No progress yet, I had a toilet emergency that turned into a bathroom remodeling job. I did find a small drill press and some metal strip to use. so its just a matter of finding time. I'm debating whether to change the ride height too while I have the chance?

The early shocks don't have the damping adjuster so you just need to miss the shock shaft, plenty of room for that. The later ones will be trickier, theres enough room for three 1/4 inch holes but the last one will be a tight squeeze to miss the adjuster. Some care in locating it may be all that's required, or possibly go down a size, or even go with three bolts.

Even just three grade eight 1/4 - 20 bolts would be very strong considering the side plates will push directly against the spring mount and will not be in shear. Rebound loads are all they need to deal with and that's just the weight of the wheel.

Its going to work, just need to find a spare afternoon.....

Here is the final solution I used for this mod.
Bearing is a 16mm full complement bearing from the UK with 18mm ID and 24mm OD.
The bushing is a 25mm ground down to a snug 22mm fit in the clevis .
The oil seals are SKF 18x24x3mm + 16 mm bearing = 22mm and makes a snug fit in the clevis.

woodsryder said:

Hey guys, I've just added a few shots with dimensions -> http://s705.photobuc...ockAdjsideM.jpg
http://s705.photobuc...cklinksideM.jpg

I've also got a couple of Autocad drawings, which I'll post later, which lead me to believe that we can drill four holes, where woodsryder suggested above, and we should be OK.
We (I?) use metric bolts at this end of the world so four M6 Allen bolts placed as close to the four corners of what's left, after we cut the useless (as in too close together to use the unmodified DR650 link and its wider bearing) existing tags off. I can't see how we would hit any oil galleries but I would still like to see one dissected.
If someone doesn't do it soon mine will end up on the milling machine and then we'll all know if it works or not.

jatojet said:

...or we could do it this way!

And here are a couple of drawings to show where I'm headed.
http://s705.photobuc...ke-Modified.jpg
http://s705.photobuc...lDimensions.jpg

Damn, I wish I could paste jpg's in to the body of my posts!
Any help welcome.

Let's talk about strength here. I love stainless steel but there's no need to use 8mm thick just because the aluminum ones were. If you're using a 300 alloy, I believe it actually has a slightly lower yield strength than cheap hot rolled steel,.. which is still three times more than the aluminum tabs you are replacing. 4mm SS would be overkill and you could probably get by with 3mm if was a better grade of steel. In english, 1/8 thick should work in 4130 steel, 3/16 in low carbon cold rolled or even hot rolled steel. I found some 1/4 thick hot rolled strip at Home Depot that was 1 1/2 wide so I'll use that to avoid a lot of cutting, I would have used 3/16 but they had none.

Now on to the bolts,.. Suzuki chose one grade 8.8, 10 mm bolt for the pivot and that was sized for an overweight rider with a passenger and gear over the biggest bump they could imagine,.. with a big safety margin. You might think we need to at least match that strength with our 4 new bolts but we dont. Their clevis bolt handles all the compression loads but our bolts won't need to. The side plates should butt squarely up against the lower spring retainer with no gap. If this is done, our new bolts won't see any compression loads at all!

There are no side loads either, so all that's left is extension. The worst case here would be a big jump with a blown out shock having no rebound damping. This would allow the shock to extend and slam the internal rebound shock stopping the 100 lbs or so of wheel and swingarm. This is a very small number, and even smaller if the shock has rebound damping to cushion the action. Four good 6 mm bolts in double shear could lift your car off the ground, we only need to stop a 100 lb or so. We could obviously use something smaller.

There seems to be room for three, 1/4 or 6mm bolts easily, but the fourth one may be a tight squeeze next to the adjuster? I'm thinking maybe two 1/4 grade 8 bolts in diagonal corners would do the job, but might as well use three since they fit easily. Another option might be to use four 5mm bolts.

That's my story and I'm sticking with it,.. I should also mention that I am NOT an engineer so proceed at your own risk. The logic above tells me this mod should be stronger than stock. The best alternative method proposed, needs machine work and results in a reduction in bearing area from 20mm to 16mm. while others end up with only 10-12 mm wide caged bearings and one poster even ran without seals !!!!

macdesign said:

http://www.thumperta...ad.php?t=454005

macdesign said:

Marino,

When using photobucket, one of the 4 fields next to the image says "IMG Code" and has "img" in hard brackets before and after the address. Just double click that field to automatically copy it and then paste it into your post on thumpertalk.

Cheers,
Lukas

macdesign said:

I also like the fact you can choose 2 ride heights with your design.... very cool.

LukasM said:

Thanks Lukas and BSR-1. I'll follow your suggestion next time I post a pic.

woodsryder said:

All your points are well made and valid.
Forgive a humble engineer that knows better but will always be accused of over-engineering.
The fact that I have shitloads of stainless about and I have a mate that loves machining it doesn't help.
We both get a kick out of a piece of stainless that has been whittled into something that looks like it belongs on a Zonda.

What can I say .. Men being kids!
I guess the answer to the age old question "Why?" is " Because I can."

The rest of you take heed of woodsryders comments.
Hopefully the drawings I supplied might be of some use.

Good Luck with it bro

I have done the shock swap and I am looking for a new spring. The stocker is way to soft for me (220 lbs). I see that there are 2 different views on springs for bigger guys, 8.1 and 6.7 if I remember right. Which one turned out to be a better choice. I was also going to order from eshocks but dont know the correct conversion factor for metric to lbs/inch. Also how do you know that the springs listed are 2.5 inches in diameter.

if you did the DRZ shock swap, get a drz spring, not a dr. i am 220# and run an 6.1 DRZ spring. if i were to buy again i would try the 6.7 better for off road.

Uping a dead thread for some more info. I understand it takes a bit of grinding/new bearing/ etc to use the stock s hock linkage, but would it be possible to use the DRZSM shock linkage in its place? Or would that require more modification than using the OE DR shock linkage?

if i remember the drz linkage is a no go, completely different.

for those who have been running the DRZ shock on their DR for any length of time, what are your opinions of this conversion? I have a blown DR shock and a DRZ shock sitting on the bench. I did a trial fit of the shock and clearances to the frame, airbox, intake boot, brake reservoir hose, etc were alarmingly close. I want to upgrade, but not at the cost of jeapordizing some other part of the bike due to contact.