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General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: vasya100 on June 22, 2015, 10:56:05 AM
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Hello Everyone,
I want to lower the rear end of my 11 Cali Black Eagle on approximately 2 inches. I see a lot of ads on Ebay and Craigslist with Cali's lowered 2 inches with shorter ?Progressive Suspension? shocks. Which shocks will fit to lower the bike 2 inches? Any advice will help! Thank you!
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You can drop the fork tubes about 1-1/2 inches. That may help.
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You can drop the fork tubes about 1-1/2 inches. That may help.
Thank you, I'm going to drop the front fork tubes. The rear suspension is a question mark for me, which shocks will fit and what is the safe length of the shorter shocks, the stock length is 13.5".
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Ugh, isn't 1 and 1/2 inches a little extreme? Seems like you would be banging the fender into the lower tree.
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So what you need to determine is at what point the front or rear suspensions bottom out.
In the case of the forks you need to make sure that the fender doesn't hit anything at full compression. You may need some help determining that, but there are various methods. You can strap the bike down and use ratcheting straps to pull the front end down until the forks bottom, take a measurement of how much space the fender has and go from there. Just don't leave it compressed too long.
Alternately you could throw some wire tires on the tubes against the lowers/sliders, snug so they stay in place on their own, but loose enough that they will slide with gentle kraut. Then go for a ride, use the brakes and/or some bumps to see if you can compress/bottom out the suspension, and measure the travel by measuring does far the wire tie has moved. Use that dimension and fender clearance to determine how far you can move the forks.
Now as for the rear, what you need more than the extended length of the shock is the COMPRESSED length. Easiest way to determine that is to ask the shock manufacturer. The next best method is to set the lowest preload and carefully load the suspension until it is compressed and measure. The most involved method is to remove the springs from the shocks and compress. If you mount them without springs you can simply measure the gap between the underside of the fender (at the tail light wiring harness along the underside) to determine how much shorter a compressed length you can go before the tire will damage the fender and writing harness.
It's been a few years, and I think I was running a slightly taller tire, but I think I made contact with the fender using shocks that were only a little more than an inch shorter overall...
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Check out Mike Tibereo's 'Cali Braintrust' thread... he lowered his cal vintage and outlined the process there. I would trust his methods. Might be some info you can use.
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Hello everyone,
Thanks for the advice,
1) I dropped the front triple tree 1 inch, seems to improve steering a lot
2) Measured rear shocks, compressed should be not less than 9.4 inch, so I believe the lowest I can go is 13 inch. Any ideas on good 13" shocks for Cali Vintage/Black Eagle?
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Check out Mike Tibereo's 'Cali Braintrust' thread... he lowered his cal vintage and outlined the process there. I would trust his methods. Might be some info you can use.
Thanks, the forks can safely go up no more than 15mm. The rear shocks can go down to 13". I also went with a 130 rear tire. See the aforementioned thread