I am from Peoria, Il. The home of Caterpillar, Inc. I don't see using the new CAT engines as such a bad thing. Within the past 2 months I have seen two articles outlining CAT's new engines and engineers. You are correct. Cat did bite the bullet for not having engines compliant with emmission standards in the past. But now, and this is all according to an article in the local news paper the Peoria Journal Star, Cat has new engine technology called ACERT. Advanced Combustion Emissions Reduction Technology The engineers were recipients of the "Inventor or the Year honors presented for the 31st consecutive year by the Intellectual Property Owners Association. The group represents the creative output of 230 companies around the world. Previous winners include the Jarvik 7 Artificial Heart and Bose speaker technology. There are 246 patents surrounding the ACERT project. Patent number 6,688,280." Here is another excerpt from the article: "GETTING TECHNICAl For our more engineering minded readers who feel slighted by the lack of much "technical" information on precisely what it was Scott leman and Jim Weber actually invented, what follows is the abstract on page one of the document that awards the two inventors with a U.S. patent for an "Air And Fuel Supply System For Combustion Engine." It should clear up any remaining questions. A method of operating an internal combuestion engine, including at least one cylinder and a piston slidable in the cylinder, may include supplying pressurized air from an intake maniforld to an air intake port of a comustion chamber in the cylinder, selectively operating an air intake valve to open the air intake port to allow pressurized air to flow between the combustion chamber and the intake manifold substantially during a majority portion of a compression stroke of the piston, and operable controlling a fuel supply system to inject fuel into the combustion chamber after the intake valve is closed." That all was from the article at the end of August. Now from the one in July: "Caterpillar has reduced diesel emissions in trucks and busses almost 90 percent since 1988 and plans to reduce those emissions another 90 percent by 2007 using the new technology." Also, "Weber and leman invented an air management system combined with precise valve control to reduce emissions rather than downstream in the exhaust. That makes the ACERT engine different from all other engines with emission controls. The company was hit with penalties for each engines it sold without reduced emissions, which totaled millions of dollars as the company committed to its investment in ACERT rather than developing less effective emission controls. But ACERT is now available in every on-road engine Caterpillar makes, which has helped the company solidify it's position as the world's top truck and bus engine manufacturer." Sorry for being so long winded. Hope you learned something. Those were some of the more interesting parts of the articles. The remaing parts of the articles discussed the engineers and their, imagine this, their farm based backgroundIJ Infact I'll close with this due to its relavance to this borad: "RURAl RESOURCEFUlNESS Weber was raised on a farm in a central Illinois town so small, Anchor, most people have never heard of the bigger town, Colfax, he uses to better pinpoint its geographic location. Better, he says, to just call it a small town in eastern Mclean County and leave it at that. His inventiveness blossomed early and was born out of boyhood curiosity, a fatherly role model of perseverance and a working farm's demand for resourcefullness. "When you're out in the farthest field and your tractor breaks down, you better come up with something to get you home," Weber said during an interview in a Caterpillar conference room at its Downtown headquarters. They both, however work in Mossville-Weber at the Tech Center, leman at the Engine Center. "I was always welding something or another." Weber graduated from Octavia High School, which is furter evidence of his extreme rural background. The school no longer exists. He then went to the University of Illinois and emerged six years later with a graduate deree in theoretical and applied mechanics" Have a good one.