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How can I lower my bike? I need to lower it because I'm short and I hate tippy-toeing it. Also will this affect the handling at all?
Thanks
Thanks
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"Stupid is as stupid does" - Forset Gumps Mama -
Cheers,
=-= The CyberPoet -
Thanks for the link: But I'm still not sure of one thing
In the link they had stated that you should match how much you lower the front and the back.
One of the guys said he used a dogbone that was 1/2 inch longer (I think) than the stock ones, and that lowered the back about 2 inches. Then he said raise the forks 1/2 inch to start with and then work your way down.
My question is if the back is lowered 2 inches then why wouldn't you raise the forks 2 inches to match and start from there?
Also if the front and back are lowered the same will lowering adversly affect the handling?
Alot of people seem to think that the answer to my problem is to buy a new seat. Is it because it won't handle as good lowered.
Thanks again"Stupid is as stupid does" - Forset Gumps MamaComment
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When talk about raising the forks, it means raising the forks through the triple-trees, so more of the fork tube sticks out above the triple tree. Lowering the front doesn't do much to lower the seating area, so you lower the front primarily to either speed up the steering (if you're not lower the rear), or to help keep the posture of the bike fairly neutral (balancing the reducing in the back with the reduction in the front, to keep the rake angle the same, thus help keep the handling similar).
The problem with lowering in general (both sides equally) is that your ground clearance goes to crap, meaning your pegs and other hard bits will touch down earlier than the same bike with a higher clearance. If you're light in body-mass, or use stiffer suspension components, so the suspension doesn't want to sink as much, it can help greatly in such cases....
Take this example:
Imagine you're coming up on a right-hand curve in a windy road. You tap on the brakes to shed some speed (which causes the nose to dive on the forks, and the rear to life a bit), then start canting over for the turn. The front wants to rise again (in response to the spring pressure), but also wants to dive (in response to falling RPMs as you go off-throttle), so the forks stay somewhat compressed. With a lowered bike, the ground clearance at this point means that you can't lean the bike as far before you are catching foot pegs or feet or belly fairing against the ground.
Depending on how much height you need to compensate for your inseam measurement, you might want to look at trimming the seat foam (cheap, but detrimental if you are heavy-set, say 175lbs and up), replacing the seat foam with a denser + thinner foam, or replacing the seat with a saddle (like the corbin) -- or, and I don't recall seeing this mentioned, if the difference of an inch is sufficient, think about getting thick-soled riding or combat boots (which effectively lengthen your legs instead of reducing the height of the bike). If you do go the combat-boot route, look for boots with steel toe, steel heal shank, preferably steel in the sole, and a sewn-in-tongue that comes up most or all of the way (to keep water from being driven into the boot under pressure when riding in the rain). I use a pair of WW-2 style tanker boots:
And you can get them resoled with a thicker sole very easily.
Cheers,
=-= The CyberPoetComment
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