RAM 2500 Cummins Diesel FINED 1.7 BILLION | Certified Diesel Mechanic Explains..

Introduction to Cummins’ Recent Troubles Apparently, Cummins has been a little bit naughty as of late, and the chickens have finally come home to roost in the form of a $1.7 billion fine from the EPA. I’m going to tell you what I think as a certified Cummins heavy-duty diesel mechanic. Today, we have a beautiful truck in the shop, a Ram 3500 with the high output Cummins, the big boy. This is a limited truck, so not only does it have the big engine, but it also comes with a big price tag. It’s the perfect setup in my opinion, with the crew cab, the standard size box, and a wonderful truck that comes with leaf springs and a big payload.

The Ram 3500 Cummins Truck We’re going to talk about what’s going on under the hood because our friends at Cummins have apparently got themselves in a little bit of trouble. Welcome back to the channel, guys, and happy New Year! I wanted to start off 2024 with a little bit of a bang, so we brought in a really nice truck, the good old 3500 high output limited Cummins. What’s not so beautiful is the price tag that Cummins is apparently paying in a settlement with the EPA, $1.7 billion for apparently running defeat devices from 2013 to basically the present.Cummins’ Alleged Emission Defeat Devices There’s a lot to get into, like I said, as a licensed diesel mechanic, and I’m excited to open up a discussion with you guys to see what is going to happen with Cummins in the future. We’ll start off with what Cummins has allegedly done, what we know so far, again, it’s a settlement, so there’s not too many details out there as of yet. Then we’ll jump into the mechanical aspect, maybe get a little bit technical as to what is going on with the emission systems and maybe what Cummins is doing to quote unquote defeat them.

The Impact on Cummins and Ram’s Relationship Thirdly, we’ll just talk about what I think is going to happen with Cummins and Ram’s relationship, what maybe Cummins is going to be forced to do, and just the fallout of this somewhat large environmental penalty that’s going to be raining down on their parade. So right off the bat, there are roughly a million trucks involved in this, starting from 2013 to 2020. It is alleged that these said trucks are emitting too much nitrogen oxide gases, and that’s what these defeat devices are allowing them to do.Understanding Nitrogen Oxide Gases When most people think of diesel emissions, they often think of lots of black smoke. That’s what people think about when they hear defeat devices. Now, let’s dive into what exactly nitrogen oxide gases are. Nitrogen oxide gases are expressed as NO2, and we often go by the term NOx, NOx sensors, NOx conversion rate. But NOx gases are highly toxic to humans, they’re pretty bad for the ozone, they contribute to smog, so all in all, not really good stuff. NOx gases are emitted by every internal combustion engine, but with diesels, because of the cylinder pressures being so high, as well as the cylinder temperatures being so high, diesel engines tend to emit a lot more NOx gases than a normal gasoline engine.

Regulation of NOx Emissions The black smoke that you see come out from this good old cat loader, that’s called diesel particulate matter, basically just soot, unburnt fuel. You really can’t see NOx gases in the air very much, like carbon monoxide. NOx gases are almost odorless and almost colorless. They’re not completely, but if you had this truck right here with a good old high output Cummins idling in front of you at a stoplight, you’re not going to see any black smoke, you’re not going to see any smoke at all. So you really have no idea if this truck was emitting more NOx gas than what is regulated for.

EPA’s Efforts to Regulate NOx Emissions Starting in 2002, the EPA started to softly try and regulate the amount of NOx gases that came out of diesel engines. They did this by implementing EGR, or exhaust gas recirculation, basically taking some of your exhaust gas and putting it back into the intake for it to be reburned. And that does help to eliminate some of the NOx gases. To this day, EGRs are still used on modern diesels. In 2010, the EPA wanted to further reduce the amount of NOx gases leaving these diesel engines, and they did so by introducing a pretty stringent regulation, and that is 0.2 grams of NOx gases per brake horsepower per hour.

The Use of Diesel Exhaust Fluid (DEF) That forced manufacturers in 2012 to start utilizing diesel exhaust fluid, or DEF. Diesel exhaust fluid, when sprayed into the exhaust, can help eliminate up to 90% of all NOx gases, basically transforming it into nitrogen and water. That’s where we start to see the utilization of DEF, and unfortunately, as I know as a diesel mechanic, that’s when we started to run into a ton of issues with these engines, tons of reliability issues, because it just starts to become a very complex system.

The Complexity of Modern Diesel Emission Systems So to me, it really is no surprise that in 2013, Cummins decided to allegedly try and install defeat devices on their engines to try and somewhat bypass the NOx regulation emissions. Pretty much every modern diesel engine, every truck you see in the shop behind me, utilizes three major components in their emission systems. The first one is a DOC, diesel oxidation catalyst, which helps to transform carbon monoxide into water and carbon dioxide. Secondly, is what’s called a DPF, or a diesel particulate filter, which filters out the black smoke. Thirdly, there is an SCR, or a selective catalytic reduction, which helps to eliminate the nitrogen gases.