quote:
Originally posted by ZmOz:
Sometime I like to mow my lawn very early in the morning...like right after the sun comes up. My neighbors don't partiularly like that. I was thinking today, my jeep is almost 200hp, and 242ci. With the muffler it has it's amlost silent. My lawnmoer is not quite 7hp, and about 12ci. It sounds, well, like a lawnmower. Why are lawnmowers so loud?? Is there an aftermarket muffler I can get to make it nearly silent?
Consumer level lawnmowers usually run cheap exhaust systems, but you quickly realize that even on high-quality mowers, such as the Lazer-Z I mowed on last summer, that the bulk of the noise, at least on big-deck mowers, comes from the deck itself.
I'm really sensitive to loud noise, and while I can stand the noise of the engine itself (a air-cooled, OHC, V-Twin gas), the noise once you engage the deck is overwhelming, and ear protection is needed.
If you're really serious about this though, I agree with Bror that the best thing to do is to go buy an automotive muffler and weld it up. Cut the pipe coming from the engine before it gets to the factory muffler, and then run some new pipe from the old pipe to the new muffler. I don't know if you can weld or not...but just bring it by a muffler shop. They can do it for you.
Like I said, the deck itself makes a great deal of noise, but running an automotive muffler will significantly reduce engine noise, and on consumer sized decks, the noise shouldn't be too great...