Im looking at changing the final drive gearing on my 749R to improve acceleration for road use. Standard gearing is 15 front sprocket and 35 rear. As a starter for ten I've been told to go to a 14 front sprocket and leave the rear as is for now. This will mean that the standard chain can be retained and the wheelbase won't change that much. Anyone got any comments on what is the optimum gearing for road use?
As a general rule dropping one on the front is roughly equivalent to increasing 3 on the rear, aside from chain length issues. Your easiest route, if you want to pep the thing up a bit ie make it more snappy in terms of acceleration is to buy a nice cheap 14T front as you've been advised. If you decide it's revving out everywhere and is over the top, for you, then you can tame it by using smaller rear sprockets. If it's not revvy enough for you, with a 14T, the start increasing the size of the rear sprocket until you get what you are looking for. You might have to buy a longer chain at some point, that's the way it is, you'll have to replace it at some stage anyway.
It's very good but I do need to sit in a quiet room with a strong cup of coffee to work through the chain length.
I don't think that matters whilst the guy is experimenting, he wants to find out quickly if he;s going in the right direction and get some more action from his throttle inputs by the sound of things, less than 20 quid he gets a 14T Renthal front and he knows what's what right away. You are correct that he would be better staying with a 15T front and increasing the size of the rear in the long run, but this will alter the wheelbase, and therefore feel/handling of the bike at the same time unless he jeeps making chains the right length each time he changes the rear sprocket. Easiest/cheapest/quickest route is just to drop a tooth on the front and see what's what.
