So the previous owner of my bike had some...lets say ghetto rigged lights on the bottom of the bike which I wanted to remove.

I am pretty foreign to the mechanics/structure of bikes and low and behold...the item that this was bolted onto was the "Shock Link."

I have no idea why the previous owner would have mounted a bracket and put it through there...but I removed the bolt without knowing what it was and the bike dropped 3-5inches and now for the life of me and my friend who's assiting me we cannot get the thing connected.

Is this something that needs to be done by a pro? It seems the only way to get it to line up is to compress the shock but that's where the jack is and we cannot swing the shock link back into place.

Thoughts/suggestions are greatly appreciated since we had spent 2+ hours with no luck getting it connected.

P.S.

I did my first successful oil change/coolant flush on a bike though! haha (easy stuff!)

 

Gave you a PM answer too.

If everthing is stock and in spec, you need to jack the bike at the frame so the swing arm can hang freely all the way. All that stuff while line up again unless you have the wrong shock in there.

 

Thanks for the PM - We'll take a look into this tomorrow. I think we kept trying to jack from that triangle piece. We took the bottom bolt out which is what I believe is connected to that shock link.

How do I know if I don't have the correct shock in? I'm going to guess it's aftermarket. It came with an aftermarket exhaust, new grips, scotts steering stablizer (i think that's what it's called).

 

Yea no. That linkage is meant to handle the weight of the bike ~400lbs plus the rider up to 200 +/-lbs and that mechanism leverages all that so the shock might see upto 1000lbs+ on the shock spring. Your not crushing that with a floor jack.

Umm, well if the shock is in spec then if you do as I say then the shock fully extended will be equal to the distance of that shock space when the swing arm is fully extended when lifted as I'm telling you. Meaning there will be little to no tension on the shock at that point. If the shock is wrong for that bike it will either still have tension on it or it may even be too short and the swing arm will hang from the shock. In which case you can still put it back together ok. If its too long your going to have to figure away to compress it that last amount to get it back together.

The way the linkage works makes it so the bikes swingarm moves way more than the shock does. So its important that the shock is correct since the ideal operating portion of the shocks stroke is a relatively short distance.

 

We got it back in today in 5min. We lifted the rear subframe up more then we did last evening and everything lined up perfectly.

Word of advice if this happens to anyone else in the future. Open up the passenger seat and lift from the subframe from there and it should even it up in a second!