Is it my imagination or has this problem got much worse?

Every morning at 04.30 hours my partner and I are being woken by a moped being furiously driven past our house at excessive speed!

It has one of those damn expansion cans fitted and makes the most annoying noise - like a HUGE Bumble Bee... We hear the thing coming from a mile away...

That idiot must be waking thousands of others including small children in their beds.

This kind of exhaust fitment is without doubt UNLAWFUL yet the local plod around here seem to not to care. The police do possess considerable powers in these cases.

I'd like to know why these expansion chambers (cans) are being lawfully imported and sold in the first place to all these little twats.

Nearly all these automatic scooters / mopeds are ridden by youngsters. They fly around the streets taking enormous risks taking into account their riding ability etc.

I consider ALL motorcyclists who fit unlawfully loud exhausts to be ruining the good name of the majority decent, responsible, law abiding riders.

Most importantly, why would anyone wish to wake & upset people they have never even met let alone know?

It's becoming the bane of our lives around here.

The police (Toy Town) are bloody useless.

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Triumph Bonneville 800 (2004), Yamaha XT600E (1999), Honda XBR500 (1986).

Alas- one of the answers could be " because they can and don't care"

Youth is often wasted on the young just as wisdom is wasted on the old!
Noise pollution, alas, is the bane of the modern world. Not just scooters, parties, arguments, trampolines, leaf blowers, sunday lawnmowers...the list is long...
Blessed be the noise cancelling Bose earplugs, your own choice of music (or none at all) and the open road.

Sounds like you need to go for a long ride Neil!

Buy an MV Augusta and join him/her. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJUaSKz8R3I

I had a loud exhaust on my moped when I was a teen and still like loud exhausts.......... "Loud pipes save lives"
I do sympathize with you being woken at 4.30 though

it's not just the mopeds unfortunately. Some wee scrote (the mate of the boy that parked across the end of my drive blocking me in one night!) goes up the hill past our house in his crappy little hatchback at excessive speed making excessive noise through the ridiculous 'performance' exhaust he's fitted (which probably does little more than stop the exhaust gasses being efficiently ejected!!)

but then, when I was that age I didn't give a shit either, it's only now I'm a grumpy old man that I do!

no..they don't.
ever hear of a little property called 'the dopler effect"?...at speed your actualy ahead of your sound by feet (or meters) based on speed of course. You end up a hood (bonnet) decoration before your heard.

those kind of pipes are to boost as much power as possible and to hell with what people think.

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kicka,kicka,cough, sputter, kicka,kicka, cough, sputter, bwbwbwbwbw....she running fiine today

Read back on my posts, I am not explaining my reasons again.

To be ahead of the sound your engine is making you would have to be travelling faster than the speed of sound; ie Mach 1, or 766mph (approx. 340meters per second depending on air pressure).

The doppler offect is not really this its a change in pitch of the sound (or light) wave, either up or down depending on direction of travel.

Understand just how you feel - I never needed an alarm as a guy used to go down the road about half a mile from my place (a nice twisty one) on a Ducati with loud pipes - regular as clockwork, Monday to Friday at 7am on the dot !

Best bet might be to get up early and pull him over for a 'chat' one morning. Perhaps see if any other neighbours fancy getting up and being there with you ! Being young he probably does not realise how he is upsetting people and thinks the sound of the bike is 'cool' whatever the time of day.

Perhaps explaining to him that he can repack the silencer might help as well ! But, like others have said, we were all young and offensive once, so don't be too hard on him .........

well, to my knowledge ,there is no real limit, except for common sense !! the government backtracked on noise limit as deaths went up !!
I have to say, as a young person !! how many of us did have common sense !! lol but I do understand ! ear plugs !

Ah the noisy scooter problem, we have just the same thing. I doubt you'll get any help from the police, if they're like our local force they've been scuppered by health and safety regulations that say they cannot pursue youths on motorbikes in built up areas for risk of the youth having an accident.

Crazy I know, the local scrotes all know this so go belting round residential areas on their stolen 50s with no helmets on safe in the knowledge that there's very little chance of them being pulled over.

Earplugs are your only answer.

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An interesting post as, to a small extent, I've been seeing it from the other side. Last year, via a circuitous route, someone gave me a mid 70's Suzuki B120 two stroke which I've now done something like 5000 miles on. For those of you that don't remember / know them the B120 was designed to be a low powered inoffensive commuter bike intended to take you a few miles to work / to the station etc and most certainly not to stand out in any crowd. The problem is that these days it does stand out.

I've noticed on many occasions when riding it sedately through town that I get looks of annoyance from people walking nearby - something that doesn't happen when I'm riding one of my other (four stroke) bikes, even those with louder exhausts. The bike is completely standard and the exhaust exactly as Mr Suzuki intended it to be yet it does seem to annoy a certain number of people. My guess is that there is something about the timbre of a two stroke exhaust note that is intrinsically annoying and that as two stroke use has declined the few that have survived stand out more.

One kid on a sports 50 wouldn't have stood out 30 yrs ago and you'd probably have had a hoard of them buzzing / screeching their way past your window each morning; now you want to strangle the one remaining one. Probably won't help your sleep pattern but maybe you could think of him as an endangered species.

Morning,

a few years ago, when I worked in the bike trade, there was a fatality on the housing estate, near to our garage. The scooter was a 50cc Gilera and the rider was 16. We were asked to inspect the bike, to see if it had been modified at all, as witnesses said it was doing well in excess of the 30mph speed limit, when it crashed.

So we checked it out and found it had been fitted with an 80cc conversion, with a matching exhaust etc.

What hadn't been uprated were the brakes or suspension.

The rider was killed in the accident and no other vehicles were involved.

It appeared that the bike had been bought as a second hand 50cc model but the new owner, and his mates, bought the parts with his mums credit card (with her permission) and the rest is history.

Sad loss of a life and it show's that the parents were either ignorant of the motoring laws, or they ignored them.

Regards

Reggie

Why just don´t you take the time once to block the street with your car just in time and tell that guy in no uncertain ways what you think of him and his steed. Then get out of the way and send him his merry way.

As far as unlawful and the police are concerned, well I grew up in a middle class neighbourhood in the sixties and seventies. Yet unlawful and dangerous are great terms to describe a fair amount of our fun activities in our misguided youth. My kids think I had an awesome time as a youngster.

You might want to leave the cops out of the equation. One day your kids might scream down the street where your current miscreant is living with an expansion chamber you helped them to fit on their 50 ccm. Maybe this thought can help to brighten your day/night.

Take care.

Pete
That is a really bad idea Never mind the road traffic issues , you are potentially committing an offence of unlawful imprisonment - dont do it !! However i understand your frustrations.....................................