your thought on struts?

Recently, I've really been liking the looks that are achievable by hard-tailing. I love the lower rear end look! I have never ridden a hard tail though so I wanna try riding for a while with some struts.

I now have 10.5" shocks installed. I'm wondering what is the shortest strut I can use? Now that I think about it, im not sure i want to go to much shorter. I'll wind up losing ground clearance then.

Anyway, do/have you used struts? What do you think? How big a difference is the ride, keep in mind im a healthy 25yrs? I'm just gathering some thoughts!

 

For a test ride, a couple pieces of 1" X 3/8" flat steel with holes drilling in each end will work. That's what I used when I test rode mine and it didn't take me long to put the shocks back on (too dam stiff to ride like that)
I wish you luck!

 

what shocks are you using? I was looking to hard tail mine as well prior to finding out how tempermental these bikes are top pod, now I just want to lower mine as much as I can while maintaining suspension of somesort

 

All I did was take my shocks apart (made a shock compressor to get them apart) and cut 1" off the top of the springs. It is about all you can take off the springs or they will be sloppy in when you put them back together. It lowered the bike about 2" or so. I also have a thinner seat (Off a Harley sportster) and changed my rear wheel from the 18" Seca wheel to a Maxim 16" wheel, which lowered it even more. It's nothing like the stock seat height. It must be about 5" lower than stock now.

 

The shocks I'm using are off of a mid-90s Yamaha Radian. They are 2" shorter than stock and dropped the bike a little over 2".