I thought a few of you might be interested in my lowering project; it’s been a couple years now. The original goal was to make it rideable for a lady 160cm tall. I was also doing a lot of miles on the road and the stock suspension was not doing me any favours – brake dive and a bouncy rear.
Oh and I was a poor uni student at the time so I didn't want to spend any money. You'll notice I did blast the chopped springs with a torch to get the ends the right shape again, so I’ll say that this is purely for entertainment purposes and not intended as a guide for anybody to try and copy my rough work.
Anyway, pictures speak a thousand words so here goes:
Special tools are required to hold the internals to loosen the lower bolt... Or some scrap lying about works too.
Heat mandatory!
Topout spring visible, here I'm toying with ideas on what to do...
More scrap kicking about, I have a plan.
Measure twice, cut once.
Trial fit, note function of topout spring is retained, and the spring is what contacts the parts as they meet. The spacer I made never moves.
A quick tangent, I noticed the swingarm had been eaten away.
I then ground all the brackets off the stock exhaust and it still looked gross, so I made a cover using what I had lying around. Still looks terrible but aftermarket exhausts are too loud and don’t last long enough for me:
Anyway back to the suspension. I did a similar thing with the rear shock but machined some acetal rod up on a friends lathe. Note the grooves in the top one to allow the oil to flow from the centre shaft. I’ll note I’m no longer running the second smaller spacer.
The bump was shaved and some air pressure added. (nitrogen would be the correct procedure but like I said; entertainment).
Paint!
Had to bore out the swingarm where I welded it. Used some Loctite 680 to hold the new bearings in place.
Tacked the spacers onto the fork internals. I didn’t go nuts here as I didn’t want the heat to mess with anything, also I can grind them off later without damaging the shaft.
I put the washers back the wrong way on my first attempt, which was a bugger.
Finding a suitable height with an inherited bottle jack. This pic was taken at 40,000 miles.
Had to chop the kickstand of course.
Spring tampering evidence
And then disguised...
Finished
Quite a difference...
Handles great on the road, taking coils out of the springs effectively stiffened them up, and I managed to dial the damping pretty good to match.
Next episode... Collapsed output bearing at 50,000 miles.
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