Motorcycle Noise

Commuting, Day rides, Audax, Incidents, etc.
DaveGos
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Motorcycle Noise

Post by DaveGos »

I was cycling the Horseshoe Pass yesterday and the number of noisy motorbikes spoiling the ride was to me unacceptable. Also here in Shropshire if you ride the Corvedale in the summer on a Sunday its just one loud bike after another. I have nothing against motorbikes, its just the modified exhausts they put on them . The ones that come with the bikes originally are normally fine. Does anybody know, do the police ever enforce or prosecute for the use of such exhausts
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ArMoRothair
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Re: Motorcycle Noise

Post by ArMoRothair »

Seldom.

I have a motorbike and when I book in with my mechanic for its annual service and MoT the first question he asks me is if it has the stock exhaust cans on it. They only check at MoT and a large numbers of bikers swap them for loud ones immediately after.

I've never understood the need myself. Mine makes nice noises already, nice to me but perhaps not to others, I don't understand why anyone would want to inflict those noises on everyone else.
james01
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Re: Motorcycle Noise

Post by james01 »

When we had proper traffic police there were certainly frequent prosecutions. It happened to me 40 years ago, the internal baffles in my silencer collapsed during a journey. I carried on regardless only to be stopped, charged and subsequently fined. The irony was that I always preferred the smooth hum of a well-silenced machine to the anti-social raucous din favoured by some bikers.
I imagine that the worst that would happen to a noisy biker nowadays would be a caution based on his promise that he'll "get it fixed as soon as possible". In other words: nothing.
tatanab
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Re: Motorcycle Noise

Post by tatanab »

Why pick on motorcyclists? The complaint should simply be modified exhausts since people also modify cars by adding bean tin exhausts. The difference is that the noisy motorcyclists tend to be posers who only get out in good weather, whereas the posers in noisy modified cars are out all year round.
eileithyia
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Re: Motorcycle Noise

Post by eileithyia »

I was in a similar situation a couple of years back, a glorious summer day and trip over the Ribblehead viaduct road was spoilt by the almost continuous noise of passing motorbikes.. While I felt other road users clearly had as much right as I did to enjoy a challenging route on a nice day... the noise was not really acceptable..

I confess I had not realised, in my naivety of these things, that the exhausts could be modified.. :(
I stand and rejoice everytime I see a woman ride by on a wheel the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood. HG Wells
Mark1978
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Re: Motorcycle Noise

Post by Mark1978 »

My biggest ride in Mallorca, over the Puig Major, a major climb and my biggest ride up to then, was almost completely spoiled by some motorbike rally going the other way. Thousands (no exaggeration) of motorbikes coming the other way, often three abreast, often well over into my lane, meant I couldn't take a decent line on the descents because they were over on my side of the road, and couldn't appreciate the beauty of the place because of the constant roar of motorbikes. I went through an unlit tunnel and honestly didn't think I would make it, that a motorbike would overtake into me and that would be that :(. This went on for 2 hours with no end in sight, got down to Soller which seemed to be the source and they were still masses of them heading out.

I went for a ride over a mountain pass yesterday and there were quit a few bikes around but counted in the dozens rather than the thousands so didn't really mind!
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maff1977
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Re: Motorcycle Noise

Post by maff1977 »

If it drowns out the sound of my neighbore's constant strimming, i'm all for it. i quite like that deep noise you get with harley type motorcycles i don't know if that's real or tin can exhaust. :?:
Last edited by maff1977 on 9 Jun 2014, 7:52pm, edited 1 time in total.
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mill4six
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Re: Motorcycle Noise

Post by mill4six »

Mine used to set off car alarms, I loved it :oops:
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Mick F
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Re: Motorcycle Noise

Post by Mick F »

I cannot understand why anyone wants a loud engine noise.
Why don't people enjoy quiet efficiency, rather than a noisy wasteful racket?

What's wrong with a quiet motorbike?
Mick F. Cornwall
TonyR
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Re: Motorcycle Noise

Post by TonyR »

Mick F wrote:I cannot understand why anyone wants a loud engine noise.
Why don't people enjoy quiet efficiency, rather than a noisy wasteful racket?

What's wrong with a quiet motorbike?


The helmets they wear cut out all the sound so they have to have it loud to hear the engine at all. Given that lots of vehicles now have engine noises that are artificially generated to make them sound good perhaps what we need in a sound generator and speaker in helmets linked to the engine so its loud for the rider and quiet for everyone else :wink:
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ArMoRothair
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Re: Motorcycle Noise

Post by ArMoRothair »

Mick F wrote:What's wrong with a quiet motorbike?


Quite. That's why I wear custom fit earplugs as well.
beardy
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Re: Motorcycle Noise

Post by beardy »

Having put on hi-viz, riding with the headlight on and still getting vehicles fail to notice your presence, you can not help but notice that you get noticed much more when your exhaust baffles have "fallen out".

I notice that people often approved of the noise of my old Triumph and BMW "thumpers" but nobody likes my two strokes.
mrjemm
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Re: Motorcycle Noise

Post by mrjemm »

One of the primary reasons I got out of the world of mobikes.

TonyR wrote:
Mick F wrote:I cannot understand why anyone wants a loud engine noise.
Why don't people enjoy quiet efficiency, rather than a noisy wasteful racket?

What's wrong with a quiet motorbike?


The helmets they wear cut out all the sound so they have to have it loud to hear the engine at all.


Nope.

I used to get headaches from the noise. Even with a choice of pricey helmets and good earplugs. Actually found in-ear headphones playing music better sometimes.

Had 2 bikes that stood out. A Tuono, that when I tried without the baffles was stupid, and I felt ashamed riding it through a village, and put them straight back in. The other, a KTM Adventure, came with a 2-1 and no baffle. It was ridiculous, and as long as I owned it, was trying to get the baffle found by the dealer who claimed it was somewhere in the store... When I finally sold it, and heard it ride away, was the 1st time I'd heard it from the 'outisde'. I was so embarrassed that I'd been that offensive.

beardy wrote:Having put on hi-viz, riding with the headlight on and still getting vehicles fail to notice your presence, you can not help but notice that you get noticed much more when your exhaust baffles have "fallen out".


Do you use this approach on your bicycle also?
mrjemm
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Re: Motorcycle Noise

Post by mrjemm »

tatanab wrote:Why pick on motorcyclists? The complaint should simply be modified exhausts since people also modify cars by adding bean tin exhausts. The difference is that the noisy motorcyclists tend to be posers who only get out in good weather, whereas the posers in noisy modified cars are out all year round.


Again, nope. Some cars may be loud, but nowhere near bikes. When miles from a road in the hills, or out on a boat at sea, or behind double glazing, or in a crowd, it's motorbikes you'll hear far more than any cars.
tatanab
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Re: Motorcycle Noise

Post by tatanab »

mrjemm wrote:it's motorbikes you'll hear far more than any cars.
Depends of course how they are driven.

Noisy motorcycles - other than after market silencers, some allowance should be made for water cooled versus air cooled. A water cooled engine has a water jacket of sorts and so is muffled versus an air cooled engine which will have a thinner engine block and lots of fins for cooling (which can vibrate nicely). This air versus water cooling can be heard plainly if you stand behind an old Volkswagen let alone motorcycles. It happens that most cars are water cooled and most motorcycles air cooled.

I had a 1961 Triumph motorcycle which was loud. This was in the days when we had loud because we could not afford to replace the silencer, unlike today where people modify them to be loud. When I rebuilt it with new silencers it was still pretty loud but not harsh. I also had a Triumph/Norton (Triton) that I raced which had a home made exhaust with rudimentary baffle which was quieter than many of the modern "loud" stock machines that mrjemm has described.

Loud motorcycles were more of a problem in the late 70s and the 80s, with many complaints in newspapers etc yet I do not remember reading a complaint about noisy cars in todays press. In the earlier times the complaints were probably because the noisy machines were usually the two strokes, which have largely gone from the roads these days except of course for the kid's mopeds in France. It is the frequency of the two stroke that seems so objectionable. Noise motorcycles that I dislike - any Hardly Able To (sorry Harley Davidson), ok on the move but very harsh when starting up; two strokes definitely; and the worst of the lot are 4 cylinder rice bikes which it seems have to be ridden at 6000 revs.

I had an experience of NOISE a few years ago. I went on a Rocker's Reunion Club ride in about 1990 on my old café racerised Triumph which was not exactly quiet (as noted above). When we started up the only reason I knew my engine was running was because I could feel it. Stationary in a group of almost 1000 similar machines I just could not hear it.

Back to the original point - on the open road I think the higher frequency of 4 cylinder engines (modified exhausts or not) are far more objectionable than the frequency of a low revving parallel or V twin.
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