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I live about 5 miles (on the same road) as the local Harley Davidson dealership and would love it if HD riders left the stock pipes on their bikes. While the e
by smoyer 5y ago
I live about 5 miles (on the same road) as the local Harley Davidson dealership and would love it if HD riders left the stock pipes on their bikes. While the engines do vibrate, don't dismiss the additional concussive force of an unmuffled exhaust.
- bserge 5y agoI hear them outside and am happy for them, they don't have tinnitus. Yet. I used to like the sound of engines, still do, but I never understood the farty exhaust tbh.
- amelius 5y agoHint: they wear protective earplugs.
- bserge 5y agoThe bastards!
- RhysU 5y agoThe protective earplugs are to combat wind roar and hearing loss over a lifetime. The non-Harley folk wear them too.
- whartung 5y agoCorrect. My bike has a stock exhaust and sounds like a sewing machine, but I wear earplugs mostly to protect against the constant wind noise at speed.
- tbihl 5y agoIs that not accomplished by wearing a helmet? I haven't been on a motorcycle in over a decade, but I recall it being pretty quiet in the helmet.
- chairmanwow1 5y agoI had a pretty nice helmet, and it was absolutely not quieter
- steffan 5y agoNo, there's more than enough noise to cause permanent hearing damage. Obviously higher speeds=higher wind noise; you might be fine < 35mph (~ 55kmh) in a city, but anything above that hearing protection is advisable. "Measurements of motorcycle riding noise levels vary, but are generally around 85-95 dB at speeds up to 35 mph, climbing to 110-116 dB at 65 mph"
- hughrr 5y agoYeah it’s just being a nuisance for the sake of it. There was one who lived over the road from me a few years back who would rev his broken exhaust bike at 5am and wake everyone up. About three weeks later his motorcycle mysteriously caught fire in the early evening. There were people smirking out of their windows enjoying the schadenfreude. There’s still a puddle of aluminium melted into the ground where it died.
- ryandrake 5y ago> Yeah it’s just being a nuisance for the sake of it. It's a lot like rolling coal[1]. No actual safety purpose, people do it simply to project insecurity and irritate others. Sometimes I think society is too tolerant of purely antisocial behavior, but I guess in the US everyone has the freedom to be a donkey. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal
- hughrr 5y agoOh joy that’s terrible. Had no idea anyone did that.
- amelius 5y agoSadly this won't help in the majority of cases. Their insurance will just pay for a brand new bike with the newest and noisiest tech installed.
- amelius 5y agoIsn't there a legal limit on the amount of dB(A) produced by any vehicle?
- kzrdude 5y ago(Sweden situation). There's recurring inspections of any vehicle, binannually or something maybe for motorcycles. The HD people I know/knew, would change back to the stock pipes for inspection, because the loud ones were not legal to use. Then just change back again.
- arglebarglegar 5y agoyes this is exactly what people do with modified cars too
- moonchrome 5y agoOr they just add/remove the DB killer (removing a small plug vs dismantling the exhaust)
- foepys 5y agoWith Euro4 and later exhausts this is no longer possible. Db killers need to be not removable, so you need to replace the whole slip-on.
- moonchrome 5y agoHad a friend who put an Akrapovic on his MT-07 - DB killer is welded but once you drill through a small part on the weld you can remove it/put it back easily and the drill hole is covered by carbon shield so unless they disassemble the shield to check (and my friend had it like this for 5 years before selling IIRC) it was just pull out - put it back in for technical
- nitrogen 5y agoJust curious, do these changes affect power output in either direction?
- kingkawn 5y agoFor the bikes being loud enough that everyone knows you’re coming is life and death issue on the road surrounded by huge cars and trucks
- gbrown 5y agoThat’s the sales pitch, but I haven’t seen any evidence. Almost all the sound is projected behind you, where people can already see you (and where high-vis clothing would be more effective than sound anyway, but you don’t see many bikers wearing that). Anecdotally, the people I’ve known with loud exhaust systems are not what you’d call “safety conscious”.
- Invictus0 5y agoEven if it's ineffective, it's still a psychological safety blanket. It's much the same reason that bikers ride in groups.
- SquishyPanda23 5y agoI'll keep that in mind next time a loud bike wakes up my children in the middle of the night. "It's okay honey, that man needed a psychological safety blanket.'
- JasonFruit 5y agoMy kids would find that hilarious, and I'd have to resign myself to hearing it after every motorcycle that passes for weeks.
- tartoran 5y agoThis!! Mufflers and subwoofers wake up my child in the middle of the night and only we know how long it takes to fall asleep again. Its frustrating because both of these sources are completely unnecessary
- 8note 5y agoIsn't that to say that's its worse than ineffective? That suggests it causes bikers to do more dangerous things because they think the loudness is protecting them
- kube-system 5y agoLoud pipes are annoying, but they won’t change the amount of vibration transmitted through the handlebars to a phone mount.
- jacquesm 5y agoYes, but the proximity is such that the soundwaves themselves could conceivably vibrate the case enough to do damage if it is in a partially enclosed space and facing out (because that way it gets pressure from only one side, essentially a reverse bass speaker).
- shsbdncudx 5y agoNah dude, you’re really reaching. So now loud noises break the iPhones camera?
- jrootabega 5y agoIt's not a bad hypothesis, but would Apple have withheld that info if they were already advising people of the danger of direct mounting? They could just advise people to keep their phones inside a padded box or something of the sort.
- jrootabega 5y agoI'm not commenting either way on the value of loud motorcycles here, but is this related to the article? It says the danger comes from mounting the phone directly to the bike. As far as I can tell, it doesn't say that the acoustic vibrations damage the phone. Would the muffled exhaust also reduce the physical vibrations of the frame?
- jacquesm 5y agoJudging by the vibrations of my walls: yes. The sooner a maximum noise emitted law for vehicles goes into practice the better. I have a neihgbor here who goes out for small trips 20+ times per day on his HD. Open the garage door, take the bike out (running, of course), close the garage door, rev it a couple of times, wait for a few minutes for the engine to warm up, roar away at maximum volume. Return 10 minutes later, leave bike on the stand while opening the garage door. Turn off bike. Close garage door. Wait 1/2 hour or so, rinse, repeat. No idea what he's up to but it's not a normal usage pattern as far as I can see and I'd be a-ok with that if he would not make so much noise. Even with headphones on you can clearly hear it and the vibration is enough to rattle the cup on my desk. With noise cancelling on on the headphone I don't hear him.
- spoonjim 5y agoHe’s a delivery drug dealer. Very common for heroin and a major enabler of the heroin overdose epidemic. Allows people who are too zonked to do anything to still get their fix. Pioneered by Mexicans but now adopted by all kinds of criminal gangs.
- dTal 5y agoYou seem very confident.
- barneygale 5y agoShotters don't generally use loud/obvious vehicles
- jacquesm 5y ago