Just to throw another one in - you could get a lower 'enduro' (iirc) named first gear, but all had a 'sport' 6th instead of overdrive.
Love my lowered 1st gear
'sport' 6th, not so much, would have preferred overdrive 6th like on std GS's
Mike O'll be along in a minute to give you the wallet busting way of getting lowered first and overdrive 6th
Since I have received a couple of enquiries about this - here's what's involved:
It requires the innards of two gearboxes - an Adv one with the low first gear and a standard GS Lite one. This is complicated slightly by there being two versions of gearbox, the (ironically named) "lightweight", which was introduced in late 2002 and the original version. The internals of these two cannot be mixed.
Once you've identified the gearboxes you need, you'll need to find someone who can split the intermediate shaft...
One of the gears - I can't remember if it's first or sixth - is machined as part of the shaft. You need to select the gears you want (2,3,4 & 5 are common to all) and then reassemble the shaft. You then select the matching gears...
...and reassemble the gearboxes.
You will be left with one gearbox with low first and high sixth and another with normal first and low top (in effect, a close ratio box).
So - pitfalls:
1. Identifying two 'matching' gearboxes - can be identified by three letter code on the RHS of the gearbox, near its joint with the engine
2. Identifying whether the Adventure gearbox has a low first (it was an option) - the three letter code will tell you
3. Finding someone to do the work. I've had two built - one in the USA by Anton Largiader and one on the UK by Steve Scriminger. Steve has now retired, but Chad got one built in the last month or so by Mikeyboy, who posts on here. Chad texted me the other day to say he was starting to swap gearboxes yesterday evening - so he might be a good person to PM to ask about costs etc.
Your ideal solution is to find one of the gearboxes with broken mounts or something - to bring the cost down. The Adv low first is going to be the difficult piece of the puzzle to find - everything else is pretty common. You'll want to replace all seals and bearings as a matter of course - plus fit a new clutch plate if the clutch is anything but brand new (false economy not to, while you have the bike split). Also examine the input shaft. If the splines are still good, then the chances are they will stay that way. Steve built his gearboxes so they were shimmed to allow the maximum amount of input shaft to protrude (the length of the engaged surface on the spline on the input shaft is the cause of failure - if they'd made it a cm longer the problem wouldn't exist, so Steve told me) - so it would be a good idea to build yours this way.
The decode on the three letter codes is covered at Anton's site, but the ones you'll need are:
GAN => up to 2003, silver, short 1st and short 6th (only GSA)
GAP => up to 2003, black, short 1st and short 6th (only GSA)
JAL => EVO silver short 1st and short 6th (only GSA)
JAM =>EVO black short 1st and short 6th (only GSA)
Only the above four codes will have the low first. You need to marry up the internals of one with the internals of a matching GS Lite (ie if your source a JAL gearbox, you'll need a gearbox from a GS Lite starting in J, if you have a GAN, the other box's code will need to start with a G).
I hope that all makes sense.
Cheers,
Mike
