Noisy motorbikes

tangled_metal

There's a charity ride through the Lakes each year for the Lancashire Harleys club (can't remember their name). It's always a racket but if you pay attention there is a wide variation in noise from each bike despite a lot being the same model (fat boy iirc). It seems to me that exhaust note is a personal choice like the any other part of the bike.

tangled_metal

OT there is a Nissan skyline gt car that drives past me on my cycle commute. I can hear the roar and pop from it's exhaust from quite some way away. It gives me time to prepare for his excessively close pass he always does. Stupid @rsehole!

The Rookie

bompington wrote:

I don't know what the legal noise limit is but I'm pretty sure a lot of bikes exceed it

There is no legal noise limit as such.

Regulation 54 of the snappily entitled "The Road Vehicles (Construction and Use) Regulations 1986" makes it an offence to ride a motorbike or drive a car with an exhaust that has been altered to make it noisier than when the vehicle was first 'manufactured' (definitions of manufacture apply), so anything with a modified exhaust is almost certainly illegal however quiet it is UNLESS it has been type approved and fitted under the 'stage2 manufacturer' regulations which in effect means a manufacturer approved part (such as Subaru 'Prodrive' kits or Ford 'Mountune' parts - Harley also produce some legal modified exhausts).

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1986/1078/made
Silencers
54.—(1) Every vehicle propelled by an internal combustion engine shall be fitted with an exhaust system including a silencer and the exhaust gases from the engine shall not escape into the atmosphere without first passing through the silencer.
(2) Every exhaust system and silencer shall be maintained in good and efficient working order and shall not be altered so as to increase the noise made by the escape of exhaust gases.

No it's never really enforced - Northern Constabulary in Scotland tried for a while but it was very difficult to produce 'beyond reasonable doubt' evidence in court in many cases. I helped a Subaru owner defend his case as the prosecution evidence was fundamentally wrong. I think they gave up about 10 years ago.


There is a lot of misinformed comment on exhaust noise, like this

Tangled Metal wrote:

Part of the issue used to.be the test itself. Unless it has changed it's all about the noise at certain revs. The real issue is that most motor bikers don't use those revs other than when setting off. A super sport bike will operate best at a lot higher revs than the test so could easily pass the road legal test with flying colours but be excessively noisy in real life use. This is possibly the same with cruisers like the Harleys but the company I used to work with only concentrated on super sports bike exhausts. Basically we made a nice bit of business out of gaming the test. Increases in power right up the power curve (33% increase or greater at some revs) while meeting the very narrow test requirements. Surprisingly easy to cheat.

Bike MOT centres often carry exhausts for the main super sports bikes in case the customer has forgotten to put his very nearly new original pipe back on. They rarely get caught out doing it so no major risk.

Race courses are now having stricter. Sound requirements for race cars. I have no doubt bike tracks are feeling the same constraints. As a result there's quite a few smaller race oriented exhaust companies producing road legal race pipes. .

Which is plain wrong.

asprilla

I hate them, purely because they scare the kids witless. Both of them cover their ears and run for cover when a loud bike goes past.

It's anti-social.

secretsam

Well, I certainly opened Pandora's box, kicked the hornet's nest, etc with this one!

I have no problem with bikers, my Dad used to ride a bike and my Mum loves them still.

It's the noise thing. And I note the comment about RLJer cyclists from one of our motorised cousins - but there's plenty of pretty rubbish road behaviour from every group of users, including bikers (wheelies away from lights, massive speed, using the bike boxes at junctions, riding like d1cks).

Now, onto the next topic: those 3-wheel scooter feckers

hopkinb

SecretSam wrote:

- but there's plenty of pretty rubbish road behaviour from every group of users, including bikers (wheelies away from lights, massive speed, using the bike boxes at junctions, riding like d1cks).

That reminds me - I was lucky enough to see a biker wheelie away from some lights about a month ago.....right onto his back, while the bike skittered down the road a little. He (I assume) got gingerly to his feet, and the bike didn't hit anyone or anything, so I didn't feel too bad for laughing as much as I did.

twist83

A good friend of mine who I do track days with has a few toys. Among these is Desmosedici RR which is a limited production road-legal version of the Desmosedici MotoGP bike.

He has the 'standard' cans and the Manufacturer made 'other' cans. With either on and this is no exasperation you can hear him coming from a mile away with only minimal revs. It is other worldly loud BUT came this way from the manufacturer so is perfectly 'legal'.

Most aftermarket cans are fairly sensible lower down the rev range and are only loud when in the 10000+ RPM range. But then bikes with stock cans at that range are also incredibly loud.

I don't see the the need for stupid loud cans especially in an urban environment like London. It seems counter intuitive having something so loud you cannot hear what is going on around you or feel through vibration.

I am however a sucker for a howling Motorbike or car.

Same with cars though. A Fiat 500 out of the factory has a noise limit as does say a Ferrari. The second even on stock cans is ear splitting loud.

tangled_metal

@therookie
It seems you're right. The drive by tests aren't rev related but speed related. With other criteria like height of microphone, angle to exhaust and other factors. Put that down to a bad day and over a decade since.I got roped into such a test.

One point though, the test used to be something about the noise being measured at 30mph accelerating to 50mph. That can easily be done at lower revs than most super sports bike riders would operate their bike at. I can keep my revs and noise lower in my car or drop a gear and accelerate quicker with a noise penalty. Which type of driving or riding do you think most tuned car and super sports bike use for their leisure?

As far as.my other other comments go you're welcome to come up this way and I'll get my former colleague to take you to the local bike test centres to get your bike passed with a race pipe on when it goes in. Since 2004 MOT doesn't require noise meter testing. Only a check that the exhaust has no mark saying race use only or similar and in the their opinion it's not too noisy. A bit vague and not really ensuring noise is being controlled IMHO.

As far as the last bit I'm sure you can Google race tracks and noise control requirements. My old company used to supply a lot of race exhaust manufacturers and repackaging suppliers in the past. The people still in the business say it's booming not least because there are a lot more tracks having to tighten their rules on exhausts. Indeed some manufacturers even produce race pipes that are able to be used on the road too. That's without a big loss of power over race only pipes.

Despite all the finer of the exhaust noise issue, what is the purpose of exhaust silencers? Is it to reduce excessive noise? With bikes do you feel the rules and regulations are working? Reading this thread there seems to me that a lot believe that bike exhaust noise is still a problem. Living and often driving/cycling around my local area which is nearby local biker routes and hangouts I can say I don't believe that the noise from the super sports bikes is under a reasonable control. Just as I think the riding styles are not conforming to acceptable standards. It's certainly not the majority who are riding dangerously but the proportion on these local biker routes is certainly higher than in day to day use. Although according to my.very unscientific judgement (as reliable as tyre MOT testers judgement) the noise of these leisure bikers is excessive. BTW I've biker colleagues who will defend biking against anything but agree with me about these leisure riders around here.

If you live near a problem area I certainly think you'll see it as a bigger problem.

secretsam

twist83 wrote:

A Fiat 500 out of the factory has a noise limit as does say a Ferrari. The second even on stock cans is ear splitting loud.

That's because the dB test for cars is based on their drive-by noise at a certain speed - so the engineers model the car to be quiet at that specific datum point, and then to make a racket at other points :evil:

FWIW, any car without a proper silencer makes an insane amount of noise - I remember my old Escort Mk3 exhaust snapped at the manifold once...amazing racket! :oops:

The Rookie

The test is second gear, Enter gate at 30mph and accelerate at ful throttle.

The issue is that it doesn't matter how quiet an exhaust is, if it makes more noise than the original it breaches reg54, the only way to make it legal is to homologate it (European whole vehicle type approval) as second tier manufacturer, it's a pain but not technically different, I've done a few cars. This is how Subaru make the Prodrive kits legal (they messed up at first as they didn't think they needed to do it as the noise was below the limit, had to pay a few customers fines while they sorted it) and how Mountune do the ford kits. That is why they are only legal if fitted by the relevant dealer who is counted as the manufacturer for the purposes of the law.

Like I said though, there is no enforcement.

Due to its performance the Ferrari can do the test in third gear only, a Fiat 500 has to do it in second and third and average the result, a lot of sports cars now have switchable exhausts which funnily enough only open above the max rpm seen on the noise test. Porsche came up with a novel 'cheat' but were caught out and told rather firmly not to do it again or action would be taken, they rigged the electronic throttle so it didn't open very quickly when doing the test, so even though the pedal was in the carpet the throttle itself barely opened.

bompington

Well, funny that on the day of this thread I wound up following a biker who was not just loud but actually looked like he was trying to kill either himself or someone else.
I was heading home from work, he turned out of a village side street ahead of me and immediately started doing the "I'm a racer warming up" wiggling thing; then backed off the car in front before each corner (there are lots) and accelerated violently through the corners up to the bumper of the car, hanging off the bike with knee out of course; then went jumping several times from a position behind his back bumper to one on the outside at the back, in a very jerky fashion, several times; finally overtook him at very high speed, very close to oncoming traffic, after which he pulled over to the other side and dropped behind him, then did it again; then roars off into the distance (happened that Mrs Bomp was on the phone with me at the time, she commented on how loud it was).
I never saw the car driver do anything to have provoked this behaviour.
But it turns out he wasn't finished: ½ mile later he was sitting at the side of the road, pulls out behind him and then alongside him at the lights, shouting abuse.
That's when I decided to call the police: the dangerous and aggressive riding was one thing, but the fact that he had no number plate really did seem like a good enough reason.
What kind of a moron exactly are we dealing with here? I very much doubt that the polis set off in hot pursuit on my say-so, so it's unlikely it will have any consequences for him. But it would be really nice if there were some...

awavey

The Rookie wrote:

There is a lot of misinformed comment on exhaust noise, like this

Tangled Metal wrote:

Part of the issue used to.be the test itself. Unless it has changed it's all about the noise at certain revs. The real issue is that most motor bikers don't use those revs other than when setting off. A super sport bike will operate best at a lot higher revs than the test so could easily pass the road legal test with flying colours but be excessively noisy in real life use. This is possibly the same with cruisers like the Harleys but the company I used to work with only concentrated on super sports bike exhausts. Basically we made a nice bit of business out of gaming the test. Increases in power right up the power curve (33% increase or greater at some revs) while meeting the very narrow test requirements. Surprisingly easy to cheat.

Bike MOT centres often carry exhausts for the main super sports bikes in case the customer has forgotten to put his very nearly new original pipe back on. They rarely get caught out doing it so no major risk.

Race courses are now having stricter. Sound requirements for race cars. I have no doubt bike tracks are feeling the same constraints. As a result there's quite a few smaller race oriented exhaust companies producing road legal race pipes. .

Which is plain wrong.

which bit ? because racing circuits do have very strict sound limits thesedays, Brands Hatch has only 12 days a year I think where really noisy stuff is aloud (ho ho) and they arent going to waste those days on a bunch born again bikers at a track day, so they will test bikes noise limits and not let anyone ride who doesnt pass the test, and during race weekends theres a permanent dB meter on the pit straight, plus scrutineering checks.

as Dr Ullrich,head of Audi motorsport, has always said, noise is unused energy.

I dont dislike noisy bikes, I dislike the antisocial people who ride them in urban environments.

The Rookie

It never mentions race circuits and is in fact referring to the drive by homologate on noise test, so my assessment is correct as TM has aknowledged.

tangled_metal

You quoted the whole post which mentioned race courses, race cars, etc. in the last part. I got the wrong word, it's race circuits for motorized racing or courses for horses. I think though you were referring to the earlier testing part and didn't edit my post (rather long so perhaps best to edit my posts when quoting).

I've looked on a few exhaust manufacturers who focus on race cars and bikes. Quite a few mention tighter rules on exhaust noise/sound levels. You can often buy two versions of exhausts for each bike or race car. One is a pipe for unrestricted sound level circuits and another for tighter rules or road use with race circuit use.

It's actually not that hard to achieve good attenuation of sound without significantly reducing performance.

Anyone know whether repacking your own exhausts on bikes is legal? If you get repackable exhausts you can replace the absorber yourself and tailor sound reduction to your own requirements.you could make it noisier or quieter, leave a baffle out or any other change from OEM spec.

secretsam

Thanks for all the posts about bikes and race track laws, very interesting but not really relevant - I'm not planning on riding on a race track any time soon

More of the anti-social bu99ers this morning. Do the damn things not give them headaches?

twist83

The Rookie wrote:

The test is second gear, Enter gate at 30mph and accelerate at ful throttle.

The issue is that it doesn't matter how quiet an exhaust is, if it makes more noise than the original it breaches reg54, the only way to make it legal is to homologate it (European whole vehicle type approval) as second tier manufacturer, it's a pain but not technically different, I've done a few cars. This is how Subaru make the Prodrive kits legal (they messed up at first as they didn't think they needed to do it as the noise was below the limit, had to pay a few customers fines while they sorted it) and how Mountune do the ford kits. That is why they are only legal if fitted by the relevant dealer who is counted as the manufacturer for the purposes of the law.

Like I said though, there is no enforcement.

Due to its performance the Ferrari can do the test in third gear only, a Fiat 500 has to do it in second and third and average the result, a lot of sports cars now have switchable exhausts which funnily enough only open above the max rpm seen on the noise test. Porsche came up with a novel 'cheat' but were caught out and told rather firmly not to do it again or action would be taken, they rigged the electronic throttle so it didn't open very quickly when doing the test, so even though the pedal was in the carpet the throttle itself barely opened.

Interesting stuff. I have zero knowledge on it. Some cars (Maybe Ferrari was a bad example) I don't see how at any point they pass. The Likes of Pagani? Any revs, any gear they sound stupid loud?

99% of track days I have done bar ones abroad have noise tested before they let you out. Sometimes they did noisy days as well.

tangled_metal

OK, sorry about that.

Can you define what we are allowed to post on a forum thread you've started about noisy motorbikes? Give us a list of rules just so we know what you see as relevant.

I bet I'd be very grumpy if I got woken up by loud motorbikes every morning. I have lived close enough to main roads before, needed to keep my windows shut. After a few months I got used to it and the noise became background noise I just filtered out. The issue with motorbikes and tuned cars are often different in that their noise isn't as uniform you can get pops and excessive revving for example which you can't really get used to.

There's an exhaust company run at a garage near me that's supposed to be pretty good with custom exhausts. You can get an exhaust replacement in quality stainless steel with a lifetime warranty cheaper than kwikfit aftermarket rubbish. They'll even tailor the exhaust note for you. I believe they'll offer a quiet pipe and a noisier pipe for that sportier image. Not sure that's even conforming to regulations but they do well out of their business.

secretsam

Tangled Metal wrote:

OK, sorry about that.

Can you define what we are allowed to post on a forum thread you've started about noisy motorbikes? Give us a list of rules just so we know what you see as relevant.

Apology accepted. Please keep the noise down. :twisted:

The Rookie

Tangled Metal wrote:

Anyone know whether repacking your own exhausts on bikes is legal? If you get repackable exhausts you can replace the absorber yourself and tailor sound reduction to your own requirements.you could make it noisier or quieter, leave a baffle out or any other change from OEM spec.

It's legal bearing in the C&U reg54 I quoted earlier in the thread, the requirements are
1/ You must have a silencer
2/ It mustn't be adjusted (changed) so as to emit more noise than when first manufactured (bearing in mind 'manufactured', bearing in mind 'manufactured' can mean different things under different circumstances but not relevant to the discussion.

Low volume vehicles (such as Pagani or TVR before they went bust) are often not registered under European Whole Vehicle type approval and the regs are more lenient, for example the rally cars about to charge around Wales are NOT modified cars, they are bespoke built and then registered in the relevant country under the relevant regulations, so for the UK built cars its the same regulations as a home built kit car.

A mate had an early Fireblade, he fitted a (not really very loud) 'race' exhaust, we drilled the pop rivets out of the manufacturer label on the stock exhaust and riveted it over the 'not for road use' marking on his new can!

tangled_metal

SecretSam wrote:

Tangled Metal wrote:

OK, sorry about that.

Can you define what we are allowed to post on a forum thread you've started about noisy motorbikes? Give us a list of rules just so we know what you see as relevant.

Apology accepted. Please keep the noise down. :twisted:

tgotb

The Rookie wrote:

A mate had an early Fireblade, he fitted a (not really very loud) 'race' exhaust, we drilled the pop rivets out of the manufacturer label on the stock exhaust and riveted it over the 'not for road use' marking on his new can!

What was his reason for fitting the 'race' exhaust?

essex-commuter

TGOTB wrote:

The Rookie wrote:

A mate had an early Fireblade, he fitted a (not really very loud) 'race' exhaust, we drilled the pop rivets out of the manufacturer label on the stock exhaust and riveted it over the 'not for road use' marking on his new can!

What was his reason for fitting the 'race' exhaust?

If it's not for noise it can only be an increase in BHP, looks, or better fuel consumption. I doubt if it's the latter.

tangled_metal

essex-commuter wrote:

TGOTB wrote:

The Rookie wrote:

A mate had an early Fireblade, he fitted a (not really very loud) 'race' exhaust, we drilled the pop rivets out of the manufacturer label on the stock exhaust and riveted it over the 'not for road use' marking on his new can!

What was his reason for fitting the 'race' exhaust?

If it's not for noise it can only be an increase in BHP, looks, or better fuel consumption. I doubt if it's the latter.

But does it meet regulations? If not would that get picked up during mot? My bet is it wouldn't. Another one slips through the system.

bompington

TGOTB wrote:

The Rookie wrote:

A mate had an early Fireblade, he fitted a (not really very loud) 'race' exhaust, we drilled the pop rivets out of the manufacturer label on the stock exhaust and riveted it over the 'not for road use' marking on his new can!

What was his reason for fitting the 'race' exhaust?

Silly question. I think we all know the answer is to try and convince the world that he has a big willy.

rick_chasey

That's what Lycra shorts were made for.

bompington

Rick Chasey wrote:

That's what Lycra shorts were made for.

...if you think actual size is what I'm talking about then you're missing the point

rick_chasey

If you think I didn't get that I think you're missing the point

bompington

If you think that I think that you... oh, forget it

fat daddy

Tangled Metal wrote:

would that get picked up during mot? My bet is it wouldn't. Another one slips through the system.

yes it would get picked up at an MOT .... MOT testers do look for illegal exhausts and they do fail MOTs on them.

but seeing that it requires 1 x socket set and sometimes a screw driver to loosen a jubilee clip, it takes about 2 minutes to swap an exhaust over on a bike.

None of these exhausts make it to the MOT centre ..... its the same as removing and replacing the CAT at MOT time on cars .. that's harder work, you have 4 bolts and need to jack one side of the car up 1st, so best giving yourself an hour for that.

jamesco

Tangled Metal wrote:

Put simply, unless you have an enforced requirement for a maximum exhaust noise level irrespective of the revs the bike (and car) is being run at you'll never stop this problem. I'm highly against bikes because of this noise issue and other problems i see with.them. As a result i feel first case of excessive noise you get fined and points, second you get your bike crushed. I feel that strongly about it.

+1000. And not just points the first time: the keys should be taken off the rider so that he can think it over on the side of the road while waiting for a van to take the bike directly to a workshop to be 'fixed'.

At least half the twats with loud exhausts also have illegal plates, either angled up, written in a tiny fontsize or nothing at all. That'd be one easy way for the cops to write them up.

(Rider of a VFR800 with a stock exhaust)