Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

c. . en ~ w Z W ...J U >- U Unless a sudden, drastic reduction of noise happens soon, - there won't be a single place left where we may ride. By Charles Clayton Wherever 1 try to dirt ride anymore, it's no time hardly until the black and white car or helicopter settles before me and the guy behind the sunglasses, half apologetic, half uptight, is only doing his job. "Y oU gotta clear outta here. No mo torcycle riding." They see 1 am not going to give them any lip. They are sorry, but the citizens are calling the station, demanding the cops pu t a stop to anyone they see or hear riding in the vast, vacant acreage near Los Angeles. Lately I'm getting more elbow action from the long arm of the law than your average criminal. The officers tell me they'd rather be out chasing crooks than doing this, but orders are orders. "Isn't there some organization of bikers," they ask, "to put pressure on the p,~liticiaI!s_ to ge"t you some place to ride?" No. The comp'laint calls are increasing and the cops hate to waste time stopping our fun, "but the people don't want noisy motorcycles near their homes." Noisy Motorcycles. 1 have a cheap silencer on my stinger, but 1, too, have had my teeth set on edge by the blare of wide open exhausts running down my street, 'Waking th~ baby. I've gone so far as to lay in wait for the noisemakers, flag them down and try explaining to them that, while I love and make my effective silencer would have to cost, if living from mo torcycles, even 1 feel an there were such a thing available. urge to call the cops when one Trouble 'is, the market demand for unmannerly bastard who thinks he's mufflers is heaviest in the very loud, John DeSoto shatters my peace with his phony-racer models. Probably the pipes. manufacturers, distributors and dealers While the riders thus lectured had every reason to tell me to go to hell, who rake in their profits on the sale of none did. Instead, each apologized in his shorty mufflers, open pipes and tiny own way and never troubled my megaphones don't even know that they eardrums since. This leads me to believe are cutting their own throats. All they that motorcycle enthusiasts don't can see is a product that costs a dollar consciously set out to annoy people by to make and sells fast fOT $12.95. So their noise, but simply are unconcscious what if the motorcycle is repressed out of the distress that they are causing of existence for being noisy? 1 wonder if others. Worst of all, they are not even they e.ver think of that. The public is, of course, to blame. aware of what their noisemaking is costing themselves. We pry out the baffles and buy those racy-sounding pipes. Not that we want Unless a sudden, drastic reduction of noise happens soon, there won't be any to shake up the neighbors, but because of our conscious or unconscious desire more places where we may ride to ape the racers. motorcycles. I don't know how to change Noise is the enemy. We fun riders motorcycles from noisy to quiet. But I have more reason to resent the "noisy know that it must begin. And so I hope motorcycles" than anyone else, for they that by spelling out the problem here, not only rattle our gourds with their ideas may be generated, and carried racket, but we even have to bear the through to a more peaceful world. blame. All motorcycles and everyone It would seem that the dealers, etc. wh 0 rides one or ever hopes to ride; have the most to lose in this anti (noisy) pays for the noise through the nose. , Being thrown out of public property • motorcycle: situation. And they _would - not for disturbing anyone's peace also gain the most (in profits, community respect, etc.) if they came yourself but because someone's peace was once upon a time disturbed by a up with the solution. It could be as simple as a gun silencer noisy motorcycle - isn't the only way we pay. and cheap as a baffle. Add up the high price of hauling our Unfortunately, the Maxim patent bikes to farther and fewer rides, the covering the principle of the gun declining value of our riding investment silencer is considered Top Secret by the as we rmd it harder to use, and the U.S. Government, lest it fall into the hidden tariffs of hatred tacked onto our hands of criminals who might make taxes (for we must pay the very police silencers and commit murder without being heard. If we had a Hiram .Maxim who have to harass us). Added up, it comes to more than what a good, in motorcycle accessory design, or II someone was clever enough to re-discover the principle of his silencer, it would allow the gases to exhaust unimpeded while trapping the loudest report and convert it to a whisper. A renegade gunsmith once told me Maxim's secret, but I've forgotten it now. It had something to do with spiralling the sound. - Whether we'll give up our noise and accept any silencing device, no matter how perfect, depends on what the racers do. The thought of racing without roaring pipes isn't easy to accept. Yet, 1 have witnessed virtaully silent production road races and found the lack of deafening sound exhilirating. The machipes seem fast as jet planes. You see 'them before you hear them. Th e c O,n venience of carrying on conversation during the race is a new experience that I recommend if you ever get the chance to try it. Let the crowd do the roaring, the bikes are diere to race. Probably the campaign to kill the noisy motorcycle image before it kills motorcycling would succeed suddenlY if AMA rules required silencers for all racing except straight-line record attempts. Overnight the market for similar silencers would skyrocket. Everybody wants to sound like a racer. That would leave only the problem of what to do with all of the outmoded noisemakers left lying about. Since this is a disposal problem outside the scope of my experience, I can only suggest that we collect them all in a central location and help them up for all the world to see - that you can't call them _Unoisy motorcycles" any more. 11

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