I have avoided shaft drive bikes because of the difficulty in changing the final drive ratio. Are there off the shelf gears available to do that? Or is that a custom gear order? I had a Honda CX-500 shaft drive and could not find anyone who would take on that job.
Thanks and good luck with the sale.
Don.
More options with Guzzi, but don't discount different diameter rear tires.
I have a huge gearing matrix (most of it useless). I had 3 18" rear wheels, 100/90, 110/90, and 120/90 tires on each. Using the circumference I measured on the garage floor, I figured these represented 3% difference in gearing. The same as one tooth on a 33 tooth rear sprocket. Plenty fine enough for a big hoary twin. Guzzi having made so many models and never really changing the design of the rear gears makes that interesting as well. Only problem is there is usually big gaps (9%) between rear gear ratios (I have 7:33(4.7), 8:33(4.13) and 9:34(3.78)). Combined with the 3 rear wheels, and also sometimes (I should say most sucessfully for my best runs), I use really tall rear gears from a guzzi automatic, a short rear tire, and only use 4th out of my 5 speed. Less chances to miss a shift and bend an exhaust valve, and El Mirage is still plenty long to top out. Set up a spreadsheet, the combos are mind boggling, but usually come down to a small handful you are going to try. Don't get sucked into going too tall. And stock (at least for Guzzi) is usually too tall.
The CX was sucessfully dirt tracked. They turned the motors 90 degrees. I'd go that route. Custom gears are way too pricey. Although I'd look into the CX650 Turbo gears and some of the other models that shared the same swingarm first for alternatives. That plus try multiple diameter rear wheels/tires.
