FZRSupport: the FZROnline Archive

Hi, I'm wanting to lower my bike 1-2" so that I can be flat footed. What are my options and the easiest? I've read about changing out the dogbone and also changing to different shock. Is there a shock that is a "Drop-in" and is shorter?

thanks,

My stock reply is as follows:

You don't need to flat-foot the bike. I have a roughly 26" inseam and my 600 is not lowered. You'd be pretty hard-pressed to find a guy smaller than me riding around on a "normal" sized bike and I get around with very minimal fuss. In fact, my 400 track bike is slightly RAISED in the rear and I still get around okay (and that's with an ultra-stiff suspension set-up). If you DO decide to lower it you'll need to lower the front also to maintain the stock geometry. If you don't, the handling will get goofy (some may even say unsafe). Also, by lowering the bike in this way, you'll lose a bunch of ground clearance. You really are better off learning to handle the bike at the stock ride height.

What you CAN do however, is have the seat foam shaved out. This will probably get you about an inch closer to the ground. Also, at the risk of degrading the feel of the rear end, you could back the preload out of the shock which will make the bike sag more.

The answer to your question though would be to install longer dogbones.

i have a little japaneze buddy that rides his cbr no problem

your feet dont need to touch the ground when the bikes moving , honestly unless your leaning the bike over to just barley touch one foot i wouldn't worry about it.

I ran 2003 GSX-R 750 dog bones with the stock shock in my old bike - a 92 FZR600. Lowered the back about an inch. I also lowered the front an inch by raising the forks up higher in the triples. See below:



It's a very subtle drop. I didn't need to lower it but I just wanted to.

Thanks for all the reply. I can ride around fine. I'm on my very tip toe and it's ok until once I had to maneuver the bike back and forth and it was a pain. I'm 5'6" and 125lbs. I'm thinking 1" front and back and I'll be OK. I will look into that GSXR dogbone. Do I have to modify it to make it fit?

thanks,

phudeb wrote:Thanks for all the reply. I can ride around fine. I'm on my very tip toe and it's ok until once I had to maneuver the bike back and forth and it was a pain. I'm 5'6" and 125lbs. I'm thinking 1" front and back and I'll be OK. I will look into that GSXR dogbone. Do I have to modify it to make it fit?

thanks,

No modifying needed. just replace the stock dog bones with the longer ones

Phudeb - If you find it difficult to maneuver the bike 'back and forth', then get off the thing and walk beside it! I'm not sure it's your height that's the issue (I think Brandon's shorter), but rather your strength - if the bike outweighs you by nearly 4-1, you're going to have a more difficult time than a 240lb fat bastard like me who's more than half the bike's weight.

(Actually, with my FZR250 I'm more like 2/3 the bike's weight. Funny story - a few years ago the local race organisers were muttering about an idea to impose minimum 'bike and rider' weight limits for the local 125GP class, around 280lb. I offered to show up for weigh-in with just the front end...)

What Don said - If you have to, get off the bike and walk beside it. Also, reaching the ground has more to do with your inseam than it does you overall height. So... unless your inseam is shorter than mine (doubtful), you should get along fine without lowering it.

If you lower the bike by one inch, you may need to shorten the sidestand. When I did the R6 shock swap on my 600, the stock bones lowered the bike by about that much (IIRC). When I had it on the sidestand, it looked like it would fall over if you looked at it wrong. I promptly had shorter bones made to bring it back to the stock ride height.

If you want to put in a shorter shock, check with Reelrazor. He puts together bolt-on solutions that include a modified R6 shock and adjustable bones. That way, you can play around with the ride height until you're happy with it.