loweering 4th gen 1996 Honda VFR

Greetings. I am considering lower my 1996 Honda VFR 750 due to my 29-inch inseam leg length. Other than toying with the seat there seems to be 2 options. The dog bone type. Has anyone used the Ebay sold Pro-tek Honda Interceptor 750 Lowering Link Kit? It only has 1 adjustable dog bone (I asked the seller to comfirme) piece instead of 2 like other lowering bones I have seen for other bikes making me question its strength. There does not seem to be much information on a Pro-tek brand but the name is similar to Pro-Tec which is a well established motorcycle aftermarket parts seller with a US address and phone # to call for info. These are affordable but that may be for a reason that I DO NOT WANT TO FIGURE OUT THE HARD WAY. Option #2 are the triangle rear shock link plates type with boltholes closer together. The only 1 I can find for 4th gen Honda is Lust Racing. They are a bit more than I want to spend for a experiment that may not work out. Are there pros and cons for either type of lowering kit? Any help from someone that has done this mod would be much appreciated.

 

There is only a single dogbone on the VFR linkage, along with the two triangular side plates. I know that on the 800, you can reposition the side plates (rotate them) and lower the bike quite a bit as my own bike had been lowered before I bought it. There's a bit of mucking around but you could check that out before committing to the links. You can also lower the front simply by slipping the fork tubes up through the triple clamps but don't go too far or you could smack the mudguard when the forks are compressed fully.

 

I see that the eBay lowering kit swaps an adjustable double rod-end for the OEM dogbone, and is used with the OEM triangular side plates. It looks plenty strong from the pictures, but if it is badly manufactured, the most likely place it would fail would be at the joint where the threads begin on the rod-ends. So long as the rod-ends are good quality, though, it should be fine.

The safest solution would be to swap in slightly longer side plates and use the OEM dogbone, but the plates would not be adjustable, so you'd be taking a gamble about the resulting height.

If it were my bike I would probably make some new side plates with the bottom holes 5mm further apart than OEM and see how much it lowered the bike. That would be the cheapest option, too, but you'd have to be able to do some basic fabrication.

Ciao,

JZH