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WHEELS

Woody’s Wheel Works Wheel Set

The F800GSA comes standard with black aluminum spoked wheels, but they’re engineered for weight instead of strength, and feel like butter bounding off rocks. We found a great resource in Zack at Woody’s who, notably, works directly with customers to hash out their options and solve equations.

Zack listened to our goals and narrowed it down to a few options before we decided to go with 3.5" wide wheels with ultra-heavy gauge spokes laced into aluminum RAD Hubs. How do you justify the two grand needed to make this mod? First, decide how likely it is you’ll log any serious off-road miles on the F8GSA. If it’s more than 50%, check your record to see if you’ve ever ruined a wheel.

If the chance of tweaking a rim is high, divide the cost of replacing or repairing (including rim, spokes and replace) one wheel ($700), against the cost of Woody’s wheel set ($2,100), minus resale value of stock rims sold on eBay (~$1,500).

Essentially, the cost of this mod is offset by selling the stock wheels along with the peace of mind of not having to replace a damaged wheel. If money is a big deterrent, consider upgrading the front only.

POWER & GEARING

REMUS EXHAUST—Slip-on System

Off the showroom floor the F8GSA is torquey and responsive in its own right, but the REMUS slip-on and mid-pipe add at least a few HP without blowing your eardrums. We tested the REMUS unit without the wide diameter header package ($567) and, as a stand-alone mod, the slip-on proved a worthy performance upgrade.

TouraTech Front Sprocket

An absolute must for this project (and yours) is shortening the stock gearing by one tooth in the front, replacing the stock countershaft sprocket with TouraTech’s 13T. Putting this into perspective, the stock F8GSA stalls in slow-speed technical sections and that’s not an “ultimate” characteristic.

We noticed this problem on our first shakedown of the stock F8GSA and it was an easy fix. The trade-off is noticeable on the top end, though, shaving as much as 15 MPH off the top speed.

Staying on point to our original plans, the URM does not need to go 130 MPH to be ultimate.It should, however, not stall while climbing out of a rocky wash, nor should it smoke the clutch trying. Mission accomplished.