Hello!
I am a proud owner of a '97 GS500E, until Tuesday unable to drive, then my plates and the battery will arrive.
However, I am starting to document myself to make the bike more comfortable for me. I am ~185cm (6'-6'1"), and the current setup is horrible for sitting on with with feet on the pegs. I have already decided to move the shift arm a lot lower than it is right now, thinking about ordering new pegs since these seem to be OEM and are incredibly tall with all the rubber on it. Main problem I have is feet position, I feel slightly cramped on it.
Back to the question at hand. I was looking into shifters, thought about maybe giving GP-style shifting a go, for no reason, then looked at shortening the travel of the shifter. A lot of the answers I found were related to the rod linkage type of shifter, not the direct one. Would there be any advantages of moving to a rod-linkage, disadvantages, et cetera?
Thank you in advance!
I moved to a rod based setup just because it gives you lots more options if you want to repositioning the footpegs. I wanted to lower my footpegs which isn't a good angle to move the stock shifter. If you wanted a more race style rearset position then you would really need to move to the rod linkage shifter.
My setup uses a hayabusa shift arm, an SV650 linkage and a Honda F3i footpeg/bracket with the holes reamed out to fit the GS500 mounting hole locations.
Thank you Bluesmudge, that actually hits another idea that I had to move the footpegs too. Thank you for including the parts too. Do you think sometime you can provide me with a few photos of the whole setup, just to see in general how it's all set and done?
No easy to post photos, but this link shows something similar using GSXR 600 rear sets. Same idea reaming out the mounting holes.
https://pantablo500.tripod.com/id3.html