DRZ400S and DR650 - Lowest seats possible?
 

Hi everyone! My wife and I are planning a Central and South American trip and want to know how far the DRZ400S and the DR650 seats can be lowered with seat / fork / shock mods?

Thank you for your help!
Chris & Sharon

Hello,

My wife and I spent a year riding a pair of DRZ 400S.

Linz is 5' 3" and she could touch the floor just with her tip toes which was enough to get us from the UK to Central Africa. It bothered her most in the sand and on some of the more tricky trails.

We had a custom seat made (Motorcycleseatworks) that was very soft at the front, used Talon links on the rear suspension, set the rear spring pre-load softer than it should have been and dropped the forks through the yokes as far as they'd go (without hitting the bars).

Don't have any info for the DR650, sorry.

On the DR650 you can do the following:

Front - Slide the forks through the clamps, at least 40mm available there
- open up the forks and move the spacer tube. This is described in the manual. Again about 40mm to be found here.
- Run a smaller front wheel

Rear - Use the upper hole in the lower shock mount. Again detailed in the manual. The manual recommends to flip a spacer ring while doing this, but I have read elsewhere that this is not really needed. Apparently this drops it 40mm.
- Make/buy longer dog-bone links.
- Wind off all preload on the rear spring

Seat - Suzuki is rumoured to do a 30mm lower gel seat. Or redo your current one.

Sorry I can't give exact measurements.
Ben

Thanks for the feedback folks! We are thinking to finally cut the 400 from our potentials list due to the world (at least in a good deal of Latin America) turning into Tarmac and the fearsome stock seat height of 37" (at least for a short wife :). But one never knows what other changes make take place before the bike is chosen. Thanks for the detailed instructions and appreciate your time in answering.

Chris:helpsmilie:

You will definitely have an easier with the 650 since it starts out lower and has the factory lowering option built in before you get to the mods that you can do to both bikes (links, sliding up the forks, smaller wheel, etc).