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Unread 10-22-2008, 09:33 PM
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Smithers Smithers is offline
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Location: San Luis Obispo, CA
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Alrighty then! The rearsets have been awesome for miles on miles now. The ONLY thing that I have to complain about is the position of the rear master cylinder but that is resolved by the release of the Sato II rearsets for this bike. I will be able to buy the parts to upgrade the right side and get the master cylinder up and out from under the hot engine. This is the sole reason the brakes don't work well on the older Aprilia Mille bikes. They just kind of threw the braking system together as it definitely screams, "last minute" design, without a doubt.

So if I want to nit-pick I would bitch about how the rear set shifting position causes me to miss a shift from time to time. Well if you increase the stroke of the shifter in which more leverage is applied by the position of the heim joint mounts, then yes, the gear might not fully engage. If you get more leverage on the shifter pattern the amount of movement needed is also increased. This caused me to not fully engage the next gear from time to time. I needed a change.

FYI: I had my buddy Danny Hull trick out my suspension settings as well as the complete bike setup. The bike couldn't be better, long story but it's perfect now. He also noticed that the shift rod for the Sato shifter was at it's full extended position. He recommended that I find a longer rod so that there would be no chance of stripping out the last few threads on the rod with my super powers. Then he started digging around in a box of goodies in his shop and he found a purpose built heavy duty shift rod and handed it over to me. Once we found the correct threaded couplers I threw it in my bag so I could install it later on and also make some adjustments while I was at it.

And that's just what I did. Here is the piece compared to what it replaced:


Here is the front heim joint as I moved it up one notch on the shift arm thus, decreasing the amount of throw required to shift gears... very smart move on my part as now my shifting is my smoother and much more satisfying.


And here we have the job all finished up and ready to perform. The shifting is MUCH easier and I never thought such a small adjustment would make a difference in shifting action. Who knows? Maybe the shift rod being much more stiff also helped smooth out the shifting as well...


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