Sportsters...... I love 'em. Light, tight, quick, and always ready for a street brawl. There's just one problem: The availability of aftermarket parts. Although the aftermarket industry has yet to fully embrace the Sportster rider as a marketing force, Baker Drivetrain is one company that is bucking the trend.

What you see before you is the recently released Baker XL6 6-speed transmission for your Sportster or Buell. I've had this one in my bike for just a couple weeks now, and I've got to say - this is THE TICKET for anyone screaming down the highway or wanting to raise some eyebrows in between stop lights.

The unit comes packaged in polystyrene and complete with transmission, shifting drum, forks, pins, low-effort detent spring, a template for minor case mods and installation instructions.

My test sled was my Softail Sportster, built just last year. It's a 1200 XL with a stock 30-tooth pulley on the secondary. At 80 mph, it feels like you're doing 65 with about a 550 rpm drop. The top gear is a .86 overdrive, as opposed to the stock 1-to-1 gear ratio of the stock unit. This is interesting because it gives you barn burners out there the option to drop the tooth count on the secondary pulley, gain about 8 percent torque through the gears, and still retain the stock overall gear ratio at the top end. It's also got a trap door about as thick as the armor on a battleship. As anyone who races Sportster motors knows, the week point of the stock engine is the trap door. Baker's is made of about a 1-inch-thick piece of T-6061 billet and it's about five times stronger than the stock door.

So, let's get to the installation.

First, we remove the shifting arm from the outside of the primary and remove the primary cover to reveal what you see above. At this point, we need to remove the clutch basket.

With the help of a spring compressor from Custom Chrome, we remove the diaphragm spring.

On to Page 2........