Bring Catalytic Mufflers To The US Market!

[Nolan]

After discovering that Grubee Inc is now importing EPA approved Chinese engines to the USA, I contacted them with the interest of buying one of the catalytic mufflers the new engines came with. This is probably the only significant difference between the engines they were selling all along. They replied saying that they wont be selling them separately, only with kits.
I can see that this is partly because they want to make people who want a cleaner bike spend the money and buy a whole new kit from them. But clearly it doesn't work that way because most of us would chose pocket book than the environment if we already have a engine kit that runs fine. So Im just wondering how we can get the ball rolling as far as getting these mufflers )which would reduce the emissions of our engines by 70%-80%) on to the open market where people who wish to save money as well as the environment can have access to them.
-Nolan

 

[DougC]

I wanted to do this also.
In California, most new small engines were required to have catalytic mufflers starting in 2007--so that means,,, that since 2007, catalytic mufflers have been available for any new brands of engines sold there.

If you look on sites that deal in small-engine equipment (lawn equipment and such) they now list separate "California" models. On the Robin-Subaru site for example, you can see two pages on the left-hand navigation panel--"Industrial Generators" and "Industrial Generators-California compliant".
http://www.robinamerica.com/generators.aspx
A lot of sites for engine manufacturers bury this info, it can be difficult to find but it is there.

I found one engine manufacturer's site that said that the only difference in the Cali-legal engines was the muffler, which had a catalytic element built inside it. Elsewhere I have read that these catalytic mufflers cost $20-$30 more than a normal muffler (which might be $5) so it's not a lot of money. They are said to reduce emissions of a 4-cycle engine as much as ~80% after the muffler is warmed up.

About midway through 2007 I asked at a local Robin-Subaru dealer about getting such a muffler, and they did not have any part numbers and at that time there didn't seem to be any way to get one separate of a new engine.
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