It’s funny that lawn mowers don’t bother me. Its kind of comforting, the droning backdrop of the suburbs in summer. Brings me right back to playing in the sandbox when I was six. The wonderful smell of fresh cut grass.
Motorcycle noise is different. I’ve wondered how much hearing loss frequent riders suffer.
probably quite a bit, but I’d say it’s more likely from wind noise. it’s why I wear earplugs.
Several good points:
Air cooled engines have all those fins around the cylinders, waving in the open air. Water cooled engines - don’t. they have a jacket of water/glycol to deaden the sound.
Motorcycle engines typically rev much higher than cars in normal operation, especially acceleration.
Mufflers deaden the noise by baffling the exhaust leaving the cylinder. This also has the effect of increasing the back pressure somewhat and this making the engine less powerful Thus, as posted above, open pipes are loudest and make the engine a bit stronger.
Also contributing to this problem - engines on bikes are much smaller than cars, so cannot afford to throw away as much of their potential power on sound muffling.
Plus, the same adage applies with bikes as with cars - big, loud, and powerful is a substitute for male inadequacies. Guys drive big noisy bikes to pretend then have big penises. The “typical” motorcycle when I was in college was the size of a Honda 350 or for the “I want power” crowd, a 4-cyllinder 750. Today, your typical bike is in the 1000-cc range.
From the factory, many bikes are quiet - or used to be. My Honda CX500 (before Silverwing, many moons ago) was almost a whisper when idling, and not much louder than a car driving. However, with water cooling, it weighed 450lb or more, significantly heavier than its air-cooled siblings. I could (did) drive it 24 hours straight at highway speeds. I took to wearing earplugs on the highway not for the engine noise so much as the wind noise. However, for take-off speed etc. it did not match the “rice rockets” of the next generation - I just didn’t care about that sort of performance.
Somewhere along the way, the Japanese realized that Harley was on to a good thing by not having a smooth, quiet motorcycle, people who wanted penis substitutes would pay Harley far more money for an inferior product; and a lot of modern bikes are either pocket rockets (1600cc ninja bikes) or Harley imitators, big, loud, long, and low. A lot too has to do with the evolution of a motorcycle from a common commute tool for poorer teens and 20-somethings to an expensive toy for aging boomers.
I don’t think engine noise is that great of a factor. The cooling fins on air cooled bikes help break up the sound just as muffler baffles do, but mainly engines don’t make that much sound themselves, the really loud noise comes from the sudden change in pressure as exhaust leave the cylinders. That’s the sound that mufflers muffle, and if you ever hear an engine without any exhaust system attached you’ll get that right away. It’s the same reason you can silence most of the sound of a gun by attaching something to the end of the barrel.
I have a 4 cylinder inline engine on my BMW motorcycle, which still has factory exhaust system. It’s quieter than many cars. What “motorcycle” sound there is probably does come from the fact that there is a relatively large engine and transmission operating out in the open, instead of being stuffed inside the body of a car.
Quiet motorcycles exist, so the OP’s basic question is flawed.
Basically, if someone in your neighborhood is waking you up at night, it’s because they either chose (a) a loud motorcycle, or (b) chose to make their motorcycle loud. Either way, they are being a jerk.
I don’t see anything wrong with snorting a bike out on the open road. It sounds great! But doing it in a residential neighborhood, especially in the middle of the night is pure assholeism and bullshit! I always turn my engine off and coast into my driveway when I come home after dark. These are my neighbors. No reason to annoy them.
I had an old VW bug. 40 HP air cooled. No engine compartment sound insulation. No emissions system. Muffler was not high tech to say the least (and probably pretty damn unrestrictive to boot).
Took all of that HP to go interstate speeds. And I passed others like me on occassion or sat next to them at lights.
Those VW’s were not nearly as loud as many a motorcycle. If those crappy assed Bugs were not particularly loud there is no reason engineering wise a motorcyle has to be.
And the loud pipes save live/equals small dicks?
IMO any person that has loud pipes should be required by law to be decked out in highly reflective gear (and probably wear a helmet as well). Otherwise IMO the safety thing is a half assed excuse.
I live near a rural highway and can hear the guys with the loud assed harley style mufflers for effing miles late at night.
I know of hundreds of people who bought houses next to or off the ends of runways of airports that they knew were there and then started a bitter fight about the noise. One of the things they did not care about was the danger to the passengers of using the absolute minimum power for takeoff and placing them in a high risk condition. As long as it got quieter, they cared not for others.
Do the irritated by noise types in this thread agree with them & hate the airplanes taking off with the burn of a thousand suns?
I have got both loud & quiet motorcycles. I can & do ride them at night in residential areas and disturb nobody. It is not the pipes, it is the operator.
Now let’s adjust for the numbers and see what the difference is between auto & pickem up trucks vs all 2 wheeled human & motorized powered transport when it comes to being moving and also using an cell phone, pad device, … at the same time.
Have any of you ever done that in your transport? ( pants on fire? )
That is a dangerous thing to one and all, almost as bad a loud engines, right??
What about the 18 wheel trucks in the next lane as the light turns green. Their engine/exhaust noise does not bother you enough to complain about? Don’t see many threads on that subject do we?
Not driving like an ass and trying to make noise, the police should be after me and not you with a cell phone in your hand?
How many 2 wheelers do it with a device in their hand?
What are my rights when my breast bone starts moving from the base noise coming from your cars?
Why are they not lumped in with loud pipes?
You don’t like loud pipes but your cars are so quite that you don’t know that an emergency vehicle is coming and just go down the road endangering the emergency crews. No need to stop you, lets grab the 2 wheelers while they are stopped. That is what the police should do.
Bawahahahahha
I have been riding motorcycle of some sort since 1964 on a regular basis, I have 3 right now and I have never had a moving violation while riding.
4 or more wheels, had more than several.
Been stopped on my bike many times because of how I looked or what I wore. Never for noise. and I have had some straight pipe motorcycles even during my antisocial years. No noise ticket. it can and is done.
Ass hats are going to make you mad no matter what you make illegal or impossible to have. Put a muffler on an ass hats bike and keying, rocks in your windshield, tire spikes, and many other ways to piss people off will be brought into play.
It is not the pipes, drugs, guns or golf players equipment and land waste that is the problem, it is a people problem.
Sometimes I have been that problem person, just not for these things noted above.
Reacting to/at me in a negative manner did not make me quit, I just remembered you and went out of my way to mess with you. ( legality has nothing to do with it, seldom does )
See, people problem, on both sides of the fence. 
I am sure it is not true that quieting all road vehicles will cause plane crashing. you’d have to prove its true but didn’t offer any field of science this is coming from…
I know there were laws which required the manufactures markings, or replacement markings (a serial number like a VIN or something) on exhaust pipes to try to make it easy to police…
But then all the noisy vehicles pulled over had the correct numbers crudely stamped on, or emergency repairs right where the markings should be …
There was a new idea that a vehicle should not be 10% (which units ?) louder than when new…
I am not discriminating between any type of vehicle. boat , plane, 2,3, or 299 wheel…
btw, the more cylinders the more effective a manifold is at improving efficiency…
The reason is that the correct design of manifold ensures one way flow, which means the exhaust stroke can push the exhaust out easier.
So the 6 and 8 cylinders benefit from a proper exhaust manifold with back pressure.
the 2 cylinders don’t get the benefit from the proper manifold design, so it doesn’t matter if the manifold and muffler effectiveness goes missing…
How many dragsters have exhaust manifolds?
How on earth did you think the comment about the ‘people’ who move into airport areas have anything to do with mufflers? It is obviously about the kind of people who are ‘complainers’.
So 600 HP Turbo - diesels need to be redesigned to be more quiet?
Bawahahahha The questions I asked, you did not seem to want to answer. Why?
:rolleyes:
I once read it can be 85db inside a motorcycle helmet. I wear earplugs, too. Even then it can be loud. Crosswinds seem to make it worse, but some days the stars align and it’s amazingly quiet. Those rides rock.
Saw a dumbass on a motorcycle the other day texting while riding. He had the phone in his left hand and would let go of the throttle and coast while he typed with his right. :smack:
Part of it is that motorcycles have to be lighter and less bulky than cars. A car muffler is a lot more effective than a motorcycle muffler, but it’s also much bulkier and heavier. A motorcycle engine isn’t as bulky and heavy as a car engine with the equivalent displacement, so there’s less mass to damp the noise.
Motorcycle engines rev higher than car engines, which tends to make them louder.
Some motorcycles are sport bikes with tuned exhausts, which tend to be loud. Cars with tuned exhausts are louder than those with regular exhausts.
That being said, bikes aren’t all equally loud. A BMW motorcycle with a standard exhaust is fairly quiet.
So, you are okay with Annoying everybody else except for your neighbors? That just makes you a noisy noise maker, but you don’t want you to be embarrassed in front of your neighbors because you don’t want them to know that that’s who you are.
That’s great that you recognize that the noise is annoying in a neighborhood, but I have news for you: it’s annoying on the “open road” as well.
Exactly. If your motorcycle is so loud that you have to turn your engine off and coast into your driveway, then you are annoying everyone within earshot when your engine is actually running.
I’ve had motorcycles pass me on the highway that were so loud that it was actually painful. It’s even worse on local two lane back roads (with a typical speed limit of 45-50 mph), because in nice weather, I like to open my car windows. Getting passed by a motorcycle with straight pipes is often ridiculously loud.
P.S. All this talk about engine size, RPMs, insulation, etc. is missing the point, because motorcycles with stock factory mufflers aren’t particularly loud. The main issue is buyers (or dealers catering to buyers) replacing or removing the factory-installed mufflers. Case in point, I saw a motorcycle safety class in progress at a parking lot yesterday. The class must require factory-spec mufflers for motorcycles used in the course, because all of the motorcycles were nearly silent.
P.P.S. I say all of this as someone who actually wants to get a motorcycle someday. I’ve held off due to safety concerns and out of deference to my wife (who as a nurse is adamantly opposed to me getting one). If I ever get one, though, I see no reason to use anything other than a factory-installed muffler. OTOH, I would definitely wear a reflective vest.
If only they could inevent a device that makes noise only when necessary. Maybe some electrically powered device activated by a button.
Nonsense. No more than a semi-truck tooling down the highway.
I live in a quiet, secluded neighborhood. Pulling into my driveway at 1 am with a piped motorcycle, or my car radio loud, or even my wife and I talking loudly in the driveway are completely different scenarios than being out on the open road.
Complaining about noise from a vehicle late at night in a residential neighborhood is a legit gripe. Whining about the sweet visceral notes of a Harley cruising down the road is just being a puss.
Don’t you think that your argument is weakened when you are forced to compare your motorcycle to a tractor-trailer?! A vehicle that is two orders of magnitude larger than yours, with 18 wheels to your two?
In any event, you’re wrong. Per this study, a Harley accelerating through a speed of 56 mph had a measured sound level of 101.9 db(A). That’s more than twice as loud as a semi with its Jake brake activated (90.7 dB), or a fully loaded logging truck (88.3 dB). (Note that the decibel scale is logarithmic.)
Besides, semitrailers and logging trucks serve a larger purpose. Your piped motorcycle is loud for no other reason than you like making noise. It’s right up there with extremely loud amped-up car audio systems.
What you don’t seem to realize is that the “open road” simply doesn’t exist. There are people around you, living in those picturesque farmhouses along the side of the road being forced to endure your noise pollution. Not to mention the other drivers.
I happen to live in a quiet, secluded neighborhood about a mile from the nearest limited-access highway (with woods between me and the highway), and about a half-mile from a local two-lane road highway. I can clearly hear the motorcycles go by on both highways. I don’t hear the semis or any other vehicles.
“Yeah, well, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.” :rolleyes: