I know this has been mentioned a few times by various members on the ‘What annoys you’ thread but living close to a road as I do, sometimes it sounds like I am at a Donington Park track event; there are lots of cars which sound like the exhaust is being dragged along a cobbled street and motorcycles that make my suspended floor shake. It’s even worse in the summer with a window open.
My neighbour (a nice enough bloke) always takes four or five goes at parking because he is in love with the sound of his engine when he revs it.
Whatever happened to the rules about noisy vehicles or have they been shelved along with all the other obvious stuff?
Before anyone says it, I know I’m getting old and turning into a grumpy old git but I can remember the number of times my old jalopies failed their MOTs because the exhaust was too noisy.
The MOT rules say that the exhaust noise from the vehicle must not be unreasonably above the noise level normally expected from a similar vehicle with a standard silencer in average condition. There’s no actual limit in terms of decibel levels, it’s up to the MOT tester to decide what is unreasonable.
I think that the attitude of that arsehole Clarkson and others like him who revel in the throaty noises pumped out of the exhaust pipes of sporty cars have created the problem. It’s the same mentality of those young morons skittling up and down roads on their weedy and under-powered 2-stroke mopeds/scooters who think it’s fun to rev the arse off their machines in a low gear just to hear the noise it makes and in some instances, drill small holes in the exhaust to make them sound more powerful than they actually are.
I couldn’t imagine anything worse than tootling down a motorway with a mid-engined sports jobby growling away at the back of the drivers seat. Would give me a real doozy of a headache.
I much prefer gliding along in a near silent car where you can at least hear the radio.
Never mind LD old fruit, soon all cars will be electric and sneaking up on people from behind in country lanes.
Sometimes, if the wind is in the right direction, of a quiet summer evening, I can here the drifters up the Gorge.
If it gets to much go to your local council and ask for the noise abatement people. They should come out and monitor the noise and report back even fine the offenders. No one will know who lodged the complaint as they are not allowed to reveal that information
Yes.
I used to have a Jag XJS V12.
We were on our way back to the office after a pub lunch and my admin assistant was with me. We stopped at a Give Way sign.
“You’ve stalled it” she scolded me.
Yes, it really was that quiet. Quieter than my boss’s Roller.
Thanks. I hate to be a killjoy, I mean I was young once and I don’t have a problem with speed or noisy cars but I just think there is a time and place for it. Sometimes they race around at 2am and surely must wake all the babies up.
Quietest car I ever had was a Subaru Forester which had a 2litre flat four Boxer engine and, like your Jag, on tickover you literally didn’t know the engine was running unless you looked at the rev counter.
Yes I think you have a point there Judd. There is one guy however who loves to rev his bike to the max past Sainsbury’s and along residential streets and he is probably in his forties. Tried getting his number but he is too fast.
In answer to the OP, I believe there are two types of motorist who drive their cars with over-loud exhausts.
One is the perfectly innocent person whose exhaust has blown and perhaps they can’t yet afford to have it replaced or repaired.
The other is the asinine boy racer type who feels that a loud exhaust makes him a person to be admired or even feared by others.
The opposite, of course, is how most people feel about him!
As an aside, I hear many motorcyclists who also rejoice in ‘making their presence felt’, and assume it is for the same reason - an attempt to impress others!
In fact, a good friend of ours (Marge’s ex-boss) has a motorbike so I asked him the question. He assured me that an ineffective silencer was less likely to restrict the power of the engine. I’m not sure I believe that! After all, most cars have bigger engines than motorbikes yet (with a properly working silencer) they are much quieter than motorbikes.
I’m sure someone here will explain the matter to me!
Bikes quite often have a restrictive exhaust JB. It’s like that on both of mine, the CAT can be especially restrictive.
Many bikers replace the exhaust with a full decat system, as without doubt you get an increase in power. However, it does mean they are louder. Most have a db killer which reduces the noise a bit, but many people take it out.
Tbh, I have considered putting a decat system on my 750. If you choose wisely, they are not all bad, some are louder than others and I’d probably leave the db killer installed.
I know what you mean mate. I’m out in the sticks so even a loud(ish) exhaust would probably not trouble most people.
You do get the idiots though who just want it as loud as poss.
If I replace mine, it will be one where it simply makes the bike sound a tad more throaty and pleasant. The stock systems can sound a bit feeble sometimes.
An ineffective exhaust WILL restrict power. For max power it needs to flow as freely as possible.
Re the difference between cars and bikes - a car has considerably more space underneath, so easy to fit an exhaust with larger more effective silencers to make them quiet. You don’t have that luxury on a bike.
A bike exhaust in comparison is tiny - so much harder to make it very quiet.
My 750 for example is actually very quiet for a bike, but still notably louder than my car.
I can see both sides of the argument, and can believe that silencers could potentially restrict exhaust gases. I assume that this could also apply to cars, though, yet the removal of a silencer from a car exhaust would cause the vehicle to fail its MoT, wouldn’t it?
So is it legal for bikers to remove their silencers?
I think it’s a question of degree. If a biker can obtain increased power by changing the silencer for an optional type, I can understand that that would be a reasonable thing to do, provided it was done within legal limits (and I admit that I don’t know what those limits are!).
The ones I detest are those who do this only as a way of (in their own minds) ‘impressing’ bystanders. They don’t impress me when they roar down the road, and I can’t imagine that they’d gain a great deal of extra power by doing it - a minimal amount at most.
Silencers, whether for cars, bikes or any other vehicle, are there for a reason!
