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Speaking as a motorcycle lover of all the brands and have owned most of the popular ones, unfortunately my Guzzis is not in that class of being "popular":( I think I can identify the major divide between HD and most any of the other makes. For what ever reason, possibly the lust for the Bad Boy image, most folks who ride and own a Harley tends to follow the cult of the Harley Davidson Motorcycle that includes the T shirts, leather jackets with all the patches, helmets with the insignias, etc. Also it seems necessary to take off perfectly effective quiet mufflers and add obnoxious loud pipes with the claim it adds HP, as well as other attributes that tend to annoy other brand owners. However there are many of us guys and gals out here that own and have owned HD and never felt the need to advertise for the company nor follow that Biker image, I did not. My 1400 tourer is my ride of choice at this time in my ridding career and may possibly be my last. However if the feeling ever overcomes me to own another Harley I will do so unapologetically as it very well may be the best motorcycle on the face of the planet:)
John - you make some very good pointsBut, have you ever really tried it?I mean.... you might LIKE it !And those Harley babes ???How can you resist ???.............
This is where stereotypes come from. Every motorcycle forum I go on takes about aftermarket pipes. Harley doesnt own that conversation. Most motorcycle genres have their uniform whether we participate or not. SS riders with their full leathers on the street. BMW riders with their Aerostich, Klim or whatever ultra expensive gear is in favor at the time. Goldwing riders with their embroidered satin jackets, open face helmets with boom mic. I think because Harly is the leader in sales far exceeding the others is what makes them a target. The interesting thing is that bikers are some of the most charitable people as a group that I have ever met.
My intentions were not to " stereotype " any brand however it's simply a fact that it's more common to see a Harley's with after market, louder than factory, pipes and mufflers than any of the other brands. Personally I could care less what types of pipes anyone spends their hard earned money on and if their choice meets the legal decibel requirements, then all the power to you;)
Aftermarket devices of silencing (play on an old Bridgestone owner's manual) are fine , it's the open pipes that are just stupid . Dusty
My intentions were not to " stereotype " any brand however it's simply a fact that it's more common to see Harley's with after market, louder than factory, pipes and mufflers than any of the other brands.
Depends on what you mean by that.You see MORE Harleys than anything else on the road.Therefore even if the same percentage of Harleys had louder pipes as any other brand, you'd still SEE MORE Harleys.Now if you meant "you see a higher percentage of Harleys with louder pipes than...." I'm not sure it's completely defensible.Yea my opinion was based on percentages of each brand. It unusual to see aftermarket pipes on the other brands, as a whole. Either way it's no big deal, like I said, each to his own as to their preference. It might be, certainly it's more likely true when compared to say BMW....but I'm not sure how universally true it is.That said, I do think you see more jit-bags with completely open pipes on Harley than anything else.
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I have Vance & Hines slip-on mufflers on a Heritage Softail. They have the "quiet baffles" and I also gave them about six turns with fiberglass cloth - but they're still not quiet ! Had a Cobra slip-on on a Honda VTX1800 and it sounded like a Briggs & Stratton lawnmower with the muffler cut off of it - and so the factory muffler went back on.
I get tired of the way overly loud Harleys like most of us, but the absolute worst sound is from various Asian twins running open pipes, they can make me spontaneously vomit in mere seconds!😁
My intentions were not to " stereotype " any brand however it's simply a fact that it's more common to see Harley's with after market, louder than factory, pipes and mufflers than any of the other brands. Personally I could care less what types of pipes anyone spends their hard earned money on and if their choice meets the legal decibel requirements, then all the power to you;)
I live on a rural road with the properties spread out...Down the road about 1000 feet is a 50 something guy who owns several open pipe Harleys and his son has an open pipe Victory..He's a really nice guy I enjoy talking to him but on the bikes he like a 16 old on a two stoke, constantly blips the throttle..I mean for it's unreal...Then he usually heads past my house ,the road is uphill so the engine makes even more noise as he blasts by with the little helmet on the back of his head ....Talk about a stereotype..I I find it interesting like a small town carnival... I have two Ducatis, both came with aftermarket mufflers..I have a 79 Triumph with a modified exhaust...They sound quite acceptable compared loud Harleys.. With the possibility of a growing green movement pushing electric vehicles, noisy bikes and cars will attract unwanted attention from those who would like to see them banned from the road...
The blip had a purpose.The narrow shared intake manifold and staggered timing played hell with the idle air:fuel mixture on carbureted Harleys, especially as more and more emissions restrictions were placed on the carb settings.Sometimes at idle the carbs would load up, backfire, and stumble as you opened the throttle and started to put a load on the motor with the clutch. It could even cut the motor sometimes.If you instead blipped it once or twice to clear it you could then smoothly apply it as you slipped the clutch and pulled away.As EFI was introduced this was eliminated, but I think some continued it out of habit, others out of conscious or subconscious imitation, and the rest cause they just liked the sound of their obnoxiously loud exhaust.I confess I probably still do it as I pull away from stops even if the last carb'd Harley I owned was more than a decade ago. But as I said previously I have nothing but stock exhausts and I doubt anyone really notices.Oh, and I guess I use it to signal a riding partner that I'm about to pull out from a stop or shoot a gap.
Interesting explanation. I have never blipped a throttle, but I thought it was because of the cam change that so many do that causes it to want to stumble off idle, coupled with the extra low idle setting some think sounds cool.
That makes it worse.You ever hear me tell the story about the Weber-Marelli engineers when the developed the first person OEM EFI system for Harley.They showed off the first running mule to Harley waiting for praise and instead were told it sounded wrong. Basically it idled properly (smoothly without miss).They were told to go back and make it sound like a Harley. So they performed studies on carbed models and realized that to make it sound the same they'd need program in random misses and stumbles because of what I described earlier (that's where I first learned of it).They told Harley no.My 96 WM EFI RK idled completely smoothly. It was wonderful, but I won't lie, it did take some time before I got used to the sound/feel.