EPA Testing

I received a call last week from Steve Wood, the Chief Engineer in charge of engines at Toro. It seems that Kubota, one of the chief makers of engines for Toro's mowers, needed to do some in the field testing of it's engines. It just so happened that Leslie Park had some engines that fit Kubota's specifications as far as serial numbers and hours of use. Yesterday, J.J. from Kubota as well as Bill and Clark from Sensors, Inc, came to the golf course to perform some tests.

This involved hooking to exhaust pipe from the mower to a set of instruments that would measure such things as CO2, NOX, particulate matter and other parameters. These sensors were on a utility vehicle that was driven alongside the mower while it was working.

This was all done in order to verify with the Environmental Protection Agency, that Kubota's engines were performing up to the standards that the EPA has set for commercial equipment. This is a recent development, because up until recently, they did not require any testing after the equipment was out in the field. It does seem that much more of this type of testing will be going on, because air quality concerns are rising. This is one of the first times this testing has been done with equipment and engines of this size in a real-world environment. Exciting, to be sure but I would not be surprised if you will see more of this going on in the future.