[9fingers]

I think if one really wanted to make the stock bazooka quieter a post mounted in the exit of the exhaust would help. I don't know why but my first bike, a Honda CT70H, when I was 12, had a removable baffle that was really just a divider, perhaps 1/8" thick, just a mini post, and that thing made it a lot quieter.
9fingers

[AK Mike]

AK Mike, Kudos for driving an E vehicle. Though I can't imagine taking away the "thump" of my bike and trading it for near silence. It is one of the things that I LOVE about my Enfield. Just curious, do you also have solar panels? My neighbor has a solar home, and charges his Bolt with the panels, on sunny days of course.
He also has a passive design, earth berm home, and his energy bills are near zero. Probably we will almost all be driving E cars in the USA within 15 or 20 years.
9fingers

There is a long story when it comes to me and solar panels, and I won't write a novel here.  But I'll summarize with... I just finished building a new home... built entirely myself over the past 10 years in a remote patch of land on a mountain side in SE Alaska.  I had designed in solar panels and a wind turbine in my original plans, thinking I could tap it into the "local" grid (have to run a long line from the nearest power pole) and do net-metering with the power company... the same way it works in the rest of the country.  It was only after I started construction that I was informed by said power company that they would not accommodate net metering (which I still think is illegal).    So I was faced with having to arrange for a very large battery bank to be completely off the grid, or tie into the grid without generating my own electricity.  In the end, I decided to just tie into the grid... at least for now.  I might still try and persue net-metering through legal channels, or I might try a battery bank as the technology changes.  I engineered the house in such a way that it would be easy for me to retrofit.

So for now, I charge from my town's local utility... the electricity is all hydro generated via water that cascades down a mountainside from an alpine lake.  So at least it is very green.

The LEAF is nice enough, but I currently have a reservation for a new Bollinger B1 should they ever actually go into production. 

[9fingers]

Interesting and somewhat typical how the power company wants to be totally in control. It won't be long till you can go totally off grid with affordable storage. And I commend you for the backwoods build.......a fantasy of mine, but I am getting too old to do it. I did design, draw, act as GC and spent the last 18 years finishing my current home. But it is a custom built modular, to my specs, and rather large............one reason it is not done yet...........And we get our power from a local co-op that relies heavily on renewables. We have a large solar farm up on the mountain near us and our co-op buys all of their capacity. And our electric rates are the lowest in the state. My son is an engineering student, about to graduate, and he is fully on board with building an off the grid home in a rural area, to get away from it all when he needs to. Of course, I taught him how to do it. We should probably get back to talking about bikes. Looks like I am going to have some custom cams made and add a PCV and auto tuner. I am guessing I will pick up around 4 HP, depending on if I change out the airbox for a low flow cleaner, and if I want to go to a more free flow muffler than the one I am running now. The Hitchcocks Goldstar pipe is just way too loud though.
9fingers

[GlennF]

With regard to the off-topic solar discussions - in Australia the supply networks have been pushing for years for a fixed daily supply charge to apply to all consumers that can connect to the grid whether they actually do connect or not, basically to discourage people from going renewable.

Thankfully they are being ignored.

It gets better - the current insane plan to thwart renewable energy is to have tax payers build a heap of coal powered generators and gift them for free to energy companies to run, apparently according to politicians that is going to save households money ?  It is basically a shell game where your power bill will go down but your tax bill will go up but some people seem to be sucked in by it.  Note, before people start raving about leftist greenies this insane proposal comes from the far right of our conservative party.

[Alan France]

The standard silencer is the quietest no doubt about that. Noise regulations! Try Hitchcocks the U.K. specialists or Armour. Both do after market silencers but as far as Im aware they are less restrictive than standard and will therefore be louder.
 I ride miles on my bikes with standard exhausts without ear plugs and do not have any issues. Alaska riding must be fun- like a huge Scottish Highlands on a grand scale