Anyone run or currently running small front and large rear sprockets .... I’m thinking 11T front and 55T rear ... interested in how it rides etc off road ....
I have 11 through to 17 for the front and 45/47/50/55 for the rear .... and wanted to know peoples thoughts/experience before I start testing ...

Thanks
T1

I think that 11 on the front and 55 on the rear would win the tractor pull at the local county fair.

What do you want to do with the bike? That's awfully low gearing.

Short hill climb with corners against another rider ..... if you’re first into the corner and maintain your line/speed it’s tough for the other rider to get round you unless you make mistake ...

That gearing would likely have you peaked out at little more than 35mph .
There's a lot of gear changing to get there too .

Not if you take off in 3rd gear...

Low gearing may not be the answer... you can skip this post if you want to... next post will have more "technical" reasons/answers.

Years ago I had an independent rear suspension quad built by Triple E Enterprises... one of my racing sponsors... It was an innovative machine at the time. I originally chose a Rotax 250 two stroke to power it...

One day Rotax blew up... it was a known issue and parts were on backorder for at least a couple months from Austria... long story short, two days later I had stuffed a 610 Husky engine in the quad... had something like 65 HP and weighed the same as the Rotax!

I was going to the Glamis sand dunes a lot back then... we used to race up Oldsmobile Hill and Comp Hill but mostly rode the dunes. I had geared down the Quad quite a bit initially for the hills... same sort of reasoning you're expressing... it felt pretty quick but annoying in the dunes and I was winding it out pretty good on the high speed runs.

Next trip I went to the opposite extreme... geared it very tall (mostly because the only other (custom) rear sprocket I had was a lot smaller and I needed to run a large front sprocket with it)

What happened surprised me. Instead of starting in second or third gear at the bottom of Oldsmobile and racing through all the gears to the top... I'd start in first and shift into second after the whoops... and then hang on! I had to have my weight over the bars and the front wheels were off the sand about a foot all the way to the top! People I had raced previously that were "close" I just flat ran away from. Stayed in second all the way to the top.

I couldn't beat the highly specialized alcohol-fueled hill racers that did nothing but race the hill. I did beat pretty much everybody else though... including several modified Yamaha Banshees. At first people would line up next to me to beat the four stroke... but after a few races nobody wanted to try. Fun times. Point is with the "low" gearing it was a lot slower.



(picture is from an article they did on my quad in the May 1996 issue of 3&4 Wheel Action Magazine... do not try this at home! LOL)

Thanks for that .... that’s exactly what I was hoping for .....
I am going to try the 50 & 55 with a range of fronts from 11- 15 and see how it goes ....
Second gear all the way would actually be great once away from the line ...
Cheers
T1