22-02-15, 03:53 PM
Hi Noggy - you've just about hit the nail on the head.
When I was racing a Proddie 400 in the 80's, there were some places where you either came into a corner screaming the engine in one gear, or bogging it in a higher gear - neither giving you the ability to get good drive through and out of the corner (especially true for Gerrards at Mallory Park). The answer was to either change gear (up or down) in the corner, which would upset the handling/grip, or change your sprockets - usually going up two teeth on the rear (to save time and cost I only had 2 spare rear sprockets, one with 2 teeth more, one with 3 teeth more - going to 4 teeth more meant the previously higher gear ratio was now the same as the previously lower ratio) so that you get the revs matched to corner entry speed to let you gave a constant drive through the corner. Changing the front sprocket was a lot more time consuming and the change for a single tooth extra/less was proportionally bigger than a couple of teeth on the back - so I never bothered with that.
To be honest, in road riding, I've never found the need to have my revs so precisely matched to corner entry speed, as I'm never short of drive out a corner - thesedays not on the Fazer 1000, or the Aprilia RSV, and certainly not on the FJ 1200 - so that's why personally I think it's a waste of money.
But, then again, maybe I'm the old dog that can't/wont learn a new trick.
When I was racing a Proddie 400 in the 80's, there were some places where you either came into a corner screaming the engine in one gear, or bogging it in a higher gear - neither giving you the ability to get good drive through and out of the corner (especially true for Gerrards at Mallory Park). The answer was to either change gear (up or down) in the corner, which would upset the handling/grip, or change your sprockets - usually going up two teeth on the rear (to save time and cost I only had 2 spare rear sprockets, one with 2 teeth more, one with 3 teeth more - going to 4 teeth more meant the previously higher gear ratio was now the same as the previously lower ratio) so that you get the revs matched to corner entry speed to let you gave a constant drive through the corner. Changing the front sprocket was a lot more time consuming and the change for a single tooth extra/less was proportionally bigger than a couple of teeth on the back - so I never bothered with that.
To be honest, in road riding, I've never found the need to have my revs so precisely matched to corner entry speed, as I'm never short of drive out a corner - thesedays not on the Fazer 1000, or the Aprilia RSV, and certainly not on the FJ 1200 - so that's why personally I think it's a waste of money.
But, then again, maybe I'm the old dog that can't/wont learn a new trick.