 3-6 months. After Trump's election, the EPA kind of went into hiding for awhile (see articles on increases of alcoholism among EPA employees - seriously). Some of you will remember the story I relayed last year about the EPA picking on small tuning businesses along with parts makers like Cobb Tuning. Most of them would prefer the aftermarket to not exist, or at least not be able to touch their engines (witness GM's attempt to classify the software in their ECUs as licensed to the owner - ala Microsoft - so that if you altered it you'd be violating their copyright). And don't expect the OEMs to help out much. I expect there to be some court battles, lots of fines, some people going out of business and more. SEMA this year will probably feel like London during the Blitz. They are going to push hard trying to shut down the aftermarket. Never forget there are a lot of enviro zealots in the EPA and they don't like cars. Included in the list I got (but not confirmed yet) were Cobb Tuning, Vivid Racing and ModBargains among others. Now I get word that yesterday they raided a number of aftermarket companies, primarily those selling flash tools. Harley paid a $12 mil fine and agreed to buy back and destroy all the tools they could (and still had in inventory). We saw the opening salvo a little while ago when they went after Harley Davidson's aftermarket product line (Screaming Eagle) for selling flash programmers for their bikes. Well, after the VW fiasco I knew it was only a matter of time before the EPA used the public uproar about VW cheating to start pushing harder against aftermarket companies.
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