Shock Replacement - 6Th Gen

Question for those that have replaced teh shock on thier 6th Gen - do you really have to remove the rear cowl and exhaust pipes?

No  ..

Good - I didn't want to reinvent the wheel so to speak....

Have to? No. Will it make it easier in the long run? Yep.

Wellll OK.....  I get that now.

Next Question:  whether or not you have removed the rear cowl and exhasut pipes - How do you actually get the stupid shock out of there?

I am at an impasse - Lower bolt removed, upper bolt removed and next step according to the manual - "remove shock".....

My recollection was that you kind of have to move the swing arm up and down, not in a rapid fashion, but to allow the shock to be at a particular angle. I also recall removing the dog bone and triangle completely to get that little extra room needed to remove the shock.

Yes to Duc's post, pull the rear wheel and jack up the SSSA to almost full compression and that actually opens up the area the shock needs to go through.

No exhaust or cowl removal.

BR 

I found it easier (last week) to remove the swing arm pivot bolt...YMMV

Having a floor jack under the swingarm really helped me to slowly and easily get the SSA to the right height. I definitely left the exhaust and rear cowl alone. But the preload adjuster for the shock (mine has ABS) was a HUGE pain.

+1 on the preload adjuster.  Then after separating it you have the pain of re-filling the hydraulic fluid and getting the air out.

I am again grateful to the members of VFRD for the depth and breadth of knowledge.

I completed the swap of the shock this afternoon with only 1 additional run to the hardware store. 

Additional steps if you do not remove the rear cowl and exhaust (ala baileyrock and Duc2v4):

If I do it again in the near future

- Remove rear wheel

- remove upper shock bolt

- remove lower shock bolt

- jack up swingarm - almost all the way up

- remove dogbone top bolt

- remove dogbone

- remove shock

- replace shock

- reinstall upper shock bolt - loosely

- reinstall dogbone

- reinstall lower shock bolt

- lower swingarm to align top dogbone bolt - almost all the way down

- tighten up all bolts

- replace rear wheel

- reinstall all misc bits...

Only tools I used were pretty much

14mm Combo wrench

17mm combo wrench

14mm Socket

17mm Deep Socket

5mm Hex head (i think maybe 6mm)