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Comment by samtho | Hacker News Reader

> dumping oil into the dirt

This is still illegal most places regardless of where you do your service. All auto parts stores (in California at least) let you drop off as much oil as you want for free and they dispose of it. Some Autozones will give you an empty container to transport the oil back to them (if you ask).

> releasing freon into the atmosphere

A/C systems are closed, so unless you have a leak, it shouldn’t ever make contact with the outside. Even DIY tools to “recharge” it have special one-way connector valves that connect directly to the one-way connection valve on the A/C system. We’ve come a long away in this tech.

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You can pick up an AC manifold on amazon for about $20 and cans of refrigerant (not top off kits) are available at any auto parts store. There's plenty of reasons to need to open the AC system in a car.

Unfortunately AC repair shops generally price gouge. I've seen shops charge > $100 just to evacuate a system for you, which is just hooking it up to their (admittedly very expensive) recovery machine for a couple minutes. Take the car back to have it filled again with about 4x $6 cans of refrigerant and they'll charge $200+ to once again hook it up to their machine for about 20 minutes. Ask them to diagnose your busted AC system and they'll inevitably tell you the evap coil is leaking and it's a $2k+ repair because of the 15 hours of labor involved in removing and reinstalling your entire dash. Go home and follow some youtube directions and find out it was really just a leaking oring on the condenser.

It's no wonder people do these repairs at home. Maybe the fix is for the auto industry to move to a less harmful refrigerant and design their AC systems in ways that don't require them to be disassembled for various unrelated repair work.

They’re are plenty of reasons to open the system, my point was that it isn’t a simple fluid top-off that oil or engine coolant is. A leaky A/C system is really an exception and people who work on their cars typically understand the work that goes into this and why it shouldn’t ever need topping off in ideal circumstances.

I agree that refrigerants need to be safer, but it’s not my experience that people who are relying on their cars to literally survive are going to just pop the refrigerant valve and let it rip.

You're not paying for the repair. You're paying for the peace of mind that comes with a "legitimate business" that you can sue if their shop burns down with your car in it, has an expensive machine that avoids discharging refrigerant, follows labor law, etc.

It's the same reason people pay more for products that are ethically sources.

That said I think the prices are crazy and would be lower if the financial burden of running a "legit" shop weren't so high.

> Maybe the fix is for the auto industry to move to a less harmful refrigerant

I think 1234yf is supposed to be a lot better. I'm not sure what the adoption rate is, though.

I'm telling you what I've seen people actually do. These aren't the minority either, these are most of the poor shade-tree meth heads I grew up with in the PNW.

> This is still illegal

But not enforced because you're not going to catch someone pouring oil over a fence on their own property into a bunch of weeds at night.

> transport the oil

The shit gets everywhere. No thanks. They know they can go to autozone or leave it in a clear plastic container, but that's extra work. I'm not sure people realize just how little free time blue collar folk have.

> it shouldn’t ever make contact with the outside

Pulling the A/C unit out to lighten the car for the dragstrip. Why bother renting an A/C reclaiming machine when I can just open the valve and let it vent?

Again, I'm not saying people shouldn't be allowed to work on cars, but trying to ignore the real environmental dangers here is burying your head in the sand.

I agree, "shade tree mechanics" often do disregard environmental considerations. But, they tend to pretty much disregard all laws and regulations, when they're inconvenient for them. Hence the shortcuts to "save time."

The question is: what ought to be done about this? I don't think a blanket ban on other than "minor car repairs" is it, but I also don't think the type of person you're talking about here is going to be too fazed by fines and inspectors.

I'm just saying the environmental cost is real. I feel people are dismissing it because "it's not legal to dump fluids" when the reality is that it's pretty common—and pretty hazardous at a local level.

I think if you banned all automotive work at home (including oil changes) that would reduce the amount of environmental damage like this. It's far easier to catch someone changing oil than dumping it. However there are obvious socioeconomic reasons why I don't think this is something that should be done.

I'm not proposing a solution, I'm just pointing out we shouldn't ignore the environment here. Or expect poor people to care about the environment because they very much do not. I know the people that do this and if I challenged them on it they would say "the government pours oil on their own gravel roads to keep the dust down anyways" or "if the government cared about the environment they wouldn't have killed Stanley Meyer" or some other claim to point out perceived hypocrisy.

How far does this go? If you have a riding lawnmower you have to change the oil in that too. Are we forcing people to spend money to haul their mower to a shop to get the oil changed? ATVs?

I'm completely against this. You're expecting poor people to pay for things they can do themselves if they're willing just because a few people dump oil in their weeds at night. Your freon argument doesn't sway me either. Wrecks cause freon dumps all the time. Your neighbor pulling freon out of one car isn't causing that much environment damage.

Also: if you're concerned about it, report them.

I wonder if the solution here is entirely different. Maybe instead of asking what-ifs per-se we ask, "well, why would someone not do it the proper way." The answer there is, whether justified or not, the current process is too much of a "hassle" (I don't see it as such but for someone dumping motor oil down storm drains for them it apparently is). We can't make them do the current process that is more of a "hassle." So how do we make a more "hassle-free" process? Maybe like garbage, one Wednesday a month, the recycling/garbage company picks up jugs of fluids? We have an existing process, so maybe we just rope one more thing into. The county/city already does garbage pickup and disposal, why not fluids?

I think we just need to be real that, there are environmental externalities to many many things. Even when we take a good faith look at various issues it's entirely reasonable for other factors to trump environmental concerns. (Moral, economic, social, cultural)

I realize you're not proposing a solution. That's precisely why I was asking about one. I'd like to see the environment protected while at the same time people retain the right to do repairs on their own vehicles on their own property.

> I think if you banned all automotive work at home (including oil changes) that would reduce the amount of environmental damage like this.

Sure, and if you banned all alcohol consumption, then that will reduce the amount of kids damaged by alcohol.[1]

Still doesn't mean that banning is an idea worthy of consideration.

[1] The negative effects of alcohol on a population is far worse than many other things that are banned, and yet alcohol is not. Many things would get immediately unbanned if the bar was "needs to be more damaging than alcohol"

So your argument is that we should enact laws that ban all automotive work at home because some people do not follow the existing laws around dumping motor oil. Do you really not see the flaw in this argument?

Every single comment I've posted on this topic (including the one you just replied to) I've been careful to point out that I expressly do not think such laws should exist.

Fair enough. Sometimes I am blindly emotional when I feel like my right to do stuff to my own things on my own property is questioned.

> Pulling the A/C unit out to lighten the car for the dragstrip. Why bother renting an A/C reclaiming machine when I can just open the valve and let it vent?

This is very rare in the grand scheme of things and the most common case is simply to recharge a line that had a slow leak. Both the valve that allows you inject coolant on the A/C system and the valve on the pressurized can are one-way by default. Yes, a little get leaked every time you do this because there is a void between where the valve attaches to the pressurized can, but this is all about trade offs.

If your A/C is leaking, you can usually fix it as it’s usually just a brittle gasket or a flare connection became loose over time. Most people I’ve helped have vacuumed out their refrigerant before disassembling so they can simply pump it back in. Why pay for new coolant if you can borrow the vacuum tool for free and just use what you got already? Yes, I’m sure some people just open the valve and let it rip, but most undertaking this repair at least watch a few YouTube videos.

Having the option to leave your oil in a clear container more than accounts for the environmental dangers. That is not 'extra work'. When you're doing an oil change you need a container to catch it in anyway- but the claim here is it's too much work to put it in a clear container?! Used oil is trash, so I guess you'd argue it's 'extra work' for people to take out their own trash as well.

Why not just charge something like a core fee like with batteries though?

I don’t see how someone sees one thing wrong with an activity and go “yeah let’s ban the whole thing”

> Why not just charge something like a core fee like with batteries though?

That doesn't work with motor oil for a number of reasons. It can burn off, new engines don't come with any oil, etc.

> I don’t see how someone sees one thing wrong with an activity and go “yeah let’s ban the whole thing”

Scroll up and see what my initial post was and you'll see this is the direct opposite of my position from the beginning.

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