Being a 6'8" 300lb bandit rider, who likes to bike camp (picture below) its about time I relief that poor poor stock shock with something a bit stronger. This picture makes me laugh, you have to feel sorry for that bike!
Before I get started, I should mention that Bill over at bladesbandit.com has a great shock swap howto also. Here is a link to his instructions:
http://www.bladesbandit.com/prorearshock.htm If you are planning on swapping your shock, I would read his instructions first, as they are more detailed than mine.
I thought my howto might be useful for those of us that are specifically retrofitting our bandit 1200s with GSXR 1100 shocks. A quick disclaimer: I am by no means an expert with this. Just a banditalley'er armed with a digital camera and a gsxr shock. This is my first time doing such a swap, there probably is another 10 ways to do this, but my method described below worked best for me! The pictures are probably more important that anything I have to say so you won't hurt my feels if you skip below!
To pull my stock shock out, I could either have remove the dog bones, and the bolts connecting the bottem of the shock as Bill does in the above url. I decided, instead, to remove the shock from the top. So I had to remove the airbox, which inturn, meant I had to remove the carbs and pull the shock out from the top. The main reason I did this was because the dog bones could not easily be removed due to the permenant lock tight used by the previous owner or factory.
Here is a picture of the 1993 GSXR 1100 shock and the stocker. Notice the 1100 shock with the reservoir is a bit longer.
Placement of the GSXR shock must have the resovoir tube bolt facing towards the rear wheel as shown below. Otherwise the nut will hit the frame.
The only small amount of grinding that was necessary was done on the replacement GSXR shock, not to the bikes frame or other OEM parts. The stock airbox did not need any modification for this shock to fit (This is comforting to me as the GSXR 1100 shock was only $40!)
On to the grinding. In order to get the bottem holes lined up a small amount of filing is necessary. It can be done by hand, with any ole file.
This is what it looked like after I got it to fit.
I placed my reservoir in my tool area for now. I will mount it nicer later.
RESULTSThe shock was definitly worth the trouble. I noticed it really made my steering faster and serves my freakishly large body a lot better. I also noticed that I didn't feel like I was sinking into the bike when I did a 2 second gear roll on.
If you have pod filters, you could have done this swap much faster than I did. Pulling the airbox off is a pain in the butt and took a bit of time. I ended up spending an entire afternoon doing this, but I am sure many of you, with more experience than I, could do this in a hour or two.
Those of you who are a bit lighter than me might want to go with a GSXR 750 shock or, of course, the nice progressives. But for the $40, I spent on this one, I think it was well worth it! Here are some more pictures. The red bike is my gixxified bike with my new shock, and the goldish/greyish/silver is landshark's stocker. Sorry my Givi monorack is in the way but you get an idea of seat height. Also, notice I can put my center stand down, but the rear wheel isn't completely off the ground. It is very close.
I hope this helps someone!
Topic: GSXR 1100 Rear Shock Swap Howto for a 1st Gen Bandit 1200 (Read 9382 times)