I like most of what the T700 does but at the moment I have no chance to take the bike off-road so the stock gearing isn’t making complete sense to me. 1st gear on the road is virtually redundant and I find myself taking off from standing in 2nd more often than not and as I reach 70mph I can’t help but wish I had another gear to go up. As such I’m going to swap out the OEM front sprocket for a 16 tooth JT sprocket (JTF1591-16RB) which has the same rubber dampening as the OEM. I’ll report back my findings once installed and tested.
Update – 06/04/22
After much heaving with a 2 foot breaker bar and my son standing on the rear brake pedal I could not get the sprocket nut to release. As such it’s going into a friend, who owns a bike repair shop on the island, to be sorted with his impact gun tomorrow! Growl..
Update – 07/04/22
Install complete with sun still shining, I managed to give the new sprocket a 50 mile test and was very pleasantly surprised at what a difference it made.
1st gear finally became relevant on the road. As I pulled out onto an A road I wound on the throttle from 1st and as I felt the need to change to 2nd I glanced at the speedo and I was at 30mph (48km/h) but there was more left if I’d needed it. I don’t tend to blast high into the revs these days, my testosterone levels have calmed and with the 16t sprocket in place so has the T700. In town 1st-3rd are nicely usable and it doesn’t feel as snatchy as it once was.
I throttled threw 2nd and 3rd and it was very noticeable how much quicker you were going in each gear. The acceleration was still great but you were hitting much higher speeds with each change. Keep in mind the Tracer 7 and MT07 use the same 6t sprocket. By 4th I’m comfortably in the mid 50s (mph) and still at fairly low revs. On the island A roads where the speed limit is 60mph the bike was very comfortable in 4th and 5th gears and there were few occasions where I felt the need to bring 6th into play. 6th now feels very much like a highway gear, the gear I felt was missing before.
In the coming week or so I’m going to try to do a video from my helmet which will show you the speed, revs and gears as I throttle threw them as well as a GPS speed readout which will give you accurate speeds instead of the very inaccurate speedo speeds!
Hello,
I also plan 16T sprocket on my realtively new bike (4000km) but I wonder if it will be still possible to set the correct chain slack as you spent one chain link at the front sprocket so the rear wheel should go by 1/2 link toward the front to keep the same chain slack – is the hole in the swignarm big enough to allow mogin rear axle toward the front of the bike even on new bike ?
Thanks
Hi Marcin. No problem with the chain length. There is enough on the stock chain to fit the 16T and adjust the chain slack appropriately.
Do you adjust the chain at the same specs Yamaha recommends, or you leave it a little bit looser?
You adjust to similar specs as OEM, yes.
Out of interest what revs are you running in 6th at 75 – 80 mph? My stock 15t runs around 6500-7000 rpm at those speeds. Looking at swapping to a 16t as well, but hoping to establish how many rpm this will knock off at 75-80 mph. Are you able to help/advise? Many thanks Dave.
Hi David! The revs are circa 500rpm less than the stock 15t in 6th.