gsxr rear wheel on a post kat COMPLETED lots of pics

[Miyagi]

so as some of you may know i have been in the process of doing this for the last few months and with the help of Krey and some other people it all came together yesterday. if anyone wants to see alittle of the back story here is the link http://katriders.com/vb/showthread.php?t=104904

so it all went pretty painless and other then having to cut off the tab on the exhaust for the center stand it bolted right up. at the same time i put on my B12 rear shock that raised the rear 2" and looks amazing. so here are some pics of before and after.

before:




and after with a rear wheel from an 03 gsxr, gsxr rear axle, vortex sprocket, michalin pilot tire, and bandit 1200 rear shock:

[Kreylyn]

That looks pretty snazzy!

Krey

[KatanaGSX92]

That looks great!

[Kreylyn]

I'm curiuos the feedback on how you think it rides with the new setup.

Krey

[Miyagi]

ill make sure to write up a good experiance. unfortunatly here in RI its still freezing out with ice and snow. once it gets alittle warmer out and i get the rest of my fairings back from paint lol ill make sure to bring this thread back with a nice write up.

[Trackerrrr]

Looks factory to me.

[Bensen]

Damn that looks sweet!!!

[justinboyce]

looks awesome!!

[XRacerX]

It looks a little too tall in the rear for my taste, but it is your bike. I hope you did something in the front to compensate for the ride height in the rear. The Katana came with nice, street friendly handling geometry. By raising the rear that much, you took a bunch of trail out of the front. That will make the bike fall into corners better, but your mid-corner frontend feedback will be horrible, and the bike will be twitchy in a straight line at high speeds. I understand that you raised the rear for looks, but there is a lot more going on with the geometry. If its just a bike that you cruise around on, then no big deal. But if you ride hard in the twisties, then you just radically changed your geometry. Good luck...

[Kreylyn]

Looks factory to me.

Success!... Woot.

It's called a "stealth" mod. It's not supposed to be flashy.

Krey

[Mafia Kuztoms]

Nice workmanship I like it; we went with a busa rear tail and swing arm (upside down) look. We went for the flashy look ladies like it.

[PepeBouchard]

very nice, excellent job. what kind of rear sprocket is that?

[Miyagi]

all the thanks goes to Kreylyn for this mod. he built me the swingarm and boy was it alittle more work then the pre2000 gsxr wheel swap. he did an amazing job and like i said it slid right in with no trouble at all. and i love the stealth look. im a big oem+ looks guy i want normal people to look at the bike and think it came that way but to fellow Kat riders they can see the amount of work that went into it. as far as raising the tail i did do it for looks only. it raised the rear about 2". i did no modification to the front end but ill have to see how the bike rides as it is right now. i do like to go through the twisties a bit but by no means do i drag knees or anything crazy like that. im going to feel it out for now. i like the way it looks alot so as long as its not really bad then i will probably keep it. and the sprocket is a vortex one that was made specifically for me to run a kat 530 chain on a gsxr wheel. cost 75 bucks.

[rhauss]

looks bad *** !!

[loudnlow7484]

It looks a little too tall in the rear for my taste, but it is your bike. I hope you did something in the front to compensate for the ride height in the rear. The Katana came with nice, street friendly handling geometry. By raising the rear that much, you took a bunch of trail out of the front. That will make the bike fall into corners better, but your mid-corner frontend feedback will be horrible, and the bike will be twitchy in a straight line at high speeds. I understand that you raised the rear for looks, but there is a lot more going on with the geometry. If its just a bike that you cruise around on, then no big deal. But if you ride hard in the twisties, then you just radically changed your geometry. Good luck...

I absolutely don't agree.

The overall rake of the Katana's is incredibly relaxed, so even raising the tail by 2 inches would put it roughly in the realm of modern SS bikes, but not excessive by any means.

In a bike with a 58 inch wheelbase, the height in inches that you raise the tail by roughly equals the change in degrees of the steering head angle. That's just one calculation of course. I don't have the numbers for the offset of the steering axis to the fork centerline, but I would guess that it's about par for sport motorcycles, not especially deep or shallow.

All of this, of course, is bench racing. What I can tell you from actually riding, is that even with the tail raised quite a bit, the bike is not unstable at all.