GS850GT Shaft Drive Gears - Available swaps out there??

[Darin Jordan]

My buddy just picked up a very nice low-mileage 1986 Suzuki Cavalcade. Sweet Bike. Needs to be on my "to-get" list when it comes to looking for a touring bike.

It's Shaft Drive and appears to have a much higher gearing than my GS850GT... I'm turning a little over 5000 RPM at 70mph... he's turning around 3,000, or something like that.

We were talking about possible gear swaps for the GS850. I'd love to get a little lower cruising RPM, since that's where I spend most of my riding time.

I'm suspecting that some of this has to do with transmission gearing as well. Likely not going there. But you never know.

I figured it wouldn't hurt to ask:

Are there any definitive lists out there that show what shaft gears from what years could possibly be swapped at the rear shaft-drive/final-drive?

Anyone ever done a gear swap to lower the cruise RPM a bit?

 

[londonboards]

Yes there is a list somewhere. At some stage someone here posted it up. I think it was Steve.

The later model GS1100GK (1983) had slightly taller final drive gearing in the rear wheel hub (I think). When I was looking to do the same thing (reduce revs for cruising on my GS1100G - 1982) I worked out that at 70 mph it would really only cut down revs by about 250 rpm. Not a big deal.

Also consider where your engine sweet spot is. You may find that by reducing your revs you enter into the "bad vibe" zone which would make cruising at 70 mph uncomfortable.

Greetings

 

[Nessism]

 

[Steve]

Let your engine spin. :encouragement:

if it spins much slower. It simply won't have the torque to keep you going, and you will have to downshift to get the revs back up. You could swap to the '83 1100 final drive, but I would not go any taller than that.

I don't know what the final drive ratio is on the Cavalcade, the difference might be in the secondary drive, not the final.

.

 

[eil]

The Cavalcade is a V-4 with very different characteristics compared to your inline four. GS engines were made for fairly high RPMs and I've found that 4000-5000 on the 850 engine is pretty much its happy spot for cruising.

 

[Nessism]

For what it's worth, I put a 2.91 final drive in my old 850 and loved it. Dropped the rpm just enough to reduce the business when runing 75+ mph. It's a straight bolt on change and worth the experiment in my opinion.

 

[Darin Jordan]

For what it's worth, I put a 2.91 final drive in my old 850 and loved it. Dropped the rpm just enough to reduce the business when runing 75+ mph. It's a straight bolt on change and worth the experiment in my opinion.

I am going to look into it. It's pretty inexpensive to do, and I think it would be a nice little tweak.

Around here, it's not uncommon to fly over to Eastern Washington at 75-80 mph... 5500 sure looks a lot better than the 6,000 or so that it usually revs...