| Author | Message | ||
     Thunderhead |
whats needs to be changed out in the front end to lower the front end? i remember seeing a friend do it to his dirt bike when i was a kid but that was 25 years ago.is there a spacer or anything? | ||
| Blks1l |
Slide the fork tubes up through the triple trees. | ||
| Thunderhead |
i can only get about 1/4" before the hit the handlebars | ||
| Thunderhead |
here is the bike. i would like to lower the front to match the rear. maybe 1-1/2"  | ||
| S3ter |
If you lower the front that much you will have clearance problems. Your foot pegs will be too close to the ground in corners and your muffler will be crushed by even small speed bumps. Also your kick stand will not work. I agree that if you lower the rear, you need to lower the front so handling isn't affected but 1 1/2"? My Penske allowed me to lower the seat 3/4". Penske is height adjustable. And I brought up the forks through the triple trees 1/4" which lowered the front by 1/4". Bike handles fine with this setup, but I still have to watch out for speed bumps and I have to be careful how I park the bike since the bike does not lean as much on the kick stand. | ||
| Danny_h__jesternut |
Something don't look right on your exaust slip-on? To me, it looks like its not hanging right? It should be hanging high and tight,level. Looks to be hangin way low at the tail pipe? Is that right, or is it jest me? | ||
| Thunderhead |
its tight,just the bike is lower in the rear.  | ||
| Thunderhead |
heres the other side..maybe i should bring the rear back up a bit and the front down a little?  | ||
| S3ter |
I would agree with that. Steering will be slow with the rear that much lower than the front. Your shock travel will be reduced with the back that low. If you carry any bags or go 2 up you'll have a pretty rough ride. | ||
| Thunderhead |
so lets say i still want to lower the front a bit....is there a part i can add, remove or modify in the front end to get this done?  | ||
| Scott_in_nh |
I am going to be lowering my S3 for drag racing. I want it to take 5 minutes to put it back to the stock height for road riding. The only way I see to do it properly is to get a very similar set of bars with less rise and then adding a riser to put the handgrips back into the same position they are in now. This will give you the room you need to lower the fork tubes in the triple trees.... | ||
| Sparky |
There are most likely some spacers on top of the springs that you could modify. My 98 S3 has about a 3/4 inch thick stack of plastic spacers. I took out the thicker of the two. That made the bike ride a little smoother for my weight. If that diagram is correct for your bike, you could replace that #15 spring collar with a piece of PVC pipe of the correct diameter and keep modifying the length until you get the bike at the height you want. | ||
| Thunderhead |
a shorter spring collar(#15) will lower and longer will raise? | ||
| Eshardball |
Correct | ||
| Sparky |
Actually you would be better off by taking about an inch and a half out of the seat cushion and leaving the suspension as little modified as possible. 99 and later S3 seats are cushier (thicker) in the pilot's area than a 97 or 98 S3 seat by about 1 inch. The earlier seat foam is harder than yours though. Or you could buy a 97 or 98 seat and modify it by taking out some foam, installing a gel insert and removing some width from the sides. As was mentioned earlier, you don't want to risk a crash by grounding the footpegs or other hard parts in bumpy turns or ruin your muffler on speed bumps with lowered suspension. Also, lowering just the seat will put you closer to the still-air pocket behind a touring windshield if you get one of those.  | ||
| Thunderhead |
my ground clearance.. 4 3/8" at muffler 4 3/4" at shock. how far from stock am i? | ||
| Big_koch |
I used PVC spacers on the top-out springs of my M2 to lower the forks, and it also limits travel. Modified the preload spacers on top to retain my previous suspension characteristics. Cost me a whole $2.70. The USD forks are cartridge style, so it's much more labor-intensive to lower them internally, but non-model specific directions can be found online. Just changing the length of #15 will also soften your suspension, since it will simply reduce the preload on your fork springs. Generally not a good idea. | ||
| Thunderhead |
Big Koch- do you have a link for those directions? | ||
| Brokeneck |
Al sells a really nice set of 1-1/2 risers -- | ||
| Big_koch |
http://books.google.com/books?id=F0SpqZbvoXYC&pg=P A86&lpg=PA86&dq=cartridge+fork+lowering&source=bl& ots=tfgkhNuI4P&sig=oKIYT4h6g_QikjNyNHNIEBPjhjM&hl= en&ei=Ev6cSeX6NoiiNdvEyZkF&sa=X&oi=book_result&res num=1&ct=result#PPA87,M1 There's one of a couple I found when looking into lowering my M2 forks. It's an excerpt on Google from "How to Modify Your Metric Cruiser" I'm not sure how well it relates to your specific fork internals, but it'll give you a general idea. |
