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The Environmental Protection Agency receives information about many systems which appear to offer potential for emission reduction or fuel economy improvement compared to conventional engines and vehicles. EPA's Emission Control Technology Division (ECTD) is interested in evaluating all such systems, because of the obvious benefits to the Nation from the identification of systems that can reduce emissions, improve economy, or both. EPA invites developers of such systems to provide to the EPA complete technical data on the system's principle of operation, together with available test data on the system. In those cases in which review by EPA technical staff suggests that the data available show promise, attempts are made to schedule tests at EPA's Motor Vehicle Emission Laboratory (MVEL) at Ann Arbor, Michigan. The results of all such test projects are set forth in a series of Technology Assessment and Evaluation Reports, of which this report is one. The conclusions drawn from the EPA evaluation tests are necessarily of limited applicability. A complete evaluation of the effectiveness of an emission control system in achieving improvements on the many different types of vehicles that are in actual use requires a much larger sample of test vehicles than is economically feasible in the evaluation test projects conducted by EPA. For promising systems it is necessary that more extensive test programs be carried out. The conclusions from the EPA evaluation tests can be considered to be quantitatively valid only for the specific test car used. However, it is reasonable to extrapolate the results from the EPA tests to other types of vehicles in a directional or qualitative manner, i.e., to suggest that similar results are likely to be achieved on other types of vehicles. This evaluation of a LaForce engine is the third opportunity that personnel from EPA and its predecessor organizations in the U.S. Public Health Service have had to examine and report on a LaForce engine. The first occasion was in 1965, when automotive engineers from the USPHS Division of Air Pollution (DAP) in Cincinnati, Ohio met with LaForce, Inc. personnel in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and examined an experimental carburetor and variable compression engine. Based on their examination of hardware and available information, DAP personnel recommended no further investigation or consideration of these inventions by USPHS, citing the impracticality of the designs, the crude state of their development, and the lack of substantiating test data. |
