Loud exhausts, what do you think?

[Bass]

Firstly, I seem to remember a thread on here where someone produced some dyno figures of back to back tests of various aftermarket exhaust systems. Most gave less grunt than the stock cans - one or two gave very slightly more than the stock ones.
So it has to be mostly a "sound" thing therefore and nothing much to do with power.

Secondly, while I do enjoy a bit of character in an exhaust note, my house is on a significant thoroughfare and not far from an intersection with lights. There have been occasions when I had to work all night and so was trying to catch up on some sleep during the day. On those days, I would cheerfully have slowly and painfully executed one or two bikers with ridiculously loud exhaust systems who insisted on gunning it away from the lights - all of them V twins and most of them Harleys.

[vifferman]

There is loud and too loud. Too loud for me equates to being a tosser. I always feel like asking the rider how big is your penis?

LOL.
Have you seen that ad video, with a guy on a loud Harley, trying to talk to a pretty girl crossing the road in front of him? She can't work out what he's trying to say over the din, and when he eventually turns the motor off, he says, "Yes - as a mater of fact, my penis IS really small!"

I know from experience what is too loud: if you're riding down the street, and car alarms go off in cars you pass, it's too loud. If you're riding down the street, and people turn around to see what's coming, it's too loud. If you can ride past the HP headquarters, and end up with a cop car/bike on your tail, and get pulled over, it's too loud. If you don't get pulled over, but you're relieved that you didn't, then it's marginal.

I live a few km away from the harbour bridge in a straight line - I can see the top of it from the kitchen window. Virtually the only vehicles I can hear when lying in bed at night or early in the morning are the odd BoiRacR car that's yet to be pulled over and stickered, and Harleys with drag pipes.

[Coldrider]

Ram air Kwackas make beautiful induction music from the air boxes, but I have to admit the Akrapovic Blued titanium finish on some of their exhausts looks fantastic, looks better than noise.

[wildpudding]

The exhaust on my bike is pretty loud, used to think louder is better but now its to the point where I wear ear plugs pretty much every time to cut down the noise.

Stefan

[The Lone Rider]

I wonder what sort of responses you'd get if you asked this on a forum board that has a dominant ratio of cruiser bikers compared to sporters and other bike types.

[pritch]

my personal preference has been to leave the pipes standard and spend the money on suspension mods. stuff that makes others think you might be faster vs stuff that actually allows you to be faster.my 2c

I tend to agree with that sentiment but just after I bought my Ohlins a set of Arrow cans sort of fell out of the sky. Provenance was impeccable and the price was irresistible so....

At normal cruising speed I can't hear the exhaust so it isn't too loud.
I'll be checking them out to see if I can spot the magic circlip though.
Purely in the interests of science you understand.

[Pancakes]

I made a straight thu 2" can for mine and the results were what I expected, way less bottom end (which on a 250 V-Twin pretty much ruins the bike) and lets it just rev free and make more power over the standard red-line (which gets pretty pricey unless the internals have been sorted or it's on of those rare engines that are bullet-proof, did you know Toyota engines with a "G" in the code have heads designed by Yamaha? just out of interest)

I personally like hearing the pulse of the cylinders but hate a drone whan I'm riding/driving. Stock cans win in something you have to live with. Keeps you "in" with the neighbours and doesn't sound as fast, would attract less attention from the fuzz. With the straight pipe on tho' was the safest splitting I've ever done! Cars parting like the red sea and if someones in your way, clutch in and a rev and they move (sounds great esp under bridges etc!).

Goes to show a loud pipe hinders performance. Like all those boy racers

This is a bit different, bike pipes will have the pipe volumes calculated, the pipes merging at different places depending on the engine layout etc so the hot gasses cool and leave a vaccum to help draw out the next cylinders exhaust gasses (hence the name "extractors").
Most of the boy racer cars are turbo'ed so the greater the pressure drop across the turbine (exhaust) side of the turbo the more boost is supplied to the intake and it will also come on fasetr (be less "laggy"). You will quite often see Log manifolds on a turbo car which on a N/A vehicle would create awful results with one pulse blocking the next. Turbos don't spin at the average gas speed as the pressurised gas speeds the wheel up more than the lack of gas slows it down. I hate to make up numbers but it would be closer to 70% of the average gas speed, this means having all the gasses in uneven lenght pipes coming into the turbo at one time makes the whole setup work better. What I hate is "performance" cars with massive chrome wheels! One of the heaviest metals out for more than some nice light OZ Racing magnesium rims, do they know about unsprung weight!

[Hitcher]

Loud is good, but not excessively so. A performance engine deserves to be appreciated. And there can be some significant weight savings to be had by ditching standard mufflers.

[NighthawkNZ:Me]

I saw on trademe some NZ made performance cans that you could quickly and easily switch between loud and stealth... just by the use of an allan key... they were going for about 1500 and he had them to fit many brands and models...

Personally I like the deep rummbling sound of a well tuned VTwin.... but only for a short time, on a long trip that would get to me and prefer the quieter hence why I was seriously considering the above...

[rainman]

Well, I suppose since I'm having baffles fitted to my drilled-out pipes later tonight, that kinda answers the question for me.

I don't really mind the loud too much around town, does cause cars to pay a bit more attention, I think, but on a long trip it's just too noisy, and I would like to be able to get a WOF easily. And I have set off car alarms... although in a parking garage so maybe that doesn't count.

[Boob Johnson]

I think I've changed the cans on every bike I've owned, one, for the weight savings, and two, for the safety factor - people tend to hear you when you're filtering and any additional visibility to your average twat in a car can only be good.

Hear hear agreed (no pun intended )

Ive just ordered my new can for two reasons, nicer back note & cagers can hear me coming if they don't see me. Might have saved my accident 2 months ago

[xwhatsit]

Singles deserve to be unleashed. There's a Kawasaki MX bike around the neighbourhood somewhere -- unregistered, obviously for off-road use only, but he cracks around the roads (the one time I saw him he had a pillion) a fair bit, it's a quiet and dozy part of Auckland. I recognised the noise, though...

Singles don't have that overwhelming dizzying `boooooom' that a lot of performance engines with loud cans have. Boy-racer cars are the worst for this, but V-twins and fours can do it too. That said, despite the bassy boom of the V-twin, a Ducati has a special timbre that more than makes up for it.

Harleys have a nice flavour too, the sound of that strange ignition set-up they have that causes the potato is very tasty. Not too loud, though -- otherwise it's overwhelming, like when you turn up your stereo too high and can't hear the music properly any more. Fours are not at all nice with super-loud pipes on them. The main appeal of a four-cylinder engine note is that F1-style whine, and having it massively loud doesn't really improve it much. I think the higher frequency the noise, the harder it is to listen to loud; like when you listen to a shitty pair of headphones and the female singer just sounds really sibilant and painful to listen to. That's why singles and twins can get away with being louder than fours.

I wouldn't mind hearing what my bike sounds like with a louder pipe on it; I heard an XR250 with the same engine with a loud pipe on it, it sounded very tasty surprisingly enough. As standard all you can hear is the rattly camshaft, unless you grab a fistful on the motorway beside a concrete barrier.

I do serious mileage on my bike, so an over-loud pipe (on any bike) for me would be a bad idea.

[jimbo600]

Well my GSXR is loud as fuck. Most folk say it sounds good. Not heard a bad word against it. However, I ride in a very tall gear round home and in built up areas and it's pretty sedate when ridden like that. I have also noticed that when on open roads birds etc move away well before my arrival, as do livestock by the side of the road so it does have safety implications.

I got booted from a trackday, but all was OK after I fitted the baffle.

Flames come out on the overrun too so its stayin' on.

I'd say its not about how loud a can is, its about the tone. Some HDs are crazy loud but in my view sound gnarly.

[Pancakes]

Harleys have a nice flavour too, the sound of that strange ignition set-up they have that causes the potato is very tasty.

I think they have a single lobe crank where the con rods are on the same lobe (more like the crank on a single) where most (all the rest if Harley has patented the sound?) are like out of time inline twins with two conrod lobes on the crank?

I guess we'll find out in a minute, someone will say.

[babyblade250rr]

i just put a carbon muffler on my bike and it sounds beeeuuutiful, loud, but not overly loud to the point i need earplugs i luv it