05-15-2017, 12:43 AM
What I don't understand is the permissiveness of the local police. When I was a kid in Virginia, we could get stopped in our cars if a police office pulled up beside us at a light and heard a hole in the muffler or exhaust pipe. The police weren't interested in the safety aspect of carbon monoxide...they wanted the exhaust noise to be abated. I had a buddy with "cherry bombs" on his Chevy Nova leading to small pipes that exited in front of the rear wheels. Once the fiberglass blew out of them they could be loud, but he was very adept at manipulating the throttle to make them surprisingly quiet around town to avoid police attention. The only time he made noise with them was street racing after midnight on lonely stretches of highway out of town. "Getting on it" around town would have been a sure way to get pulled over and receive a performance award. But nowadays these Harleys make 10X more noise than my buddy's Nova a full throttle, yet they are allowed to blast around with impunity (much like the "boom boom" car stereo idiots).