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Brake geometry change

  • Thread starter Thread starter Macguyver
  • Start date Start date
M

Macguyver

Guest
I have been kicking around the idea of relocating the rear shock mounts in an effort to clean up the look of the rear end of my bike and to get more suspension travel. I was wondering if anyone could tell me if this will adversly affect the on-road handling.

Here is a photochopped image of what I was considering.
I am not really keen on the location, it's just the first one that came to mind, since the travel distance is only about an inch shorter I believe.

I just want to make sure I don't run out of travel on the shaft drive.

I did not think to check this when I originally replaced the shocks. Does anyone have an idea of how much travel the shaft drive would have below the normal travel range, in case I decide to lift the rear end by an inch or so?

Or would this be an epic-level bad mistake?

For the amount of work involved, I may just end up going monoshock on the rear.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.
 
Macguyver said:
I have been kicking around the idea of relocating the rear shock mounts in an effort to clean up the look of the rear end of my bike and to get more suspension travel. I was wondering if anyone could tell me if this will adversly affect the on-road handling.

Here is a photochopped image of what I was considering.
I am not really keen on the location, it's just the first one that came to mind, since the travel distance is only about an inch shorter I believe.

I just want to make sure I don't run out of travel on the shaft drive.

I did not think to check this when I originally replaced the shocks. Does anyone have an idea of how much travel the shaft drive would have below the normal travel range, in case I decide to lift the rear end by an inch or so?

Or would this be an epic-level bad mistake?

For the amount of work involved, I may just end up going mono shock on the rear.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Click to expand...

If you study the structural strength of the frame , you will realize that the upper shock mount is a reinforced mount designed to car the weight of the bike. If you wanted to change travel, it would make more sense to move the lower shock mount (a simple reweld) rather than move the upper, because you would only need to move a few inches in the first place.

You are correct in thinking about mono shock, because if you want to modify the rear shock geometry by more than a few inches, then the next logical move is to mono shock as the required shock stroke will find you there.
 
Three things come to mind straight away

First the area in which you have shown the new top mount location is not really designed to take the suspension forces involved

Second with the shocks at that sort of angle they will have a tendancy to want to bend or pivot rather than compress, at best you would end up with a hardtail & at worst something will break

Last to get more suspension travel you can lower the top shock mount or raise the bottom swingarm mount but you should try to keep the shock angle near enough the same for the reasons described above, as you rightly say my main concern with this would be running out of movement on the shaft UJ. you would need to check this very carefully at BOTH extremes of suspension movement, from memory 33 degrees is the max movement from the horizontal but check it to be sure

tone :)
 
Shock-ing

Shock-ing

From what I have discovered so far, I believe my best bet is to go monoshock. So that means it will be while before I attempt this.

Even after reinforcing the new mount location, and trying to keep the angles as close as I can for the shocks, it seems like the time invested would be better spent remanufacturing the rear for a monoshock.

So for now, the ol' girl will stay as is. Maybe next winter I will do something about the rear end. Until then I'll just keep telling her that her butt doesn't look big with those shocks, and trudge onward.

Thanks to those who responded, you helped me make up my mind on this.
 
If it's simply lowering you want shorter shocks seems an easy logical interim step to a monoshock....

Dan :)
 
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