16/41: The Sweet Spot!

That’s what we’re going with on the Café Racer for the countershaft and rear wheel sprockets…

I spent the morning trying different combinations on the Café Racer to get a feel for what works best, and the 16/41 gives a real nice blend of bottom end and highway cruising.  That’s the combo we’ll be delivering on our Café Racer bikes.  We will sell different gears, of course, and you may well want to see what works best for you.   Smaller engines are sensitive to things you’d never notice on a big bike…slight uphill and downhill grades, headwinds, tailwinds, what accessories you have hanging off the bike, and of course, rider height and rider weight.   If you’re a lighter rider you’ll see more top end, and if you’re a heavier rider, you’ll see less.  For the record, I’m about 180 lbs.

As the two prototype Café Racers were delivered to us, they had the 14/41 combo.  That combination is really peppy around town, but we wanted a more relaxed ride at highway speeds.   The 17/41 will get you up above 70 mph, but it just felt too tall to me.   The 16/41 felt perfect.   More good news is that you can swap any of the countershaft sprockets (the 14, the 16, and the 17) without having to add or remove chain links (the stock chain works with all of these sprockets).   We didn’t do any experimentation with the rear sprocket, but that doesn’t mean you won’t be able to.

Oh, one more thing:  With a full tank of fuel, the Café Racer weighs 273 lbs.  We weighed it this morning.