Denver passes noise ordinance affecting bikers

[meosborn]

The fact that modifying any part of a street vehicles engine or exhaust system has been illegal since the mid seventies...

How so? I've heard a couple of people say this over the years but never any factual basis to it. Maybe I just missed what you were trying to say.

 

[OrangevaleFJR]

Do you think the AMA will go to bat & try & fight this?...Or could this be the start of a growing trend?....

AMA response

This ordinance is just plain one-sided. They aren't targeting noise. They're targeting a class of vehicles. Either enforce the noise ordinances for all vehicles, including engine-braking 18-wheelers, sub-woofer thumping teens, and rusted-muffler rattletraps or don't enforce it at all.

Craig

Good point. I think they should equip cop cars with vu meters and microphones.

 

[charismaticmegafauna]

The fact that modifying any part of a street vehicles engine or exhaust system has been illegal since the mid seventies...

How so? I've heard a couple of people say this over the years but never any factual basis to it. Maybe I just missed what you were trying to say.

It's Federal Law and is stamped on the FJRs' (and others') mufflers and is written in the owner's manual (can't modify the intake either -- under penalty of law). Blue Law, I guess? if not enforced. There must be some teeth in it because dealers are reluctant to modify new un-sold bikes but will willingly install any amount of "for off-road use only" parts on customer's bikes -- after purchase. There must be a mountain of brand new Harley 'Warthog' stock mufflers behind every H-D dealer? :huh:

Making loud/noisy motorcycles is big business in America -- you wouldn't want to be curtailing that industry now, would you? :huh:

'RatoneMuerto' wrote:<snip>....and it still was not as loud as my 76 GT500 Suzuki which is bone stock.

The Suzuki GT500 'Titan" had great big fat/long stock mufflers w/lots of baffles and, with the removeable baffles in-place, where designed to sound as much like a Harley as any two-stoke twin can -- Suzuki realized in the late sixties that the secret to success in America lay in emulating the H-D noise (so much so, that they even toyed with the idea of recordings of fake sound for the Titan). As a side note: I attended a road-race in the sixties at what is now V.I.R. and most of the bikes were sort'a loud (noise = power/speed?). Besides straight piped and megaphoned 4-strokes, there where even two-strokes (Moto-Rumi 125 twins) that had, painful, open horns (1st part of an expansion chamber) -- then, valid power devices. Long-story-short, one of the fastest bikes on the track (almost regardless of engine size) was the bone-stock, and then new, Suzuki X-6 'Hustler' -- and it was by far the quietest..... :blink:

 

[OrangevaleFJR]

Long-story-short, one of the fastest bikes on the track (almost regardless of engine size) was the bone-stock, and then new, Suzuki X-6 'Hustler' -- and it was by far the quietest..... :blink:

Maybe they conserved the power needed to make that noise for the drivetrain