Not according to Denver and the proposed NY law. EPA stamps are required on exhausts and the only EPA stamped exhausts are OEM. True for cars, too.
My exhaust is stock.
…and if it rusted out or was torn off in a pothole?
Then they’d write me a fix-it ticket, which if un-fixed could get my car impounded.
However, super-loud motorcycle exhausts are done on purpose. It’s an affirmative act.
Yay! Looking at your EPA reference above I can do whatever I want as both my motorcycles are older than 1983. I won’t though because I find those really loud motorcycle exhausts really annoying. Of course that’s probably only because I hate motorcycles and am afraid of bikers. :rolleyes:
I think using a set dB limit would be the fairest way to go. You could then include all vehicles including those cars with the ridiculously loud stereos also. As you pointed out though that is much harder to enforce.
I don’t know if I could agree with the limits you are throwing out though. Do you really want to suggest an upper limit for an idling motorcycle should be the same as a Pneumatic Jackhammer?
No job is too hard for the person who does not have to do it.
All this, “I’ll do this & that to comply with the new law.” is BS. “I never do or have anything that offends my fellow man.” type statements are BS.
These threads circle & circle and no one changes their mind.
“No, it’s about the noise.” Types would look like real tools if a hidden camera covered them for one 24 hour period with a built in Db meter. It is not what they say, it is about control and self centeredness for 98% of them .
YMMV
My bike will make a nice roar if I rev it up. The horn works nicely too.
If it’s all about safety then I should ride with a 5 foot orange flag flying and a BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP speaker like trucks have when they’re backing up.
Forget safety. The “why” it’s done isn’t the issue.
The issue isn’t why but whether it should or shouldn’t it be allowed (and to what extent).
I’m just sayin…
They are going to allow you to work on the bike in their impound yard?
I hate loud pipes. They are loudest in the rear, so the “saves lives” argument to me doesn’t hold water, unless there is a rash of motorcycle rear end collisions that I’ve missed in the news. From my riding days, the bigger issue was bad merges, or lane changes directly from the side of the rider… and idiots that pull out in front of a rider.
You would have to post a bond to get it back to work on it.
If there actually is increasing pressure to silence motorcycle exhausts, it may have two causes, and I will state outright this is pure speculation on my part based on my own percepteions.
The first cause may be an increase in the number of motorcycles out there. Baby boomers are, according to an article (Salon?) a couple of years ago, the most dangerous people on two wheels. We’re finally wealthy enough to enjoy our teen-age dream of riding a motorcycle, and we’re buying them in record numbers. (Because we’re getting older, we’re also dumping the bikes in record number because of slower relfexes and lack of experience.) So, Part 1 = More motorcycles.
The second cause may be the intolerance of the rest of us Boomers to motorcycle noise. When we were younger we didn’t mind, but now we’re wearing hearing aids (because, according to my wife-the-audiology-expert, all of that thunderoous rock’n’roll we listened to all those years). We’re more sensitive to loud sounds and less tolerant of that which pisses us off. So, Part 2 = “Get off my lawn!” syndrome.
Just a thought.
Oh hell, in a few years half of Gen Y and whatever this new Gen is will be deaf due to iPods anyway.
I’ve owned a bunch of bikes. Have one now, in fact, that I ride a lot. That said, I’d like to kick loud-pipe riders in the nuts twice. Once for annoying me with their noise and a second time for making all bikers look like obnoxious jack-asses. Maybe then a third time just to be mean.
Yeah, but their hotrods will be 'lectric and won’t make any noise at all. There’ll be a new law that requires a 500 watt sound system that reproduces sound for the safety of others.
I’m firmly in the middle of this situation. I have one Corvette with a great engineered muffler system. At anything less than half throttle, it’s quiet as a churchmouse. At WFO, the tuned harmonics break down, the exhaust has a straight shot out the muffler and it sounds AWESOME.
It made no performance improvement whatsoever. That wasn’t the point. And I can keep it quiet and well behaved in most situations. It sucks to own a rumbly V8 and have ALL the sound killed off but the mufflers. A well tuned motor sounds creates a music that’s hard to beat.
I have another Corvette that spent a couple of weeks with a hot motor, tuned headers, and straight pipes out the back (No cat, no muffler) The first time I pulled into the garage and set off the car alarms, many that was Soooo coool.
The fifth time, not so much. It’s fully compliant now, but anybody that spends a lot of time with an uncorked vehicle and doesn’t do anything about it is an ass. it helps to keep in mind that the things YOU think are cool are not the things EVERYBODY thinks are cool.
So what’s to be done?
I think the EPA stamp requirement is too far. Is it? It limits you to only buying stock pipes for a motorcycle - the most expensive option and very limiting if you’re trying to customize your motorcycle’s looks. (Personally the pipes I want are all about looks and not sound. I think the look of a large radius pipe is just perfect). Here’s my current stock exhaust which is very nice - I like staggered pipes, too, but they’re not curvy. Yes, that’s a Suzuki in the first pic and I ride a Kawasaki. The company is going to release that exhaust for the Kaw early this year, though.
How can we craft an enforcable law?
How about this? Kinda like self-regulation in the movie industry. We need another stamp for aftermarket pipes. One that says says that this pipe, as manufactured, doesn’t make more than 100dB of noise at 25 feet at 3000 RPM. That’s the same level of noise, according to that chart, as a car on a highway.
Each manufacturer has to buy the $5000 tester but each cop doesn’t need one. The states can write codes to this new standard.
This doesn’t keep me from buying a compliant set of exhaust pipes & ripping the guts out. I get the stamp and all the noise I can handle. However, I can rip the guts out of my EPA compliant ones today and get the same noise with the EPA stamp so that’s not changing anything.
Let me rephrase that: What’s the balance point between modifying your vehicle to suit your wishes versus the right of the hundreds of people within earshot all along your route to not be assaulted by loud noises?
I don’t know what that chart means by “highway”, but the chart also says that level’s the same as “Propeller Plane” and “Outboard motor”. And that’d be on side streets, too, not just highways. Uh-uh. (At the same level, the chart includes “power lawn mower”, but that’s once a week and during the day. But we could talk about it. And leaf blowers aren’t on that list. I’d like to ban those. They’re loud AND they just move the dirt around.)
Pollution should be stopped at its source. That includes noise pollution.
For me, it’s the noise. That’s why I hate those sound systems, too.
That’s why I specified 3000 RPM - a highway speed. I assume that backstreets would be at lower RPM and, therefore, lower noise.
Maybe “midpoint to redline” makes sense to handle the 4000 RPM max HD and the 10000 RPM sport bikes.
So - you’re just advocating banning everything that makes any noise? Just bitching because it’s easy to do on the internet?
Like I said - this is a bit of an attempt to craft a “fair” law. One that allows you to replace your exhaust with an aftermarket one (something that cars can do today) but still keeps noise under control.
It’s easy to say “here’s a problem”. How 'bout “here’s a solution” ?
Sorry folks but I have to disagree on this one, loud pipes do save lives! If you don’t think they do, you either don’t ride or have not ridden enough. I have seen it many times when people are not paying attention at intersections and pull out in front of me, but never when I am riding the custom chopper I built with really loud pipes. The noise gets there attention, there is no question about it, they look right at me…not only that but they sound cool and piss people off!
Half of this is true.
What’s the most times you were ever kicked in the nuts successively?