Hello to all. Have a stock 06 carbed softail. Looking to change the compensator sprocket & matching chain from baker using my stock clutch basket gear. The front comp gear is 25 tooth. Any suggestions. 24,23,22. I can get the screamin eagle kit 21 tooth & chain but am afraid it might be a bit to low.Cruising the new your state mountains this past summer, I could never seem to find the right gear. Motor was allways lugging.Thanks in advance, tom

 

I run like 2300 tooling around. It's like 25 in 2nd, 35 in 3rd 45 in 4th and 55 in 5th. Now seeing that my bike is FI 95 with a SE 203 with good torque as low as 1900 might make a difference? I think dropping it a tooth might get it close. It will pick up the rpms about 100 per tooth at slow speed and about 150 per tooth at 70.

 

We had a SE 21T kit fitted to my wife's Dyna. It also has Stage 1 and we had it done to help her ride the thing. It always seemed to me she was struggling because of its high gearing, even in first. It is much easier to ride now and rolls on in top a treat!

Her 2003 bike was geared for around 140mph in top as stock, now more like 118mph, which is much more like it. We live in the UK and while we do have highways like your Interstates we don't use them much, so the lower gearing is not a problem.

New Harleys are way over-geared, to help them meet noise emission regulations. Doesn't make them very nice to ride in my view. If you study dyno curves and compare engine speed with road speed, you will see that even highly tuned engines are way off their power curves at the speeds we mostly ride at. Tuning an engine doesn't substantially improve torque at 2,000rpm. Changing gearing so it is running at 2,500rpm at the same road speed gets it closer to where things start to happen.

I reckon lowering gearing is the first thing to do, when improving a recent Harley! It is also the cheapest way of getting it to go. To achieve similar results with my own ride I left the gearing stock, but fitted an S&S V107T!

 

The 21se is for racing............................the 24 will be fine.

 

My wife doesn't race, quite the opposite, which is why we fitted it! I don't think you will notice a change of just one tooth. Instead of travelling at say 2,400 rpm you will be travelling at 2,500rpm for the same road speed.

 

Definately go with the 24. That will give you what you are looking for.

Stroker

 

Here is why the 24 tooth will give you what you are looking for. The 25 tooth crank sproket and the 36 tooth clutch sproket will give you a primary drive ratio of 1.44 engine rotations for 1 rotation of the clutch hub. The 24 tooth engine sproket will give you better off the line get up and go. Because of the new primary ratio of 1.50:1 (24/36)=1.5 So the engine will now turn 1.5 times vs 1.44 times when using the stock 25 tooth sproket. Hope this adds some validity on why I recommended the 24 tooth sproket.

Stroker