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Lowering the CL360

Fritzer_108

Member
Joined
Aug 10, 2020
Total Posts
27
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0
Location
FLORENCE
I've had my 1974 CL360 for a few years and a year ago, my sister has aggressively told me she wants to learn how to ride motorcycles. I found a 1996 CMX 250 Rebel in perfect condition with less than a thousand miles on it for $400, so she bought it and has been riding on that for the last year or so. I am thinking about letting her ride my 360, but the seat height is too high for her. I measured it to be 31 inches and the Rebel she rides now has a seat height of 27 inches. If I could drop the seat height by at least 2 inches, I think it will be a good bike for her. Are there any suggestions to do this? Different rear shocks, etc? Thanks in advance.
 
I've done stuff like this myself in the past for girlfriends who were shorter. If you want to get more creative, you can remove the seat cover and cut a little out of the seat foam (electric carving knife works well) in the rider area to help lower the seat height. One person I did it for was right at 5' tall, so we trimmed the seat about an inch and a half as well as put 1" shorter shocks on the rear and raised the fork tubes in the clamps 1". If you lower the rear you want to lower the front the same amount to keep the steering geometry the same so the handling is not affected negatively. My 450 is lowered 1.5" at both ends and handles perfectly fine.
 
One thing to remember about using shorter shocks, the travel is reduced the same amount and the shortness. IE: a 12' shock has travel @3.5" so and 11 inch would have @2.5" inches of travel. It's not exactly proportional.
 
And it’ll be more difficult to hoist the bike onto the main stand. For that matter, you’ll also want to make sure the bike leans over enough when parked on the side stand,
 
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