Gear ratios for 530 chains

That's funny! Bet you got real good at tearing it down.

baldy110 wrote: That's funny! Bet you got real good at tearing it down.

I sure did! It's a great way to learn patience.

I dug through my scrap metal and found the old sprockets, they are 18/40
Not sure why I ended up with a 38 on the last set , I hope the new ones will get me back close to 45mpg's ,
I also installed a set of 76 kz900 carbs last time and they probably are sucking more gas then the originals. we'll see.
I get around 30,000 on a set and when they go you know, the seals fail and they rust from the inside quickly and the chain finally needs to be adjusted (big time) it's a quick death,
I use the Blue label PJ1 and like it but probably not as much as I should but often.

My first set of 530's notice the rust on the front sprocket

By bluej58: I dug through my scrap metal and found the old sprockets, they are 18/40
Not sure why I ended up with a 38 on the last set , I hope the new ones will get me back close to 45mpg's , ....

Perhaps a 40T wasn't available at the time, or maybe you went with a 38T to lower the rpms to increase the mpgs. I'd guess the second reason.

hardrockminer wrote: That tranny caused me to tear the engine down to the cases five times because I didn't know I had one and I was trying to put a kick start on a bike I had purchased without one. Couldn't find the cause of the rat a tat tat sound coming from the kick start. Finally I counted teeth on #1 gear and realized it wasn't standard. It was good practice though!

Andrews Products used to make a kick starter gear so you could still use the kick start with the close ratio trans. That was way back in the late 70's. I never liked all that extra weight associated with running electric start on my bike. So if it wasn't for the Andrews kick start gear, I would have to bump start my bike all the time!!!!

Don't think anyone at Andrews today was around back then when they made those gears.

The gear backlash got me wondering if I had the wrong kick start gear. (See photo) I also realized the tooth profile was different than first gear. But I didn't realize it was the tranny that was different until someone told me to check the number of teeth. That's when I knew. The gear was just slightly smaller diameter than one on a standard tranny.

I didn't know anyone made different kick start gears. That's something for me to pursue because right now I have a blank plate over the kick start hole.