Hi. I have my new 2002 vfr. I was wondering if there was a way to lower the bike without changing the lowering kit. I'm like 5'8 and I'm touching the ground but I feel like if I had like .5 inch lower, it would be perfect. I have heard a sargent seat gives is lower than the stock seat also.
Reading between the lines - you would like the bike a bit lower, and your bike does/not? have a lowering kit on it at present. Low/no cost options include physically re-profiling the padding in the stock seat. Its not as scary as it sounds. If you have an electric carving knife, once you carefully remove the cover, you can progressively slice off surplus padding until its just right and then re-attach the cover. At the same time you could use a gel pad to replace a section of the padding for more comfort. By making the padding a bit narrower and thinner where you are sitting can help a lot. This will lower the effective seat height without any material effect on handling. I thought Sargent only offer a stock height seat replacement - so it would be rather like your current one in terms of reach to the ground. However it looks a fair bit more comfortable than the stock seat. I think the Corbin VFR seat is also comfort focused and pretty close to the standard bike thickness. It may be worth calling them both to check if they have any specific lower height or custom options. At the front you can slide the triple trees a bit down the forks (don't go mad, make sure the change is exactly the same both sides, and check the steering moves freely lock to lock and suspension movement will not result in pinched or taught cables or hoses) this will affect handling if you don't match the drop at the rear. You can try out the rotate the triangle plates trick (search on here) which will mostly drop the rear quite a bit and you may find you need to shorten the side stand for stability when parked and remove the main stand for clearance when cornering. (I quickly reverted to stock after a couple of days as the bike felt wrong, but it was noticeably lower.) Thicker soled motorcycle boots may be another answer...:vtr2: SkiMad
