I'm not old enough, but growing up in Pittsburgh, I heard the stories: lights on at noon, two pair of white shirts to work, can't dry clothes on the line
I grew up north of Syracuse…but traveled into Syracuse all the time. Back in the 60’s you could see the smog covering the city from all the car pollution. It was very very bad. Then pollution controls came along…and in less then 5 years the smog disappeared. It was amazing. Just imagine the difference it was to your lungs. City buses now run on Propane…That was a big help also.
@jtsanders - what mower did you end up getting? Given how much we’re paying these days to reduce fractions of pollution from our cars, maybe a pressure fed oil system on a 4 stroke is the price we’ll have to pay to mow hilly yards.
@jtsanders - what mower did you end up getting? Given how much we're paying these days to reduce fractions of pollution from our cars, maybe a pressure fed oil system on a 4 stroke is the price we'll have to pay to mow hilly yards.
I SMALLEST pressurized oil system I was able to find was 12hp. I had a 2-stroke for years…Went to a mower with a Kawasaki 14hp engine. I was a little bit of an overkill until I cleared out a whole bunch of trees and doubled my lawn. The 36" cut mower deck now only takes me a little over an hour to mow.
It’s a John Deere self propelled (walk behind) JS46 mower The JS26 and JS36 have pull start, and the JS46 is electric start. It has a 190cc B&S engine with 8.75 HP. It doesn’t look like Deere manufactures residential walk-behind mowers anymore.
Cub Cadet used to build a similar mower with a Kawasaki engine, but I think it had less HP than @MikeinNH’s. I don’t know if it i still available.
I’ve got to wonder out loud why CCC and local yokel are so focused on cars. Jet skis, motorcycles, lawn mowers, and semis put out much more pollution per gallon of fuel than cars. If you really wanted to make the air cleaner, wouldn’t you want to focus on the worst polluters, and not the machines that pollute the least? I know I would.
This issue is kind of like the quest for better fuel economy. You can spend money and resources on helping a 35 MPG car eek out an extra 3 MPG - saving about 22.5 gallons over the course of 10,000 miles - or you can spend money and resources helping a big vehicle improve from 12 to 15 MPG - saving about 166.7 gallons of fuel over the course of 10,000 miles.
When it comes to doing good for the environment, it’s important to pick your battles well. You can come here and berate car enthusiasts who don’t do much polluting, or you can focus your energies on big polluters, like factory smokestack emissions, oil refineries, and large vehicles. You can tilt at windmills here, or you can do something that is likely to be more effective. The choice is yours.
Yes @Whitey. The law of diminishing returns gets ignored by the zealots of all causes. The Lawn Boy 2 strokes were at the extreme end of the pollution issue but they were only useful on small areas and were, therefore, used so little that it’s hard to imagine that their exhaust was of any significance in the big picture. But the Lawn Boy is now history.