I just ran across an article in which the speaker was railing against noise standards for motorcycles. Jesus. It always comes around, this ridiculous trope: “Loud pipes save lives.”. The claim appears to be that loud aftermarket exhaust somehow contributes to rider safety.

I say that claim is crap.

I’ve never found a study showing modified motorcycles to be under represented in crash statistics. I have searched for it, without success.

You guys have any thoughts on this?

I'm with you, man. I left the OEM pipes on my street bob. It meets noise standards everywhere on earth.

Could it go faster with straight pipes? Probably. So what? For chrissakes, the goddamned machine has a 1.7L motor. That isn't enough for street use?

How do these chimps with diesels make them belt out that black smoke, anyway? They must be fucking with the fuel delivery somehow. I'm satisfied keeping my 6.5L diesel (and my Harley) running as designed.

Oooh, fun exhaust memory!

When I was young, I bought what I call a mini bike. Something like this, but not this sophisticated:



The exhaust on mine was a piece of 1” metal conduit, threaded on one end. That conduit was threaded identically to the exhaust port of the little engine on my bike. The jam nut on that piece of conduit kept rattling loose. Sometimes, the pipe would completely detach.

No big deal, I’d just screw the thing back in and keep riding.

While stopped between my dad’s shiny new ‘75 Dodge pickup truck and our propane storage tank, that pipe rattled loose and fell off. A spark from the open exhaust port ignited the gasoline that often leaked from the carburetor.

I was not able to blow out the small flame. A flame which rapidly turned into a big flame. Dad dragged it away from his new truck, but closer to the huge propane tank. By then, the rubber fuel line had burned away and the gasoline was boiling with increasing pressure inside the bike’s fuel tank, turning the fuel petcock into a nice flame thrower.

Everyone knows you don’t use water on a fuel fire. So first, we made hot gravel and sand by shoveling that useless gesture onto my flaming mini bike. Then, we burned up a perfectly good canvas tarp. We finally tried the nearby garden hose, which extinguished the fire in two seconds.

My bike was slag.

God damned after market exhaust pipes.


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hoopy frood wrote:

The_Metatron wrote:You guys have any thoughts on this?

I agree it's [mostly] crap and not a good reason for having em. If you want some engine noise, it's easy enough to clutch and blip the throttle. Why would you though when you have a perfectly good horn you could use. Sensible use of horns saves lives. Riding with your lights on saves lives, high beam in daylight ideally. I still see plenty bikers in Scotland, both natives and tourists, who don't use their lights in daytime and never use their horn to alert other road-users to their presence, which is its sole intended purpose. Going with high-visibilty is another essential. I see some bikers in camouflage jackets. Go figure.

I have owned a commercially manufactured motorcycles made as early as 1964. I’ve never seen one on which it was even a possibility for the engine to run without the headlight on. It’s wired to the ignition switch. I’ve never understood this discussion.


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While I don’t have a reference for it, I did read a study done by the USAF safety people that showed no added benefit to high visibility vests or jackets in reducing crashes. For some twenty years, such equipment was mandated for all motorcycle operators on DoD campuses, and for active duty people, everywhere. For a couple of years now, that requirement has been removed.

They actually used facts to reach that decision. I was impressed. They sure as fuck didn’t rely on facts when they implemented it in the 1980s.


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