I finally had a chance to put some miles on my 98 yesterday and it was great. But the bike pulls too hard (tries to loft the front wheel if shifted hard into 2nd) and it seems like the speedo is reading higher than I'm going. I suspect that at some point the sprockets have been changed (dropped a tooth on the front). Does anyone know what the stock gearing on a 98 is? My shop manual has not arrived yet or I would just look it up. Other than that I'm more than satisfied with the bikes performance and ergos. :biggrin: The wife says that she misses the Corbin we had on the 91 so I guess I will start to look for a sargeant.
Karl wrote an interesting article about VFR speedos here: http://vfrworld.com/forums/riding-advice/1293-vfr800-gas-gauge-accurate.html
98VFR speedo accuracy After 48 years of riding, I have finally found the perfect bike. While riding last summer to Lake George, I found my speedo was almost 5mph fast. I was using a Garmin GPS to track the trip. I think the stock gearing is 17/43. I just re-did my chain and sprockets with a OEM kit from Honda. Check out RonAyres.com. You can look up any part. I think the kit was about $225 for everything. It has it's own part # for OEM chain (top end DID) and hardened steel sprockets. I thought about aftermarket aluminum but I got 13k out of the original equip. and decided to keep it the same. Yes, the VFR is very capible of lifting the front end under hard acceleration but why are you banging gears?? Be smooth and everything will last alot longer.
Just to correct a possible missunderstanding, when I said (tries to loft the front wheel if shifted hard into 2nd), I meant that under hard accelleration it lofted the front wheel. I did not mean that I was dropping or fanning the clutch to get this result. My last sprockets and chain went 23K and had plenty more left when I swapped it out for a 520 conversion so I do not abuse my equipment! I have burned out a clutch at the drag strip trying to get low ET's with stock gearing on my 91 however but I still shifted smoothly with the clutch. Since the original post I have determined that the P.O. had installed a 15T front sprocket which explains the extreem performance as well as the ass dyno vs speedo reading issue. I plan to return it to stock as it is like riding around on an XR650 right now.
