Hopefully, this is the correct forum to ask this. There's lots of stuff online about final drive ratios, but not much with respect to actual acceleration times, and usually it's just anecdotal, butt-dyno kind of stuff.
I understand that increasing the final drive ratio (FDR) will increase torque at the rear wheel and therefore acceleration in a single gear up to a point (because top speed will decrease in that gear), but automobiles/bikes have multi-gear transmissions.
For example, let's say that my bike can reach 60MPH in 1st gear at redline with a stock FDR of 3:1. If I increase it to 4:1, I can accelerate to redline faster, but only to 45MPH, at which point I have to shift to a taller gear. The shift takes time and the gear that you've shifted to is potentially a lower ratio than first gear was with the original FDR. So yes, you got to 45MPH faster, but now your acceleration from 45 to 60 might be slower since you're in second gear. It seems like increasing the FDR just causes you to have to shift more often to get up to speed.
On the other hand, if you lower FDR, you can stay in lower gears for longer and it also has the added benefit of allowing you to cruise at lower RPM (assuming it's not so low that you stall the engine in parking lots or when starting from dead stop).
Basically, my question is, assuming my bike can reach 120MPH with a 3:1 or a 4:1 FDR, will the 4:1 give me a significantly, demonstrably faster acceleration time to 120MPH? I understand I'm using generalities, but that's exactly what I was wondering... in general, would this be the case? Thank you.
