It's amazing that they're so loud given the size of the silencers they put on those things. A KX250 has half the silencer of a KX250F, and yet it's the quieter machine. What's wrong with this picture? I'm convinced that a two-stroke that's running a straight stinger will be no louder *at distance* than a thoroughly silenced four-stroke. Up-close the straight stinger is unparalleled, but once you're a few meters away they seem pretty equally violent to me.
Story time! One time, way back in the mists of time, my dad was out in the desert with his Kawasaki Bighorn (unsilenced) and for whatever reason, he was pissed at the thing. The points were giving him trouble, or there was some weird jetting problem, or whatever. He fires up that bad boy in neutral, holds the throttle wide open for a good long while (and remember, this thing got no rev-limiter) then hits the kill switch. Utter silence. Then, about a second later, a ghostly wail comes in as massive sound blast echoed off a mountain. Then there's silence again, then another wail, from another mountain further away. Three times, the ghostly wail comes, then the sound ran out of mountains to bounce off of and just washed into the desert.
As bad as four-strokes are, this story shows that there are worse acts of noise pollution to be had. Can you imagine if bikes still ran straight stingers (or straight headers in four-stroke terms)? Granted, every bike would sound a lot more bad-ass, but all the hippies and suburb-dwellers would nail us to the cross. I'm just glad I ride in the middle of total nowhere, but I still sometimes worry about people who live five miles away catching a little bit of ghostly wail when I take the 120 for a ride.
There's my Sunday rant. I think we're getting close to realizing the goal of daily rants!