well every day . They are under-resourced , no doubt about that , and I think that the defiers of the law are well and truly aware of that fact . So I have taken my own steps in defying the noise of baffle-butchered bikes and wagons when the dark hours call . I wear earplugs to bed . However , I have to step forward at this point and confess to having erred in the pursuit of hot sound , which was really only noise at the end of the day . I was about 22 , so that is one third of what I am now , and I had a four-cylinder 350 Honda which had a pretty munted set of factory fitted pipes . The rust had begun making calls on them so I started sniffing about looking for a replacement set , with an angle toward a fourinto-one system “ with a bit of a howl ”. I found a second hand set which had no silencer pot at the exit point at all . So I built one . I discovered that an empty tin can which had once been the home to some beetroot fitted like a tight glove . Bewdy . So I got out the hammer and a large nail and punched about 25 holes in it and it reduced the sound by about 30 percent . But it still howled and barked and popped away so I was ( as a 22-year-old fixated by GP bikes and the like ) happy as a sand boy . And a few years later , when I had a CB750 , I ’ d occasionally unscrew the little caps on the muffler ends and take it out for squirt , because it sounded kind of cool . But put it this way , I grew out of it and with my bikes after that stuck with the standard units . My 600 Kawasaki may have been a tad muted but the power output was not and it did sound furiously fine . Had Ago ’ been in the neighbourhood on one the afternoons I took part in the GP called “ get home for tea on time ” he would have cocked an ear and smiled . “ Atsa good-a sound ,” he would have purred . “ Is a no noise .”
KIWI RIDER 83