Gear Reduction Question for FL

[Dr. Dolittle]

You are not lugging the engine. Do yourself a favor leave alone and just downshift if you want instant acceleration.

I agree. Just because you have 6th gear, doesn't mean you have to use it all the time. I seldom use 6th below 70 unless it's a really flat road. And it's so much easier to click down a gear (or 2) than to change your overall ratio.

Absolutely agree. Don't listen to everything your friends say - they're just trying to spend YOUR money.

The safest and most economical ways to get the oomph you're looking for are:

1. Downshift
2. Stage I your bike

You're opening too big of a can of worms messing with other stuff!

 

[geezer]

Are you sure about that? I may be wrong but I don't think any tuner can make the 6th speed light work again because it's a function of embedded firmware inside the ECM and I have never seen any consumer level product allow you to do that.

I haven't got the primary back together yet so I'm going on what I've been reading on the net. Guys who have the TTS by Mastertune have been able to get the 6th gear light and the cruise to work again after changing their gearing. I don't have cruise and if I can't get the 6th gear light to work again I won't loose any sleep over it.

 

[Hoople]

Guys who have the TTS by Mastertune have been able to get the 6th gear light and the cruise to work again after changing their gearing.

It is how you change the gearing. If you change the belt sprockets, then YES, all you would have to do is calibrate the VSS to the ground speed of the bike. That's easy and you will have your 6th gear light.

But if you change the gearing via the primary chain, that is Totally different. You no longer will have a 6th gear light. (that is unless you don't care if your speed is out of calibration)

I just can't see how TTS could do via primary gearing changes unless you change the ECM code.

In your case it is not a big deal about the light. For some maybe they would miss it. I like for all the design features to work but that's just me.

 

[geezer]

I wouldn't think of questioning you Hoople. If you say I won't get the 6th gear light back I'm not going to worry about it. The loss of the cruise would be a bigger deal to most I would think but that's not an issue for me. Thanks for setting the record straight. If I change the gearing in the primary will my speedo be affected?

 

[Hoople]

Trust me, I make plenty of mistakes so always double check what I write because it helps us all. I am actually a little confused on the whole topic because I really don't see a reason why you would even loose the cruise control to start with. Since you can I assume) set the cruise control in any gear and not just while in 6th gear, why would RPM vs ground speed even matter. (?)

You got me on that part of it....

 

[geezer]

When you put it like that, I'm not sure why the cruise wouldn't work. Doesn't make sense. I was just repeating what some folks posted and I never gave it much thought because I don't have cruise.

 

[karlsbike]

I didn't even know the new Harleys had a 6th gear light. Is it really useful to have a light telling you when you're in top gear? I would just see that as an annoyance.

As for gearing vs. speedo:
If you change the gearing in the primary, your speedo will not be affected.
This is beacuse the speedo pick-up will get an already changed gearing as input, and the relation between number of teeth counted and road speed remains the same (the same gear ratio after the pick-up).

OTOH, if you change gearing after the tranny, your speedo will be affected.
Your pick-up does not know what you've been up to downstream - you've changed the gear ratio after the pick-up.

 

[dbmg]

I didn't even know the new Harleys had a 6th gear light. Is it really useful to have a light telling you when you're in top gear? I would just see that as an annoyance.

It really not annoying it stops you from trying to up shift some more.