lowering my Paso

[Max]

I was thinking about lowering the bike by rotating the chain adjusting eccentic 180 degree so the rear wheel's center shaft would travel up and lower the bike about 4 cm. Does anybody know if that will create a problem in handling or anything

[mika750paso]

Hi Max,

Usually when you lower your bikes rear, the steering in corners comes "slower".
And when you raise the rear, the bike turns much easier to corners.
I would say, that if you like to ride corners with your Paso, keep the rear in upper position.

[Max]

Mika,

If I lower the front the same amount, will it still effect the handling behavior ?

[delagem]

If you lower the front and the rear the same, geometry remains unchanged; however ground clearance is reduced. The problem is, how do you lower the front? The clip-ons won't allow you to raise the tubes in the triple clamp. If anyone has an answer, I'd like to hear it; I'm trying to lower my wife's Paso too!

[Max]

There are two ways to do it. First method is to make a spacer for the handle bar and raise it by utilizing longer Alen bolts. This will allow the towers to be raised as much as the spacer would allow. But raising the handle bar is not suitable for me and I don't like it. The second method is to make the holes on the handle bar clamps slightly bigger than the shocks diameter about 42 mm so the shock ends would be able to pass true them. This way the handle bars wont have to be raised.

[delagem]

Max, let me know if you do this; i.e. boring out the centers of the clip-ons. I'd like to do this too, but not sure how to do it with enough precision. I'm not sure my "die-grinder" approach will be accurate enough! Or attactive enough.... But I need to lower my wife's bike too.

[Marinus]

Have you thought about reshaping the seat to grab a couple of cm? Not something I need to consider at 6’3”
You can also soften the suspension to increase the laden sag. The bike will still be high until she sits on the seat or rolls it of the stand. This will give a softer ride for a lighter person.

[Finnpaso]

delagem, my friend have machined my Clip ons such(with professional tools), that front tubes can be taken out from top(and surely also lowering front) by making bigger 42mm holes to up side of clip ons. But i havent lowered my 750 Pasos front, i only adjust rear little higher by that eccentrical chain adjuster in rear turning it 180 degrees. That fits very well to me, cause i am 176cm, so no need to lower front.

[delagem]

THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO LOWERING YOUR PASO

Ok, here's what I learned in lowering the 750 PASO. Remember, mine isn't exactly stock, not sure how it will vary from yours. YPMV(your Paso may vary)


MODIFICATION AND SEAT HEIGHT

Stock height: 30.50"

Rotate rear eccentric: 29.75"

Lower front at clip ons 27mm: 29.25"

Install gunfighter seat: 28.50"

A couple of notes. I don't care for the gunfighter seat. It is lower (by 3/4"), but it seems to make the bike even wider, if that's possible. It also makes the seat to peg distance too close, I think. We'll have to see.

The front clip-ons trap the fork height at 9mm above the triple clamp. I chose to raise my forks by 27mm, for an exposed height of 36mm. This is slightly more than how much I dropped the rear, which helped speed up the heavy and slow steering. I think it is nearly perfect, but I did pick up a slight wobble in the bars under decelleration, when riding no-handed. So my advice is, don't ride no-handed...

Obviously, the hardest part of all this was getting the clip-ons machined to allow the forks to be raised. I took them to a local machinist, and he did it for $24. Took less than an hour.

Before machining:



After machining:



Installed on bike:


And another angle:



Coulda made the holes a little tighter, but we just machined them to match the lower half. 2mm smaller would have made for a cleaner installation.

I'm happy!

[fasterdammit]

Michael -
The clip-ons look great - nicely done, and for $24, that ain't bad at all!

About the seat - we might have an alternative right near us in Jamesville - Pennon Composite. I'm not sure if you've heard of them or not, but John does custom carbon fibre and beadseat stuff. I'd think he could custom fab a seat for the Paso; I don't know if/how he upholsters things, but there are plenty of leather shops around that would do that for you, too. Just a thought!

Jake

[delagem]

Oops, one possible negative side effect: If you like railing through corners, lowering the bike definitely makes it pretty easy to drag the fairings... I wasn't all the way to the edge of the tires, and scraaaape!

But if you like grinding your own clearance, then maybe this isn't all that bad...

[Finnpaso]

My clip-ons have machined just same way, as delagems, but mine are black coloured.

[Max]

My first idea of using spacers was not bad at all. Actually it was better than what I expected. I made a spacer off of a 15 m.m. acrylic plate. First, I made the big center hole by a hole saw and did the side ones with a drill bit. The handle bar's rise about 15 m.m. works fine but, the only problem is that it is blocking some of the view in the mirrors.

[delagem]

Well, it's Lexan, so you can see right through it; no problem! Just kidding. I was originally going to make spacers out of 1" thick aluminum, and even mooched some free scraps from my favorite machine shop to do so. But then I realized it was going to take something like 8-10 hrs of work to do this approach (hang bike from ceiling, remove forks, trace clip-on shape onto plate, cut out, drill mounting bolt holes, mount on triple tree, trace big hole from underneath, machine that out, etc). It was going to be a big job!

But Lexan, very clever! much easier to work with than 6061t6. Can you post a pic of it?

[Max]

How do I add my pictures for this topic ? I could not find any obtion for attaching.