Nothing Radicalizes You Against Dirty Diesels Like Riding a Motorcycle

I used to belong to Reddit's r/Diesel subreddit. I own a 40+ year old car with a small Diesel engine, and I hoped to trade advice, parts sources, tips, and so on.

A good number of the posts are about people squalking about "freedom" to "delete" the emissions systems, about how they have a "right" to pollute as much as they want, and some of them even think rolling coal is cool and is OK to do.

I personally take good care of my engine, and in spite of the fact that it predates most emissions solutions by decades, it's well tuned enough that I can't see smoke out the back even if I floor it and wind up the engine. After all, a properly tuned engine is one that properly burns all the fuel you put in to it.

So I left that subreddit, and I'm glad for it. That stupid worldview where we are intentionally ignorant of our impact on the rest of the world is uniquely ugly.

Now on to motorcycles: all those motorcycles with no mufflers or with mufflers that don't do much to quiet their engines piss me off. People claim the noise makes them "safe", but that fails to address the fact that if there were lots of motorcycles on the road and all of them were super noisy, the noisyness would lose all value. In other words, it's a solution that can only help a small number of people to the detriment of everyone else, and can't be applied fairly if more people did it. It's selfish.

Also, gasoline engines run better and burn fuel better with a proper amount of backpressure. All those motorcycles that idle like shit are wasting fuel and polluting the air, even if they don't put out black smoke like deleted Diesels do.

It all sucks. I just wish people would be a little less selfish and less self centered.

I will never understand how California is the state that permits lanesplitting while none of the others do. I couldn't handle being stuck in traffic behind a coal roller.

meta: i really did not expect there to be such a negative opinion of people who ride motorcycles on hackernews but this is the second post in a few days where people feel a need to (and are for some reason, very comfortable) very intensely malign all motorcyclists for the perceived slights of some motorcyclists.

it's pretty gross behavior/rhetoric. i don't ride motorcycles but i know enough not to apply the specific in regards to the general.

I stopped riding motorcycles but if I were to get something for the trails I could see it being a diesel motorcycle. [1] I know someone that has the military version and they love it. One could even use biodiesel.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_motorcycle

As if motor cyclists are known for their decency.

As soon as the first nice weather comes on in spring they start driving around in their loud death machines swerving through traffic.

As someone fairly sensitive to diesel fumes, I have to switch off the AC in my car if I get stuck behind a diesel vehicle.

Neck gaiters can help, also move back to a motorcycle friendly state. Ryvid Anthem rider.

the other side of the coin is theres deleets and then there's deleets, mine keeps the cat, but removed the failed, wildly expensive , complicated, and impossible to service at home "emmisions" stuff, no smoke, no noise, runs nice, gets a bit better milage. You can notice the nox smell a bit when its cold, but it cleans up after a few minuits, and stays good all day. What you will hear true gear heads say comes out of the exhaust pipe, is "nothing but heat", and its true, with a realy well tuned diesel making lots of power, you can see it, mass heat ripples coming out of the pipes, you will see the same thing from aircraft exhausts, the other thing true gear heads will say is that "all noise is proof of ineficiency and wasted power" just saying

I cant imagine being so self entitled to complain globally about "dirty diesel" and simultaneously humbugging the lack of right to perform dangerous lane splitting maneuvers to zoom by the "dirty diesel" driving workers delivering the food the pretentious author eats, mowing the grass at his obviously perfect domicile, and fixing/towing/moving the broken garbage motorcycles that are left after like minded bikers are smeared on the ground as a result of their death trap loving lifestyle.