What's the best way to raise the ground clearance of a bike? Springs, shocks, wheels, other? The fad is to lower bikes but big guys need them raised and being perched up on a super thick seat or extended forward controls are not the best solutions. Raisng the ground clearance on the already butt-dragging newer bikes will let us lower the pegs/floorboards a couple of inches for a more comfortable and controllable ride. Thanks.

 

A quality, built for your weight shock. What bike do you have?

 

I have an '07 Wide Glide, which is one of the few year/model Harley's that is high enough stock. I'm asking for a 2011-12 Road King.

 

you can start by trying to adjust the preload on the forks by putting a short piece of pvc pipe under the fork caps. Also, some softail rear suspension lowering kits include adjustable heim joints that can be adjusted above stock height. But if you are really trying to raise the bike a couple of inches, I doubt these things are going to be sufficient.

You will probably wind up getting 2 over fork tubes to replace your existing ones. Then use the pvc pipe trick to adjust the spring preload. For the rear, I don't know if anyone even makes a shorter shock to achieve this so if the adjustable kits aren't enough, you might wind up fabbing something on the frame or the swingarm shock mounts to move them forward relative to the frame.

Edit: Hmmm, I was thinking softail rear suspension and you're talking about a RK. This will be much easier. Just move the lower mount location forward to raise the bike. See if there's a lowering kit that you can flip around and use forward of the existing shock mount instead of behind it to lower the bike. This is what I'd be looking for anyway.

 

Let's start at the front. Harley forks generally have soft fork springs, so measure sag and you will probably find you are losing ride height just from that. A simple cure is to install Race Tech single-rate springs matched to your weight, then set sag correctly, which will raise the front a little and give you the correct ride height.

At the rear there is the same problem, of too much sag. In addition ride quality is poor and IMHO the simplest thing to do is buy new shocks. Take the short cut and phone Howard of HDF sponsor Motorcycle Metal. He will custom-build you Ohlins or JRI shocks to suit you and your riding requirements. Life will never be the same again!