Installing Penske Shock on 98 VFR

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[edit] Installing Rear Shock 5th Gen

Upgrading your rear shock may not be as hard as you think. In this how-to I will go over the basics of removal and installation of a new shock. I think total time is a couple hours if you don't run into any problems.

1. Assemble tools. You will need a basic metric socket set, metric wrench set, screwdriver or long punch, and an allen head set.

2. Place bike on center stand and remove rear cowl.

3. Remove the gas tank.

4. Behind the gas tank, there is a clip thing (sorry for the tech terms) that the seat fastens to (see pic) Remove this.

5. Remove the rubber covering also. This allows access to the clevis bolt (U-shaped) nut on top of the shock. 6. If you look in the following pic, you can see that the nut for the clevis bolt is the lower one. Go ahead and remove both just to get this out of the way.

7. You can remove the slipon if you prefer, but it is probably not necessary. I say probably because I had mine off just for ease of visualization from the right side of the bike. 8. In the following picture you can see the bolts to the linkage and shock link plate (the triangle-shaped linkage); go ahead and remove all of these. (I used an after-pic with the new shock, but it's the same nuts and bolts.)

9. Once all these are removed, you can pull the old shock out through the bottom and to the left. (see following pic)

10. Attach the clevis bolt to the new shock.

11. Now is a good time to take a beer break and worry about if you can get your bike back together... Now feed the res cylinder and top of the shock up through the same way the old shock came out. (see pic)

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12. We then loosely screwed the nut on top of the clevis bolt to hold the shock up while we reassembled the linkage.

13. One that is all back together, we reverse assembled then moved to reservoir routing and mounting. After trying a few different spots, we went with the bracket on the left footpeg. It fits pretty good and allows access to the adjusters. (see pic)

14. Put plastics back on. Readjust chain. Torque all nuts and bolts to the correct torque specification.

15. Check rider sag. Rider sag with gear should be approximately 30-40 mm. Adjust rebound damping so the rear comes up about as fast as it goes down when pushing quickly and firmly on the rear of the seat; but no so fast the rear "bounces" (oscillates). Also make sure the rebound does not cause the rear to come up to slowly or the shock will "pack down".

16. Go ride!