Lowering the Ninja 400

There is an internet forum for owners of the Kawasaki Ninja 400 that I have been lurking on since the bike came out, and it just so happened that there was a recent thread on mods for short riders.  One of the posters referenced a lowering link kit sold by a company called "Roaring Toys".  I looked them up and saw that the kit consisted of a couple of multi-adjustable pieces that replace the "dog bones" in the rear shock linkage plus an adjustable side stand to make up for the loss of lean in the bike when significantly lowered.  The problem was, this kit cost $273!  I figured I could make the dog bones myself and, if I lowered the bike only an inch, I could maybe still use the stock side stand.  I had two problems I had to solve; one was to find out how to safely remove the dog bones, and the other was to determine the length of the ones I was going to make that would result in the desired one inch of lowering.  I found a video on YouTube that showed how to remove the dog bones, and it had some really helpful information.  Then, while searching Ebay for possible cheaper options, I found a guy who was selling some that he made.  He still wanted too much money, but he made the mistake of giving the dimensions for lowering the bike an inch.  I had what I needed. 

It used to be that one of the first purchases I made whenever I bought a new car or motorcycle was to buy the service manual for the vehicle.  I quit doing that for cars quite a few years ago when the service manual became a couple of inch-thick volumes that became so technical and required so much specialized equipment, plus cost close to $100.  I did buy a service manual for my cbr500, but I'm not buying one for the Kawasaki.  I think you can find out just about all you need to know from YouTube videos.  Some are not so good, but some are excellent. 

So the first step was to support the bike in a way that took all load off the rear shock, like this:

And here is where the dog bones are located:

And this is why they are called dog bones:

I went to the local Ace hardware and bought a piece of 3/16 X 1.25 inch steel and made my own, which don't have the dog bone shape, but do the job.  It turns out that to lower the bike an inch, the links need to be a half inch longer than stock......I had sort of assumed they would be shorter, but it's due to the geometry of the shock linkage.  Here are the new ones, painted and installed:

It's not enough to just lower the rear suspension as that changes the steering geometry.  You need to also lower the front of the bike.  This is done by sliding the fork tubes up in the triple clamps.  This was the stock setting:

And this is after:

I only lowered the front 5/8 of an inch.  It seems like plenty, and I was getting concerned about the side stand being too long.  I will have to do some riding to see if more adjustment is needed and how well the side stand works.  It's fine on my level garage floor, but in the real world it may be a problem.  If it is, I can cut the foot off and then cut some out of the side stand and re-weld the foot back on. 

After all was done I measured the seat height and it went from a measured 30.5 inches to 29.5, so it is exactly one inch lower.  It is very noticeable when sitting on the bike and I think Jenny will love it.  For myself, maybe I can finally drag the foot peg feelers when cornering. 

I had texted Jenny before I did this and said I thought I could lower the bike.  She said it sounded like a lot of work, but this is just the kind of stuff I like to do.