Loud Motorcycles upsetting Maine's serenity? (Freeport, Lincoln: neighborhood, camper, zip code)

[Maineah]

Originally Posted by forest beekeeper

But the marketing is GREAT!

Can't argue that! I have seen (and used) Harley Davidson toilet paper! Perhaps that was a Honda marketing ploy!

[Lincolnian]

Originally Posted by Shuffler

there is 'good throaty' like a Ducati/Aprilia/Honda/KTM V-Twin with well-engineered mufflers...

then there is 'bad throaty' like any Harley with straight pipes...simply obnoxious. I just don't 'get' the Harley thing...where is the fun in riding an overweight, poor-handling, loud, and overpriced machine? To each his own, I suppose.

I foresee a glut of bikes on the market as those who bought on credit have to start getting rid of 'toys' they could never afford in the first place. Keeping my eyes open for a Honda VFR...

Torque, rythym, riding-position, feel and American-made to boot. That's why I ride a Harley. I have a 2004 XL 1200 Custom. Throaty pipes allow better engine peformance. Straight pipes are obnoxious and give bikers a bad rap. They're mostly used by tank-top bar jockeys making the 3 mile round trip to their local watering hole where they'll fire it up and blast through the neighborhoods at 1 am or end up as road pizza.

The same obnoxiousness is exhibited by yahoos on crotch rockets weaving in and out of traffic with their well-engineered and loud pipes on their Ducati Monsters and clones at 120+ mph during rush hour passing people on the right, up the middle, and in the breakdown lane.

I've had Japanese bikes before buying a Harley (enduros, dirt, and trials.) The reliability is great. The HP and power to weight ratios are impressive.
But I still like my Harley for the street. If I wanted a different riding position I might consider a Buell Lightening, Firebolt or Ulysses. I've riden a few of these models and they move!

[Shuffler]

Agreed...I wasn't trying to single out Harleys, but there sure seems to be a disproportionate number of them making the most noise. There are plenty of sportbike 'squids', albeit the sound is that high-pitched whine/howl when an inline-4 gets up into the powerband at what, 10k - 13k rpm...

I'll also agree that proper throttle control can quell the noise a bit.

I read somewhere online where some guys built an electric R1 Yamaha...basically yanked the engine & filled the space with a bunch of LiPo batteries...imagine 0-60 in a couple seconds and the only sound is the whirring of the drivetrain and the electric motor...pretty cool...

[Submariner]

Originally Posted by Lincolnian

Torque, rythym, riding-position, feel and American-made to boot. That's why I ride a Harley. ...

I too prefer American made bikes: powerful, smooth, and quite

[L-88]

Originally Posted by forest beekeeper

But the marketing is GREAT!

So was the stock for ten years in the 90's....

[Boomerang]

I intensely dislike all of the ear-shatteringly loud exhausts, whether from motorcycles, cars, or trucks. It's auditory assault.

Where I'm living now, you can't even hold a conversation with someone if a loud vehicle is blasting down the road. You have to wait until they pass by....at least a quarter mile....before conversation can resume. Some are deafening just moving out from a dead stop at normal speed.

On the highway, I think a blasting motorcycle is more likely to cause an accident than prevent one. You can hear them all right, but it's so overpoweringly loud it's hard to tell exactly where the sound is coming from. And it's alarming at a gut level. A sudden blast of noise could cause someone to reflexively steer into the wrong lane. If loud = safety, we should all drive around blasting supercharged horns.

Also, excessive noise sounds like excessively aggressive.
It's kinda in-your-face to go around blasting everyone else's eardrums out. No wonder people who operate those things get everybody else's Irish up

[Lincolnian]

I took my bike for a ride from Bristol, Ct to Chick's Drive-in in West Haven yesterday. My friend drove his 750 Honda Shadow. We cruised 35 to 45 mph nearly the whole way. My bike just rolls of the line of the many lights and stop signs we hit on the RT 10 jaunt through interesting downtowns, neighborhoods, business areas and beaches. My friend found it a little more work because his bike needs about 3500 to 4000 rpms to get rolling of a stop. I only need a couple of hundred rpms over idle to get things moving and have great torque. The 2004 revamp of the 1200 Evolution has done wonders for performance. A lot of the revamp was done using Buell R&D as this engine is the powerhouse of 95% of their line. They're able to get 103 hp and 84 ft lbs of torque out of the same block as the Harley engine.

Comparing a Harley and a Honda is like apples and oranges. I like both but sometimes you just want an apple when the orange just doesn't hit the spot.

[Lincolnian]

BTW, the bazooka exhaust pipes on the pimped out Hondas, Kias, Jettas, Toyotas, etc. that race down the urban streets and nearby suburbs at all hours are pretty annoying too! As well as the reverb shock waves felt through the street and walls when all the hip-hop and cRap portable music studios drive through town. The police have little recourse these days in enforcing noise ordinances for this type of auditory assault as most won't pull over the violator unless they have a portable decibel meter and can prove that the sound was associated with that vehicle.

The days of "cut it out" or we're going to give you a ticket are gone in most places and people feel empowered to do whatever they want without fear of consequences.

[ClownShoes]

Well I can tell you this. My bike is a 1990 Harley Electra Glide Classic. I have straight pipes, and it is loud. The electra glide is a big bike, and EVERY DAY I ride, someone nearly hits me. Once I even had a family in a station wagon pass me on the shoulder and try to force me into oncoming traffic.

I'm the guy in the right lane doing the speed limit, with both tires on the ground.

I'm not wizzing up the highway doing over 100, or doing a wheelie down the street. Why own a Harley? Why not?

There are 2 classes or bikers. Those who ride just to enjoy the scenery and have a good time, and those morons who cause people to hate bikers.

I've been riding a bike for a little over 37 years, and nothing annoys me more than some dope on a rice rocket doing triple digits down the road a passing between cars in traffic.

Originally Posted by Shuffler

there is 'good throaty' like a Ducati/Aprilia/Honda/KTM V-Twin with well-engineered mufflers...

then there is 'bad throaty' like any Harley with straight pipes...simply obnoxious. I just don't 'get' the Harley thing...where is the fun in riding an overweight, poor-handling, loud, and overpriced machine? To each his own, I suppose.

I foresee a glut of bikes on the market as those who bought on credit have to start getting rid of 'toys' they could never afford in the first place. Keeping my eyes open for a Honda VFR...

[Lincolnian]

[quote=ClownShoes;4096657]Well I can tell you this. My bike is a 1990 Harley Electra Glide Classic. I have straight pipes, and it is loud. The electra glide is a big bike, and EVERY DAY I ride, someone nearly hits me. Once I even had a family in a station wagon pass me on the shoulder and try to force me into oncoming traffic.

I'm the guy in the right lane doing the speed limit, with both tires on the ground.

I'm not wizzing up the highway doing over 100, or doing a wheelie down the street. Why own a Harley? Why not?

There are 2 classes or bikers. Those who ride just to enjoy the scenery and have a good time, and those morons who cause people to hate bikers.

I've been riding a bike for a little over 37 years, and nothing annoys me more than some dope on a rice rocket doing triple digits down the road a passing between cars in traffic.



You're right ClownShoes. Not all straight pipe owners are bar jockeys and not all straight pipe owners blast them at full rpms through quiet neighborhoods at 1 am like many do in my city.

However, seeing as my hometown of Bristol, CT reportedly has the largest number of registered Harley owners of any zip code east of the Mississippi (approx 1200 out of 60,000 residents) we're bound to have a few yahoos.