in my daily driver. My daily is a 92 GMC stepside, 350, 5 spd, dual stainless 2 1/2 " exhaust, stainless specialties mufflers and tips. She NEVER drives my truck, she hates it. I've driven it everywhere with this setup, clocking 50K miles over the last three years - no problem. She drives it five miles, and gets a ticket. Say, for arguments sake, this wasn't my daily and it was Buckshot, are there standards for exhaust noise? A test? Decibel level? State laws? KY? Rich
Usually there are limits on decibel level at certain distance -- I've seen 95db listed on a few sites. I'm trying to google it and find it, but they must have it hidden pretty good. Most of the time it's up to the cop as to how of a pain they want to be. I was coming home one day and the Webers on my car were starting to load it up a bit, and I "cleared it's throat" while waiting for traffic to go by . . . officer chased me down, overshot me, then motioned me to come down where he was (country back roads) and read me the riot act about "I have half a mind to give you a defective equipment ticket". I don't know what the other half of his mind was doing . . . or how far it was located below his belly ****on. If it's legal with all the right stuff, I'd fight them on it . . . go get a Radio Shack db meter and do***ent the readings. Just a thought.
Tell her to keep her foot out of it ! j/k I donno if its a small town cop you might be better of just paying the fine rather than piss him off they have a tendency to remember **** like that
My 53 is louder than SBC's or BBC's with open headers at the drag strip. Seriously, I'm not kidding, and to make it worse my pipe design is similar to lakes so the sound shoots out of both sides. Absolutely nothing to muffle the sound. This is my daily driver, be it 3AM or 3PM, rain or shine, I like them loud. I live in a nice neighborhood, a very nice neighborhood, everyone else here is older and most of them love to complain about the others but with me, they love the car and never ***** once. I keep it to a rumble in the neighborhood and they're cool with it. The cops are cool as hell, especially with this being a metro city. I catch em with the window down and I rev it a bit and ask if they wanna race. I think you had a mixture of problems here: First of all the vehicle is too new to be too loud but you said you have mufflers so they should **** it, I hear new trucks with flowmasters every single ****in day and it doesn't bother anyone. Second, woman driver. My wife has issues with that too, like the ******* cop can't handle a hot rod ho. You have mufflers, and probably a cat too huh? No way it's too loud, dispute that ticket and tell them to **** it. Then park that new fangled truck of yours with it's 13 cup holders, and drive that 34! Er use it for hauling new parts for the 34. We have one, we call it "The Bel Air's *****."
95 db seems to be the most common level of acceptance in the eyes of gov't. http://www.semasan.com/Main/Main.aspx?ID=61317 More legislative stuff that affects car folks: http://www.semasan.com/main/main.aspx?ID=/content/SEMASANcom/HomePage
http://162.114.4.13/krs/189-00/CHAPTER.HTM particularly these two http://162.114.4.13/krs/189-00/020.PDF http://162.114.4.13/krs/189-00/140.PDF make it look like there is no "test" and it's opinion based enforcement. And the KRS224 makes it even more opinion based http://162.114.4.13/KRS/224-30/050.PDF http://162.114.4.13/KRS/224-30/190.PDF
Texas does not have a Db limit, but anual inspection requirements include a "muffler" device. I would be very surprised if you couldn't get a dismissal having a full exhaust system.
I think that I'm going to borrow a db meter from work and do the test, twenty inches away at 3/4 throttle. The truck has no cat, and in all honesty, it is fairly loud, but no louder than most harleys running the road. Rich
Did the policeman who wrote the ticket happen to have a decibel meter in his patrol car, or did he just "guess" that it was too loud? Remember, even though traffic cops and the general public seem to feel otherwise these days, you are innocent until PROVEN guilty. If the officer cannot provide an actual decibel reading showing that your truck was in violation, and your truck can p*** inspection...then you are innocent. If you fight this one, you'll most likely win. Most people would just pay the fine to not have to go through the h***le of going to court and before the judge...and that's what the ticketing officer was probably banking on. That's what traffic tickets are about anyway...generating revenue.
the mufflers on all my Ducatis were marked 85Db. Screw that, I cored them all The EPA noise test consists of driving by at a certain speed and testing it with the meter. So, the way that Ducati gets around that is to gear the bikes extra high so you're just loping along at a certain speed, no noise. You have to first find out how your state measures the decibels- drive by test, at idle, certain RPM, etc.
If a decibel meter wasn't involved at the time the ticket was issued and he doesn't have certified finely tuned ears (haha), you should be able to beat the ticket. "I think that truck is too loud." is not enough to convict. They have to prove it exceeds the law as the law is written.
There are noise abatement laws on the books to specifically target loud cars (stereos, pipes) without getting into the technicalities of actual measurement. If the ticket was for exceeding a db limit, you might have a case, but a ticket for disturbing the peace is probably going to be harder to fight. On those types of tickets, the only person who has to be disturbed is the issuing officer. And you have to figure into the equation, what's it gonna cost to fight it? A day's wages? Lawyer? And what are the odds that a traffic judge (who's not going to go outside to listen to your truck) is going to side with you? If it's a low dollar ticket, I say pay it and move on. Not every little thing is worth fighting. 'Course, the wife will NEVER let you forget what your truck did to her.....
I called the court clerk, here are my options. 1. Pay the fine - $155 - ouch! 2. Show up on the court date and plead my case. 3. Have a shop "fix" the problem, and bring receipts from the shop to the clerk showing the exhaust has been fixed. 4. "Fix" it myself and bring the truck to the courthouse to have the bailiff check it with a meter. I'm thinking that with a little imagination, number 3 is doable Rich
i like when johnny tells the story about a cop'r down at porkys, pulled him over in his stock/daily pickup, had a blown out muffler on a 4.0, not too bad in my opinion, ... cop had to stop talking i guess while a group of bikes went by running the drag pipes. me, i always clutch the scoot when i see the law or up shift when i worked for a ford dealer, i had a writer give me a r/o and paperwork saying i "fixed" something, cant remember what. seems like that is almost admitting guilt. other times i went to court, if the cop didn't show i won by default, and now where i am at, they dont even waste their time and my last case from a accident got dismissed.
yup...you could poke a hole in the pipe ahead of the muffler, take it in and get them to weld a patch on it, and you have a reciept and a witness that your truck was fixed.
So, you're going to go to court with a truck that's had the catalytic converters removed, and let them inspect your system? Have you checked the penalty for removing catalytic converters from the exhaust system? Just a thought... Mutt
in the town of pittsburg kansas about 20 miles from mokan if you can be heard at all from over 100 ft away then after 10pm you can be issued a $600 noise violation ticket. how do you like them apples?
I was in a backwoods VA court once fighting a reckless driving charge. The guy behind me in line had a ticket for exhaust noise (that he got while driving his son's rice burner). The guy calmly and reasonably protested that his kid drove the car every day no problems, every part on the car was purchased legally in VA, and that since the cop had no decibel meters or anything he can't prove what amounts to one man's opinion that the car was "too loud." The judge replied that cops see lots of cars every day so it's perfectly reasonable for a cop to make said judgement, so shut up and pay the fine. Hopefully your wife's KY judge won't be as bad as the redneck good ol' boy VA judge I was dealing with...but I wouldn't be too hopeful. Weasel out with a fake repair slip or write a check, I guess. ****s.
Awwww ****...... And I live in the same town. When I was in high school four to five years ago, I drove my 64 pontiac and 84 monte ss with no exhaust. Cops never even pulled me over. I even had to drive by the police station every day to just go to school and work. Who was the officer? Glasgow has gotten a lot of new young officers. Most of them look like *****s and ***holes. I know I'm not much help but thanks for posting, I'll keep an eye out.
I think Oklahoma, which is in spitting distance from me, has the law that you just can't modify your exhaust. But see cops are dumb as ****in hell so you can tell them all day long that it came stock that way. It might just be a Sallisaw (the city cops that mentions it) law. I don't know. Either way it sounds dumb. They said they can ticket for everything from open headers to rice burners with their coffee can exhaust.
Hell, a while back I had a beater and I had the front plate on another car to keep up the "appearance" of being legal.. so this state cop sees it in his mirror, pulls over, I go by, he pulls me over. The inspection had run out the month before, too, so I was stuck with two tickets. I went to court on it and found out my choices were either fix it or junk the car. So I made a reciept form on Microsoft Word with an open box on the top left. took it up to Kinko's, photocopied it with my buddy's business card in the box, and presto - instant reciepts. Then I filled it out showing I've sold it for $25 for junk, took that back into court, and he dismissed both tickets. As a bonus, I made up a bunch of reciepts that way, some with my own business card on them, and I use 'em when I sell stuff. Total cost maybe $5 tops. That was cheaper than the last no-front-plate ticket, for that one I put the plate on and brought in a photo of it on the car - I respect the law as much as anybody, but in this day and age it's become all about what you can get away with and how much money you can throw at it. If other people can get away with stuff, I see no reason why I shouldn't be able to, especially stuff as lame as forgetting to get a car inspected or having to use the front plate to trick a codes inspector. If you have the time to blow, I'd go in and plead my case - maybe you'll get a judge who isn't a ****. If he wants to be a ****, offer to have the truck fixed, come back and produce a reciept showing something's been fixed. Shouldn't be a big deal, you can be like "they found a hole I didn't know was there and I had 'em patch it" .... My own truck has a hole in the muffler now. But it sounds just about right, and with the cat on it it's quiet anyways. That same beater I got that ticket on I ran for a long time with nothing on it after the cat, it was loud, but not as loud as a bike would be. Around here you have to be super loud to get a ticket for noise, though, I only got pulled over once for a loud exhaust and that one the pipe ahead of the muffler had come off and I left it that way for a while.
The Jalopy Journal
