but I was curious what gearing combo gave you the best gas mileage. i dont care about acceleration as much anymore but I want what is going to get me the best gas mileage. Right now i am averaging about 150 to 160 miles a tank if i stay out of the throttle. Any tips and suggestions will be super helpful. I will also do a quick search on the board as well.

 

Standard gearing is 17/42
Sprock ran an 18 front for a while, but I'd say a better option would be to keep the 17 front and drop on the rear, maybe down to 39/40. Should improve your distance per tank, but don't forget the gearing will change the speedo reading, but if you go to 17/39 you'll be almost spot on with the REAL speed.
Keeping the bike well tuned will do as much for the mileage, as staying off the throttle and changing gearing......
Staying below 70 MPH and keeping tyre pressures right will help too.
Hope this helps.

 

thanks that really helps alot. I am thinking i will go smaller in the rear. But yeah the bike hardly ever gets ridden on the freeway and if it ever does it is for about a hour at the most. And i have only taken the bike above 70 once and that was when i first got it to see what it can do. Thanks for the helpful advice.

 

also i was looking at cheap cycle parts and the closest i saw to a 39t rear was 38. is that ok or is that to extreme

 

Yep my silver is still at 18/44 .......does well with it .......or at least when I don't have
an extra 120 pounds of luggage on it like I had up in Canada .... needs extra
links tho as you put more teeth in ....the silver has 117 links , 114 links is stock

less teeth ....less links too !

Yeah Herb I would not go under 40 on the rear

Sprocketcenter dot com is good too for kits

and an fyi an 18 up front would require a little dremel grinding
of the rear chain "tab" separator under the sprocket cover

I'd recommend the 18 ........ much smoother chain rotation and
less chattering.

 

+1 for the gearing.

Herb, I see that you are in UT. Here in the states we sit at lights burning gas were as Round-a-bouts keep you moving and increase MPG. I get about 50 mpg on the open road but 35 mpg if I have to sit a bunch. Small displacment engines don't burn as much as these big bores while sitting.

I will bet that if you take her out on the open road you will see better numbers for mpg.

150 - 160 is not bad for these bikes if you are sitting some. You also suck fuel to get these bikes moving from sitting also.

 

Just to let you know that if you never go on the highway or go above 70mph (6th gear) then gearing will not help.
It will lower your rpm's on the highway but in town it will be the same compared to if you drove in a higher gear.

 

yeah alot of the stuff i normally do is pretty local and i only go on the freeway if i am going for a ride or heading to the bars in salt lake city which is about 40 miles away

 

Like Jeff said, it's not going to make a difference unless you do a lot of higher speed/highway cruising. 6th gear on backroads and stuff is almost too much (imo).
I would stay at stock gearing. I like a few teeth up in the rear, but it's just a personal preference. I generally get about 36mpg avg and rip on her too much.
Huh?
+1/+2 is almost identical to the stock 17/42 gearing.

 

guys i hate to be the bearer of bad news but stock gearing on an 88 is 17\43, is it the same on the other gen? and i go on a thank for about 275kms as long as I don't pull the revs over 5000rpm which gives about 135km\h which is 84 miles an hour as soon as i go above this the beast just drinks and drinks and drinks...