Loud bikes

[FTD]

Not to the TT members but to the... tree huggin', squirrel pettin', hemp wearin', Heifeweisen drinkin', dred lock wearing, Nader votin', VW drivin', river floatin', bongo playin', Grateful Dead listenen', Birkenstock wearin', Patchuli oil wearin' wastes. <Shrug>

There isn't an emmision test station here in Southern Idaho. Do you know how many "Save the Planet" stickers I see on '75 VW vans that smoke terribly, leak radiator fluid and oil while the driver is likely under the influence of pot driving down the road. If you (greeneys) are so concerned with everything... be concerned with yourselves to start with. Stop giving me second hand smoke in the pub. Get a ring job on your "Stop the Shipments" VW. Fix the leaky bastard while you are at it. Tell your "family" to quite crappin' where ever they want to and pick up their garbage at this years "Rainbow" gathering. Squatters, theives, fornicators and drug addicts are all they are.

I don't like your bongo drums, guitars and off tune chorus of "coum by ya" (?) in the camp spot next to me at 12:30 in the morning. Do I like the way you smell next to me in the grocery line... NO... can I get Nader the head to make them shower before going into public spaces, NO!

TT's:

I have a T-shirt that says boldly in 4" lettering on the back, "TREE HUGGERS SUCK." I can get some if you want but be ready to stand up to these people... makes a night out interestiing. If they come up to me, I introduce myself as John Marvel. (Sun Valley's highest greenie)

Needless to say I REALLY get pissed about this issue of "taking" our land. I need a slap on the wrist for my pipe, I know.

If you don't contribute to the Blue Ribbon Coalition and go to the local meetings in your area concerning this and all land issues and be active as you can, your quiet pipe doesn't matter. A 98db bike will piss a greenie off in the mountains, you and all your friends showing up at the next meeting and signing petitions against this crap will make them realize we care about the lands... not your quiet pipe. They don't give a rats ass about your pipe... they care about OUR PIPES... the whole lot.

Be active.

Hoss

[SMD]

Dog I am with ya! FTD please don't make me give up my Hefe's.....there so good with lots of lemmon. ?

[live_to_ride]

Rock on FTD!!!!!!!!!! My sentiments exactly. Well, almost... I am more against the yuppy tree huggers. I am against the ones that feel that they should be able to walk around an arenacross track and plant trees in perfect quiet without any of our fossil fuel wasting leaping around chaotically and making all kind of noise. The ones that feel like EVERY FRIGGIN piece of land on the entire earth including your own back yard is theirs for enjoyment and nobody else's and get your damn atvs off my planet because you're disturbing my karma and the trees and the deer in Switzerland.

I friggin hate cowpie-eatin' bark chewin' egotistic environmentalist yuppy @!#$%%#!!!!!!!! And @#$%$%#%^$%&!!!!!!!!!!

?

[adamwagar]

HA!!! I knew I'd get a response. Seriously, FTD and Endurodog are right. The Greens just want all the land closed to motorized vehicles. Loud pipes don't help our cause, but even if we could make our bikes silent, at this point it would have little impact.

What the heck happened to our country??? ?

[live_to_ride]

Does anyone here want to help out some fellow riders and shove a stick up some enviro's rear end at the same time? Send this guy an e-mail: stevecc@infowest.com

The enviros are trying to close his favorite riding area. He has written several letters and gathered information for you all to use to print off letters. You then sign the letter and send it off to the BLM planning commity to voice OUR OPINIONS. The enviros (suwa bastards) are rallying and trying to get all of thier people to send letters too. WE NEED TO BEAT THEM!!!!!!!!!!! Give Steve a shout and help out our cause! He will be extremely grateful for your help and so will I. Thanks a bunch! I am going to make more threads in other forums to try to help this cause out. ?

Chris

[swagger]

hmmm. We, as a group, are so damn divided on this one that it may very well be a big part of our downfall.

This whole us vs everybody thing is crap. There are millions of acres of forest, desert, mountains, whatever in this country... And NONE of us managed to digest the simple lesson about sharing that we shoulda learned in kindergarden. Dirtbikers, Quad riders, hikers, equestrians, mtn bikers, tree huggers... We are all bunches of self important jerks who think what we want to do is more important than everyone else, and we are ALL wrong.

Go ahead and ride your loud as hell bike... "we shouldn't have to make our bikes reasonably quiet!" way to take a stand. Make sure you get pics of you riding that beast in the woods, so you can show them to your kids and tell them about the good old days when bikes were allowed in the woods.

I agree that we oughta have some enforcement on the laws that are currently on the books before we go making them stricter, but that will never work with all those "my bike needs to be 118 db because otherwise it doesn't have enough power" types out there.

For the record, I hate hippies as much as anyone. To blame all this on them though? C'mon, those guys are more worried about where they are gonna score some more dope, and how they are gonna impress some hairy armpit dreadlock having chick with their views on the world so they can score some of that free lovin...

[SPUTTER]

Blaming hippies?!?!?! Well, that's cool if it gives you an easy target...like WMD's. ?

but the real force behind land issues are the everyday citizens who read a politician's stance on saving our world for posterity and agree with it (logical or not) - at the local, state and federal levels.

And except around Santa Cruz, CA, I haven't seen a real honest-to-goodness hippie in many, many years. Maybe there's something about Idaho that draws them from our sunshine state..heh, heh.

[SMD]

I agree Sputter....its not the radical/extremist 2 percenters that are the issue. Its the arm chair enviromentalist that bindly support and send their dollars with out the facts.They are misled by Hollywierd celebrities and our friends over at the sierra klub. Play on a persons emotion add a little spin and they open up the purse strings. Sad.

[FTD]

It is the greenies I explained that are at the meetings, protesting, and voicing their opinions towards the panels who decide to procede towards these issues. I see it too many times.

Why did I get the finger from some greeney on a snowmobile trail because I was coming up behind her. I have been in trail side disputes with horseWOMEN and then battled back and forth in the editorial section of our paper only to embarress her thouroughly. We are MORE than cordial to hikers, bikers and horseman. We here in Idaho, at least the people I ride with, feel insuperior to the rest. We are the ones who get snuffed and grimmesed at from the "others."

The times of soletude of having the trail to ourselves, or theirselves are over. There are too many people trying to experiece the outdoors. Wave and be happy you can live in this country! Do they think I was extactic about running head on into a kid on a cr125 last year on the trail? Unless the plauge comes back and weeds us out.. there will be more traffic therefore increasing our chance of run in with the opposite desires.

If I could only be on a MX175 riding to Frog Lake in the Sawtooth mountains in 1979... UTOPIA. No such thing will happen these days.

Again, it is not my 100db whatever pipe but our pipes they are against. Don't fool yourself and think that competetive riders will go to a quieter less performing pipe nor will the greenies stop fighting us regardless. Hoss

[endurodog]

Well said Hoss!!!

You also make a point that I see. To be active doesn't always mean joining the orgs that are out there, (thats good too and needed). Your editoral letters to your local papers are showing people we won't stand for the false and misleading propaganda being spouted by the other side!!!

[Merfman]

Man, I tried, I really, *really* tried to stay out of this, but here

I go again... (Sorry Ego)

A little history lesson:

Way back in 92-93 -ish, there was a big push by assorted groups

to quieten "those damn loud bikes" Anybody remember "Project

Stealth"? But I digress... anyway, point is, after about 3-5

years, bikes became quieter. When that problem was "managed"

the next thing to pop up was "erosion" Many, many groups got together,

and did trail maintenance (still do!) and mitigated any trail that

was being "destroyed" by erosion caused by "damn dirtbikers".

Next came WSA's and the "need" for more Wilderness Areas. That

cause was helped along by the administration of the time and,

wow, I don't remember hearing as many complaints about noise

and/or erosion. In 1998, the YZ400 came along and became a popular

woods mount. There were rumblings of "too loud" and were largely

ignored for a while. Then, about 3 years ago, we got an administration

that overturned the green-friendly WSA and started opening up

areas for riding, and voila'!, we're noisy again! And it's a

BIIIIIG problem! Puhleeeze.

As has been said here over and over and over: Until we organize

to the extent of those who oppose us, we will ALWAYS fight SOMETHING

to keep our riding areas open. There will ALWAYS be windmills

for somebody to tilt at.

I'm still waiting for someone, anyone, to show me a riding area

that has re-opened due to quieter bikes. I haven't seen ONE yet.

A couple of last points:

Do I run a "gutted out" muffler? No, it's as quiet as I can

get it without spending *another* $400. Deal with it.

Do I need to learn to share? No. The greens don't share. They

want us OUT. I don't have a problem sharing, they do, and I

have a real problem with that. They don't wanna share? Then

deal with my "loud" bike or they can trek their asses into the

Wilderness areas where they don't have to share.

Organize, write letters, be active in LOCAL clubs who do the

work to restore trails, interact with the Forest Service. Join

COHVCO and BRC, but DO SOMETHING OTHER THAN BITCH ABOUT THE PROBLEM!

I'll be putting on my asbestos coveralls now...

Merf

[John_Lorenz]

I think it is all a grand conspriracy developed by one group of people

the Tri-lateral Commission

"The Trilateralist Commission is international...(and)...is intended to be the vehicle for multinational consolidation of the commercial and banking interests by seizing control of the political government of the United States. The Trilateralist Commission represents a skillful, coordinated effort to seize control and consolidate the four centers of power - POLITICAL, MONETARY, INTELLECTUAL, and

ECCLESIASTICAL."

-- Barry Goldwater,

U.S. Senator of Arizona, in his book "With No Apologies"

?

Call me paranoid but

besides Micky Mouse is real and an alien

[SPUTTER]

Except for EGO (hah!), I'd bet we're all right-on in our observations. Like the proverbial blind men and the elephant, we each have a different take depending on our experiences, location and personal needs. I fear that the elephant is overpopulation and there's nothing we can do about it in the long run.

Tri-lateral commission? I don't think any human is that capable. ?

[tctrailrider]

Some good posts here, many are missing the point. Unless we ask the right questions and find out who the enemy really is we are doomed. Bikers are lets say 2% of the polulation, tree huggers, extreme enviro's etc. are lets say 2%. Neither side carries enough weight to change anything without bringing a large portion of the remaining 96% on board. Each side can easily garner support of 20%. This leaves about 65% of the population that could go either way. Loud bikes are the quickest and easiest way to turn this 65% against us, if they don't hear us they won't know we are there. Very simple stuff.

[endurodog]

Loud bikes are the quickest and easiest way to turn this 65% against us, if they don't hear us they won't know we are there. Very simple stuff.

Yep and if I had more money I wouldn't have any bills, pretty simple. But I don't and for that matter they will hear us until electric bikes take over the gas powered ones. Your 96 DB bike is as noticable to those against us as the old 103 DB bike. We do need to be curtous on the trail, slow down when passing other users, be as quite as possible (with in reason), educate our friends on multi-use forest, so that we can try to win the majority over. But lets not be fooled into thinking that we can win these over by lowering the DB limit by 7 DB.

[oldbones]

7 db is huge. A 103 db bike is more than two times as loud as a 96 db bike! We aren't talking about a 5-8% reduction in noise here, it's a big deal.

Any bike with a decent pipe on it that is tuned for power production and reasonable noise reduction, is immensely less obnoxious than an empty coffee can on the end of a pipe. (IE stock pipe with guts removed) Can 99% of the riders out there go ANY faster with a full race pipe than they can with an all around pipe? NO, they can't, in fact they will be slower. Check the dyno results. True for cars, dirtbikes, harleys, crotch rockets, you name it. A full race pipe on any motor will make the highest HP number, but at a higher RPM and over a smaller range than a good all around pipe. 99% of us, myself included, aren't good enough to ride the bike that perfectly to use peak power at that specific RPM all the time. We need pipes that make better bottom and mid, while still doing pretty good on top. Guys that ride in the woods, and that is who this thread is for, definitely do not need a pipe than makes it's best power at the upper reaches of the rev range. If you are running that full race pipe, then you aren't only making more noise than you need to be, you are probabaly going slower than you could with a good all around pipe.

I have done a lot of dyno testing with streetbikes. Straight pipes on a harley, or super low restriction pipes on a japanese bike (race pipes) have a very peaky power delivery. Almost without exception, they make poor bottom and mid range power compared to a pipe with the proper baffling. Gutted pipes may flow well at very high rpm, but they are proven not to do well at lower rpm because of reversion and turbulent flow characteristics. If you are drag racing, or running on a track most of the time, then fine, this is the exhaust for you. If that is you, then you are reading the wrong thread, this is about riding in the woods and on the trails. But, for riding in the woods, give me a big fat meaty power curve that starts down low, and pulls hard right on up. If I lose 2 peak horse over a 1000 rpm range, but make 10 lbs-ft more torque over a 5000 rpm range, then I will be faster 95% of the time, the other guy will pull me on the long straight, but it won't matter, because that won't be enough to make up the ground he lost in the twisties.

In my opinion, anyone who has put a pipe on their bike or modified their stock pipe and is now making more than about 100db, has screwed up their bike for trail riding. Sorry, but that is how I think about it.

OK, let me have it... ?

[Dan_from_HB]

My opinion has evolved on this issue. Before, I took a pretty militant attitude about the whole thing. I ride mostly in the desert, out where no one else goes except riders. I couldn't see why anyone else would give a rip. To an extent, I still don't. But I comply.

There are some facts that can't be ignored:

1. The general public cares only when something is annoying enough to make them notice.

2. The enviro geeks are using noise as one of several political issues to annoy the general public at our expense.

3. The general public votes.

4. Lowering the noise level only matters when you are NEAR the general public. Aside from that, it's just a way to reduce the validity of the enviro geeks' complaints, and give us a political leg to stand on.

5. You are near the general public more than you think, especially if you ride in the woods.

6. Unless you are Ty Davis or Russ Pearson, you won't need the very small amount of power you sacrifice. I know. I've tried it both ways. I ride just as fast with my Q series as I did with my Power Core IV. Anyone wanna race a decrepit 45 year old relic? If you win, I shut up and go away. If I win, you buy a quiet pipe. Any takers?

7. The issue DID surface when new generation four strokes came on the scene. They are awesome, powerful, lightweight, and noisy. Especially the YZ/WR. The aforementioned geeks seized on the opportunity to make a mountain out of a molehill. Until then, we were doing a great job of quieting the two strokes to the point that they were actually pleasant to ride. And not annoying to anyone.

8. If we don't get rid of the worst of the noise, we will be chased out of almost every decent riding area you can think of. Not just because of the noise, but because it is one issue the general public can relate to. It will convince them we are not the good guys we say we are. I don't like it, not one little bit. But that's just the way it is......We need the general public on our side for a change.

9. There are lots of good 96 db pipes on the market now. Pick one and use it. You won't be disappointed if you install it right and re-pack it once in a while. I love my FMF Q Series.

I got into an argument with Bill Dart over this issue about a year ago. I wish to apologize to him. He was right. I was wrong. We need to voluntarily keep the noise down, or there will be regulations like you see now. We just need to be sure we get the right things in return, like agreements with our opponents stating that 96 Db is NOT ANNOYING so they lose credibility when they come back and ask for more. We can't allow them the ability to say things have changed after 5 or 10 years without looking foolish.

Just my 2 cents. Flame away.

Dan

[Machster]

This is a topic that will go around in circles forever. I cannot see both sides ever coming together on this one as long as their are extremist on BOTH sides. Believe me guys, I love my freedom to ride as much as the next guy. The problem is not the majority of us riders..it is the minority a**h**** that think they have the right to do whatever they want..like leaving their garbage strewen at campsites. I have personally gone behind and cleaned up after some yahoos that thought it was "their right " to leave broken beer bottles and trash after partying until 3am, gettin up at 6am to fire up their 120 dm "Monster" machine for everyone to hear. And I can't stand tree huggers!. On the other hand you have the extremist enviro-nazi's that have nothing else in their pitiful life to do except fight for what they think is right, and make sure everybody knows it. Until everybody in our sport decides to clean up their act, we have a snoballs chance in Equador to change the minds of the voting public. And btw..Volkswagon bugs (the old ones) were air cooled without radiator fluid..(Lmao)

?

[Dan_Lorenze]

Your 96 DB bike is as noticable to those against us as the old 103 DB bike. We do need to be curtous on the trail, slow down when passing other users, be as quite as possible (with in reason), educate our friends on multi-use forest, so that we can try to win the majority over. But lets not be fooled into thinking that we can win these over by lowering the DB limit by 7 DB.

Amen.....

I share the same opinion...

In my opinion, anyone who has put a pipe on their bike or modified their stock pipe and is now making more than about 100db, has screwed up their bike for trail riding. Sorry, but that is how I think about it.

Oldbones, I agree with you too.....

Dan from HB, Nice to hear from you!! You are one fast guy!!! I know, I tried to loose you a couple of times with poor results....... You have to admit, the performance of these machines is why you bought them in the first place, my dad has the "Q" pipe on his bike and I can run away from him with my TI-4 (I realize that it's rider too), we've race bikes many times.. I've ridden his bike, doesn't have the pull that my bike has, and it's obvious.. We swap bikes all the time and we both agree...

For closed course competition I want to have a bike that runs at its best, Yes I am at 103dbs but it has it's benefits in the desert...... Do you guys still think I'm a villan?

Dan ?

Dan

[endurodog]

Oldbones your missing the point, again, 7 DB in a scientific way may be quiter, but it doesn't matter to those people. Show me one, just one, place that has been left open because the noise level on bikes have been reduced, further show me one agreement with a community or any orginazation that has said

"If you get your bikes to XXX DB then your riding area can stay open"

This is not a new issue, it was all done with 2 strokes and nothing changed, zero, zip, tracks and areas were still closed because of noise. Now we have the same thing all over again, and nothing will change no matter if all the bikes get to 96 DB and they won't.

As far as the power issue, thats great you have found what works for you and you have decided what power everyone else needs. I just can't bring myself to decided what everyone that rides at altitude, desert, dunes, ect, ect, needs.

The main point is that it doesn't matter what we do there are those that are against us that will stay against us. There are those on our side that are still gonna be running 118 DB systems because enforcement sucks, there will be major divisions on opinions with in the dirtbike community, unlike the Harley community, and we will continue lossing land. Doesn't matter if were 7 DB quiter, 20% quiter or not.