Touring and gearing/sprockets

[Jay S.]

I so glad to see some life in the touring forum. I bought my FZ6R with the specific intent of building a low-cost, mid-size sport tourer. I've ridden and FJR and quite frankly didn't like the size. Plus I like that I can ride the 6R stripped down and she is still dead sexy!

The only real change/mod I'm considering (besides hardbags) is changing one or both of the sprockets. I'm confident that there is no problem running the bike at 80mph around 7K rmps, however I would like to bring the rpm's down just a bit to lessen the "buzz" and bring gas mileage down as well. There is no mechanical reason because I'm a firm believer that Yamaha inline 4's are just about bulletproof.

I checked out gearingcommander.com and I've read of a few people who have mod'd one or both sprockets and all seem to be happy. I guess what I'm asking is should I do both or just one? I was thinking I'll do the front one first and see how it runs for a while and then decide on the rear. Gearingcommander.com makes me think changing the front one will do fine.

Thoughts?

 

[See red]

There is a sprocket thread in the mods section, I was reading through it and found most go one tooth more in front. Some people have even gone +1 front and -2 in back, just remember, you will lose the hole shot you have now. I did the same on my Bonneville America and it took a about 3 stop lights to remember to give a little more off the line. Those things were not exactly heavy torque monsters either.

 

[Roaddawg]

Here's a couple good threads about the sprocket topic, if you hadn't read them yet. I'm happy with the +1 up front and think that you should do that first and give it a shot, like you were thinking of doing. It lowers RPM's about 500, makes fwy riding a little smoother, makes your speedo correct and there's still enough uumph when needed to get out of the way.

http://www.600cc.org/forum/f89/1-up-front-great-19157/

http://www.600cc.org/forum/f89/question-about-1-3-sprocket-20736/index2.html