Getin' Low.

[Megadan]

Cue Lil' John and the Eastside boys in your head.

If that doesn't play in your head, you are too old, don't worry about it.

Ok, now to be serious. I finally got around to installing the Brozz swing arm and Fast Ace shock on my Hawk. I had planned to lower the bike during this process, which is why I went with a 280mm shock.

I will have to confirm just how much lower the bike is now from where it was before, but if I had to guess, I got close to a 2.75-3" drop out back with it.

This one is for you Oneleggedrider.


So let's get as close to a before picture as I can. Obviously the angles are not quite the same, but you can see how drastic the change is.


Now, before you go thinking that this was all too drastic, keep in mind a few things. One, that shock in the bottom picture was longer than the stock one. Two, on it's side stand there was zero sag in said longer shock. Three, my bike was actually leaning too far over on the side stand. Borderline the stand itself was almost the balance point.

Now, amazingly, the bike sits at a decent angle. My VFR leans about this far over on its stand too.


The only issue I may run into is if I decide to run a smaller front wheel diameter, which I have considered going to a 19" front.

As far as the shock goes. Surprisingly, the 1000lb/in spring rate works out really well. I did have to dial in a bit of spring preload to get the rider sag right, but even with me leaping and landing on the seat with my full weight a few times it never once bottomed out. The even better part of this Fast Ace shock is that the damping adjustments actually work. The previous shock had about 4 useable settings, at best. This shock has 14 that range from controlled pogo stick, to too freaking hard. I am at 8 clicks from the softest setting and its perfectly controlled. Even my carb points down a bit now, and it was level before. We will have to see if I need to adjust the float height a little, but I think it should be alright. This is the preload currently set where I need it for 2.5 inches of rider sag, which is only about an inch down from where it was out of the box.



Some concluding notes as far as this whole swing arm swap are concerned. I have to remove at least 2 to 4 links from my chain. Right now the only way to get anything resembling proper chain tension means I have to slide the adjusters all the way back. So the brozz swing arm is just a tad shorter in its axle positioning vs. the Hawk.

If you are considering this swap, but don't want to raise or lower the ride height too drastically you would want to get a rear shock around 300-310mm in length.

As a whole, the riding position is a LOT more comfortable. My entire behind can not utilize the seat and I don't feel like I am going to slide forward into the tank anymore. Sure, the handling will be a bit more lazy now, but this isn't really a sport bike anyway.