LaMonster is proud
to be chosen as the distributor of the Mario Moto overdrive transmission
for your Honda Valkyrie & GL1500 Gold Wing
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Death Ride with Mario
Funny!
Have you ever got on the freeway or been cruising down the road and said to yourself, "the only thing this bike needs is a 6th gear"? Have you ever looked into getting a bigger fuel tank for your bike? Well this isn't a 6th gear and it isn't a bigger fuel tank but it will serve the same purpose.
After 2 years of research, development and road testing, Mario Moto of Treviolo (Bergamo)-Italy, has designed a Gearbox modification for the F6-Valkyrie and GL 1500 Gold Wing, which allows for both a high performance 4th gear and a true overdrive 5th gear for fuel economy. This was achieved by developing a new 4th and 5th gear for the GL1500 motor with a higher gear ratio. There are well over twenty GL1500's running around Europe with the Mario Moto gearbox having great results, and many are lined up at the door ready to have their gearbox installed by Mario. He had two on the bench when I was there.
I was invited by Mario and Silvano to come to Italy and test both the Valkyrie and the Gold Wing to see for myself that what was written in a article by Silvano was not an exaggeration of the facts. You can read his take on the Mario Moto overdrive by clicking HERE.
I must say I was very skeptical about the results on a stock Valkyrie or Gold Wing but knew it had great potential on a SuperCharger bike because of all the low end torque that the SuperCharger produces. I was pleased to find that even a stock Gold Wing has plenty of torque to take advantage of this modification. I started my test drive on Silvano's Valkyrie.
First, second and third are stock so there were no surprises there, but at first I didn't really notice anything different about forth ether, other than the rpm's just kept climbing. It had great power from the bottom of the rpm range, all the way past what I would normally cruise at. I got on the motorway the way I normally would, but this time I was not looking for sixth gear, and once I got to a cruising speed I had to remind myself that I had another gear left. This was a very strange feeling at first but I soon got use to cruising in the overdrive 5th. I could run 110 kilometers at 2000 rpm's or roughly 70 mph at 2000 rpm. At 140 kilometers or about 87 mph I was cruising at 2800 rpm's in 5th. At the same speed in 4th I was at 3500 rpm's. My speed at 2500 rpm's was 130 kilometers or just over 80 mph. I would pull over and document my speed and rpm's along the way.
The bike seemed to love cruising at this rpm in 5th and you can just imagine what your gas mileage would be. I didn't have a chance to test that myself because I was playing with all the rpm ranges, but I was told by Silvano that if he ran in the overdrive 5th on a trip he would go from hitting reserve at 140 miles, (not kilometers) on the old trans, to hitting reserve at 240 miles (not kilometers) on the Mario Moto trans! That's where this overdrive really shines. Now the forth gear is what I call a do all gear. I found that I could downshift from any rpm in 5th and have plenty of power to accelerate up a hill or to pass a car. There was no lag at all on the Valkyrie or the Gold Wing. I will tell you that 5th is only to be used as an overdrive. The gearing is tall so there is not a lot of power there for passing but plenty of power for pulling slight inclines and driving the bike fully loaded. I had a chance to find that out first hand.
All in all I am very pleased with the way both the Valkyrie and the Gold Wing performed with this modification. I can't wait to see what it's going to do on a blown Valkyrie. This should put a blown Valkyrie well over 200 mph top speed! Mario has drafted a car at 170 mph on his Gold Wing! Yea I know, he's nuts.
This is not like bolting on a piece of chrome or installing a timing wheel and should be installed by a qualified mechanic. You do have to drop the motor and split the casing to install the kit, but once you get to that point the install itself is very simple. Price of the install will depend on your dealer.
We will provide you with all four gears and a new shift fork rod that has been modified for clearance of the new gears. You will have to do a slight modification to the case and one shift fork in order to install the new gears.
Here are some pics of the gears and mods.
Pictures of my trans coming apart
Mosa's first reaction to the MarioMoto test drive
Jeff K's install (first impression)
Mosa's RPM's with new gearbox /a>
For info: info@mariomoto.it