hi all,

not sure if im posting in the correct area, please advise accordingly.

in July, myself and 20 other bikers will be going to Italy, passing through switzerland.

i drive a 750 v-twin cruiser with straight through pipes, it's LOUD ! and a few other guys drive harleys, they aint quiet either.

i've heard swiss cops/customs can be quite fussy about noise pollution, with a fine of +/- €250 being issued for any breaches of their laws.

i cant find anything on google with regard to motorcycle laws or acceptable noise levels in Switzerland. i was wondering if anyone has experienced this? what happened? and any advice you can give me would be greatly appreciated.

cheers

calypso

I guess you'll probably get a lot more attention being in a group of 20, but i was there last year on a CBR600 and an SV650, both with pretty loud exhausts and we never got any trouble from police or border authorities.

__________________
He who makes a beast out of himself
Gets rid of the pain of being a man

Hi there,

We met 6 English bikers in a campsite in Germany last year who had tried to get into Switzerland and had been turned away at the border as 5 of them had after market exhausts on with NO baffle. Whilst at the border they met another 2 english bikers coming out of Switzerland (who had no problems getting in!), who then got fined €400 because they had illegal / after market exhausts.

The guys we met got the impression that as long as the exhaust is original or has a baffle that they would have been allowed in!

This is all we've heard... think I'll put my baffle in when we go though just to be safe... wouldn't want to give them my travel cash!

Beej

My partner and I were stopped twice in Switzerland on our last trip through the Alps on the way to Romania a couple of years ago.The coppers were very pleasant and spoke good English and the only thing they wanted to check was that our silencers had E markings on them...that's all! Angharad's Pegaso 650 has aftermarket straight-through stainless silencers which although E marked are a lot louder than the modified WR450F silencer on my XL600LM...which at the time didn't have any markings on it.I bluffed and said the E marking was on the side facing the ally sidecase, which i pointed out was hard to dismount (it isn't really) and they took my word for it. Since then i've made my own E marking plate on mine....number and letter punches from Ebay! The tricky bit is getting the E marking inside a circle to resemble a proper one but i overcame this by using a piece of steel tubing sharpened at one end, as a punch.
If you've got straight through cans it might be advisable to make-up a temporary device that you can shove up the end and wedge in just to get you through Switzerland without attracting unwanted attention.One trick i use occasionally on the Enduro bike is to shove an old handgrip up the exhaust as far as you can. It'll quieten things down a lot for a while if you don't give it a fist-full, the it'll blow out when you open it up later.

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Just going for a short ride on my bike....

I had a gpr can on mine. I stayed off the swiss Autobhan and crossed quiet border posts. I made sure I brought my baffle along but in the end didn't put it in. I was never stopped.

So let me get this straight. You've got an exhaust system which is illegal in Switzerland. Do you want to keep on making an illegal amount of noise, despite the apparent fact that this Swiss, your hosts, do not want this? This seems to me rather rude, and in such a case I'd have to root for the cops in the hope that they'll catch you, fine you, and then perhaps catch and fine you again as you head for the border. Or maybe confiscate your bike and put you on a train back home. Seems reasonable.

Or are you looking for advice on how to make your pipes either legal, or quiet, or both for at least the period you'll be in Switzerland?

Have you noticed how much some folks, not limited to myself, dislike straight pipes?

Mark

(in possession of a totally stock exhaust system--and the bike it's attached to--here in Central Brazil)