jstanwood

Well, this may only help Dutchy, as he's the only other 4th gen owner I can think of that recently ordered a Wilbers shock, but I figured I would post this anyway.

This install took me longer than I was expecting, but I sure "learned" a lot.

Some tips:

-When the service manual says to remove something, remove it. It's tight quarters under there.

-Drain the gas tank. I trusted my petcock (hee-hee) to actualy shut off the fuel flow.

Well, once I sat the tank on the ground and gas spewed forth, I found out that it doesn't seal so well after 10 years.

So, it went up on the work bench, and I took turns draining it into extra fuel containers. (This obviously took some time.)

-Lifting the rear wheel to get the weight off the shock mounting bolts lets you insert and remove them freely.

-The shock mounting nuts are a pain to break loose with the limited clearance there is for a ratchet. 12-point sockets will work better here.

-Removing the rubber thing that covers the front battery heat shield makes removing and installing the heat shield much easier.

There are two bolts that hold it to the cylinder head, and two of the infamous plastic things that hold it to the subframe.

Pictorial:

A direction that didn't work An attempt at having the banjo bolts stick out the front of the shock.

I would prefer this for the bolt clearance, but it would have been better to actually rotate the hose so it went left. This will wait until the next teardown.

View from above Of course, once I got the hoses routed nicely, the battery heat shield hit the banjo bolt.

I was tired of fighting, so I grabbed the tin snips and pliers. In hindsight, I learned I could have used pliers to rotate the hose around the banjo bolt.

Then, I would rotate the shock 180 degrees and have the hoses point to the left. I will check for fouling after the first ride.

Remote res & preload adjuster mount I ended up routing the hoses separately for clearance so they didn't rub on anything.

Remote res and preload view 2 The goal was to have a sturdy mount and still have access for all adjustments.

I also still wanted access to the lock. The helmet lock still works, although it's a little tougher to use.

Final location Final mounting location with one hose on each side of the footpeg mount. There is still room to get the key into the lock.

The ride report will have to wait until the snow and ice clear. So far, the bike actually bounces back up now when I take my weight off it.

My wife helped to measure sag, and it was perfect out of the box. I also bought fork springs to match my weight, but I will wait until after a ride or two before installing them.

I want to be able to feel the difference by making one change at a time.

EDIT: Fixed some spelling and added another tip. The spell checker can't come back soon enough. It does add some extra humo(u)r at times, though.

I really like the concept of these, but I'm not sure I like the looks. For what they cost, I'd want to be ecstatic about them...

Well, they cost nearly what those of us that want and don't have Y2K mirrors do, plus they have signals, so we could be ecstatic. You already have them, so there less "ecstaticity" avaliable for you.