A couple weeks ago I made a post to the OA about how the exhaust collector would sometimes scrape on tight right turns and that one of the header primaries would bottom out when leaving my driveway.  I had assumed it was due to me being a pretty hefty guy making it ride low.  After talking back and forth with some of the members there were some good suggestions on suspension adjustments and leads to places that could re-valve and adjust the shocks for my added weight.  After posting up some pics and one of the members checking out the blog here, they noticed an irregularity with the forks.  Namely that they were set crazy low as you can see in this pic from when I installed the bar risers.

One of the OA members local to the area offered to help me out with the adjustment since I’m still pretty new to riding and working on bikes.  I met up with him early last week and we talked about the bikes some and using a pallet jack he had handy we lifted the front end of the bike and set the forks back to stock height.  He also pointed out that I was missing one of the frame bolts so I ordered up a replacement and a few spares since they are a hard to find thread.  Here you can see how much of a difference it was.  We measured it right at an inch and a half of drop.  The whole bike felt completely different after this and the enjoyment factor went up greatly.

Today the new frame bolts came in so I went to install it, only it wasn’t quite that easy.  Nothing I do ever is.  The right side radiator connection was in the way and I couldn’t get a socket in there.  So I removed the hose and made a mess on the garage floor with spilled coolant but the radiator connection itself was still in the way.  So I ended up needing to unbolt most of the radiator connection so I could push it out of the way.  Once torqued down, I re-bolted the radiator back up and set to fixing a different exhaust issue.

When I bought the bike numerous folks on the OA pointed out that the muffler was mounted incorrectly.  Here is a shot of how it was mounted when I bought the bike.  The muffler hanger is on the outside of the rear pegs/hanger and the springs are not quite lined up.

After unbolting the muffler you can also see where the inside spring mount on the mid-pipe was rubbing a notch into the swing arm.

So I worked the muffler loose from the mid-pipe and loosed the rear hanger a bit.  Then I tried and tried and tried….and then tried some more to get the muffler mounted to the rear of the hanger where it belongs but I just could not get it to line up.

Finally I just completely removed the rear peg/hanger, bolted it to the muffler then brute force man handled the exhaust until I was able to get the peg/hanger bolted back into place.  Then came the issue of getting that inside spring back on, that was not something I want to do again soon as there is very little room in there to work with.  So here we are with the exhaust setup in the proper location.

So after all that cursing and sweat I decided it was time to suit up and take her out for a good ride since I have had very little time for it at all in the past week since I’ve been busy putting down a new floor in one of my offices and driving the work van.  It was well worth it as usual.