How things improve in this job

My very first post in this blog dealt with the importance of windshield washer fluid. At the time I didn't consider the dark side of that.

Come to think of it, this particular dark side didn't exist at the time.

In their never-ending attempt to make themselves feel better by bankrupting ordinary citizens, the EPA raised the bar yet again on diesel truck emissions standards a year or two ago. I've described the previous round of technical "improvements" and how they've made my life more interesting here. The latest standards were far more than that approach could easily handle.* So the standard approach has gone from not making the Bad Stuff in the first place, to destroying it before it gets out of the exhaust pipe.

This involves something kind of like a catalytic converter. But it's doing a completely different job, in a completely different way. And part of the process is injecting a chemical into the exhaust as it goes into the converter. "Diesel Exhaust Fluid," it's called, and its active ingredient is urea.

So what does all this have to do with windshield washers? I'm getting to that.

Diesel Exhaust Fluid, as sold in truck stops, is a pale blue fluid, almost transparent. In truck stops it's sold in fancy bottles at equally fancy prices. At many trucking company terminals, it's delivered in large translucent plastic tanks. They look a lot like the tanks those same companies use to dispense windshield washer solvent. And in the last two or three months, I've had two trucks where someone put the stuff in the windshield washer tanks.

News flash. Diesel Exhaust Fluid doesn't clean a windshield too well.

When it dries, it forms crystals all over what you spray it on. The first time this happened, it cleaned the road salt and dirt off the windshield, then covered it with something even harder to see through. It took two or three tries before I began to realize the problem wasn't with the road.

Two days driving in wet snowy weather. Afraid to use the washer to clean the stuff off the windshield. Less than fun.

And neither truck even uses the stuff. They aren't new enough.

Thus the government improves our lives.

This post exists primarily to let you know I added another back-post, for 03/28/2011. But as long as I was typing, why not say something?
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*I read somewhere that one company did do it the hard way. Because the government had decreed that the chemical approach I'm about to describe wasn't acceptable. Then, after they'd spent huge amounts of money doing it the EPA's way, the EPA changed its mind--possibly because of lobbying from the other truck makers, who didn't want to spend huge amounts of money. Last I heard, lawyers had entered the infected area...