Some just think it sounds better, but it could also be because they have their engine beefed up and an open exhaust gives performance gains. Originally that was the intention and it created an image from there.
I wouldn't call it painful though. Those whiny four banger rice-burner Civics silly people think are bad-a$$ sound way more obnoxious IMHO. WHeeeeeeee!!!!!!! Sounds like a chainsaw about to puke.
"Rice burner". Well that's clever and cute. A Japanese motorcycle goes by barely heard. But a Harley can e heard a block away. It cries out, "Notice me! Please notice me! I'm so cool, so tough, so adolescent! Notice me!"
The rice burners I was talking about are actually cars. Civic should have been the clue. I know plenty of guy's with tuned out Japanese bikes that are loud as hell. My old Kawasaki 650 UJM isn't very quiet and it has stock exhaust. Ever heard a Suzuki 'busa go by? Loud as puck.
Some are loud because people are dumb and want the noise, others are loud because they are tuned for performance and HP gains. Depends.
This post was edited by Benedict Arnold at November 26, 2016 4:28 PM MST
Nah, I'm not that bad yet. Actually I'm pretty mellow about that kind of stuff in RL. It's more funny to me than anything. All my friends had them in HS and made fun of them for it. Crappy cars that barely ran but they would dump $2000 on a sound system but not a dime on getting it to run right or put good tires on the thing so they could go through the snow. I was a grease monkey at a young age. To this day it takes an effort for me not to go under friends cars and try and fix things they ignore.
@Glis -- "Hold my beer. Watch this!" (or its translated equivalent) occurs nearly in every socioeconomic stratum.
Are you familiar with penny-farthing bicycles?
While penny-farthings had a few arguable advantages over "standard" bicycles, they were also significantly more dangerous. According to some historical material I've read, it was that very dangerousness which made them popular among certain populations of young men at the time. It was the Victorian-era equivalent of, "Hold my beer. Watch this!"
Yes, it's true an enormous percentage of H-D riders are respectable middle-class professionals. That doesn't stop them from wanting to PRETEND they are BAD-A$$ BIKER DUDES with accompanying expressions of, "Hold my beer. Watch this!"
This post was edited by OldSchoolTheSKOSlives at November 26, 2016 4:30 PM MST
Those things are just retarded. They were popular during the Victorian Era because the safety bicycle wasn't around yet.
Yet it's true, most people buying Harley's these days are in it to shed their white collar lameness and trying to compensate by being a weekend biker warrior. Most of the hardcore bikers don't even flash their bikes anymore or ride choppers anymore. Except to custom bike showings. Too much attention from the law.
I've ridden one of those high wheelers. They have no brakes. They are extremely uncomfortable. To get up or down from that seat, you need to be fairly athletic.
Perhaps some people may believe that certain motorcycles are inherently louder than others, but I've never heard of or heard any "quiet"motorcycle, regardless of its make, model, manufacturer or country of origin.
If it was quiet, OF COURSE you didn't hear it....;-D...
I submit there's a bit of confirmation bias going on here. No, there is probably no motorcycle in existence as quiet as a high-end Lexus or Nissan Leaf. But my Honda Nighthawk 750 (stock exhaust) was fairly quiet at low engine speeds.
There are probably other relatively quiet motorcycles you, in a sense, DIDN'T hear because the noise you heard from them was not disturbing enough to be memorable, so you forgot about them. Meanwhile, all the ones which were obnoxiously loud DID register in your conscious mind, so you remeber those.
This post was edited by OldSchoolTheSKOSlives at November 26, 2016 8:02 PM MST
Benedict Arnold 