[Thumper]

I just remove the exhaust to pull the carb out. You do not have to remove the tank to get the carb out.

In fact, you can pull the slide out without removing the exhaust (just loosen the clamps and twist the carb to shim the needle). There are exhaust gaskets (in this thread, above) if you need one for reinstallation of the exhaust.

To get the rear shock out, just remove the upper mount bolt, and the lower linkage. The shock drops out the bottom in minutes.

I took the rear frame off when I first got my X too. I wanted to check out the structure, reassemble with loctite where needed, but I wont do that again. That is way more work than either removing the exhaust to get the carb out, and way more work than unbolting the rear shock and dropping it out the bottom. The linkage is easy to put back together, and you can drill a new lower mounting hole on the rear shock to lower the bike while it is out. I compressed the rear shock spring to dial up some preload (turned the collar by hand with spring compressed!).