[Paavan Shetty]

Hello,

I'm trying to look out for the rear suspension lift kit for my recently purchased Ninja 300 here in India. The bike is still on sale here in India with the latest emissions norms complaince.I tried to contact Lust Racing from the UK, but didn't get any response.

My whole aim to go for the lift kit linkages is to increase the ground clearance by that much little to avoid my exhaust bottom scrapping on the bad roads here in India for which the 140mm ground clearance of the bike was not designed for.

Any help is highly appreciated.

 

[SparkyMJ]

I assume you have already maxed out the rear preload. If you and your luggage weigh more than about 70kg, you may benefit from higher rate front fork springs, and maybe a GSXR-600 rear shock or similar. I am not sure how much ride height that would actually get you though.

Tough situation, haven't heard of many people raising their 300s, but there's gotta be a part out there for it.
-Mike

 

[Paavan Shetty]

I assume you have already maxed out the rear preload. If you and your luggage weigh more than about 70kg, you may benefit from higher rate front fork springs, and maybe a GSXR-600 rear shock or similar. I am not sure how much ride height that would actually get you though.

Tough situation, haven't heard of many people raising their 300s, but there's gotta be a part out there for it.
-Mike

Hello SparkyMJ,

I have not touched the shockabsorbers at all till now. It's just been 3 weeks I purchased the bike.

About bumping up the preload, I'm not so keen on that idea because the current ride quality of the bike is sorted for Indian road conditions (we have lot of road imperfections here in India, rarely encountering a very smooth stretch of tarmac which is limited to the broad highways). If I bump up the preload, the bike won't bounce (thus not hitting the non standard unforgiving speedbreakers) as much with my pillion onboard but will suffer on the normal road imperfections bouncing my underweight physic. If I dial down the preload obviously I'll get a little bit of increase in clearance but that will make the rear end hop under hard cornering which is not suited to my aggressive driving style and with my pillion even with the slightest of acceleration/deceleration event close a speed breaker, the suspension will bottom out and hit it.

As for the GSXR shocks and other modifications, need to carefully look at that option from budget and warranty perspective. Here in India the warranty claims are on the edge (if you get what I mean).

The easiest way out for now for me was the swap of the dog bone linkage in the rear suspension. I'm trying hard to find an existing market product (designed with some validations), but in worst case will make a lasercut part myself and slap it onto the bike and check the results myself. But this will take time and efforts, obviously (from design and try outs perspective).

Let me know what you think over all these thoughts of mine!😅

 

[Topaz]

When I looked for mine, I found this:
Ninja 300, 250R : BurkhartCycle.com, Motorcycle Parts And Accessories
Couldn't contact the seller.

Ninja 300R 2013 2014 2015 2016 Lowering Links 5 Hole Black Anodized Contrast Fits Kawasaki Ninja EX300 EX300R 13 14 Lowered Lower Dogbones Adjustable (buynowroaringtoyz.com)
These are to lower the bike. Maybe it's worth contacting them to see if they make rising ones.

There was also an eBay seller in UK that had them, but they were too expensive. Like $100 for a set.

Kawasaki Ninja 300 EX 2013-2018 Jack Up Kit RAC - bikefarmMV Motorcycle Parts - Germany
These look good. From Germany.

I've heard some people going to a metal shop and have them cut for cheap.
The stock ones are 6.5 inches from eye to eye.

I now have a set that is 6.25 inches long and it raised the seat about 10mm

 

[Ghostt]

Okay, I'm so confused at this point.

What do you want to do, raise it? Lower it? What are you looking for the bike to do? Or not do?

Suspension is a delicate thing to mess with, especially motorcycles. I'm not being rude, I just need to understand, so I can offer the best advice.

Looking forward to hearing from everyone.

 

[Paavan Shetty]

Okay, I'm so confused at this point.

What do you want to do, raise it? Lower it? What are you looking for the bike to do? Or not do?

Suspension is a delicate thing to mess with, especially motorcycles. I'm not being rude, I just need to understand, so I can offer the best advice.


View attachment 116130

Looking forward to hearing from everyone.

Hey Topaz, hugh thanks for the links. I'm working on it. Will update you all about the final decision I make.

Hi Ghostt, I totally agree with you about suspension being a very delicate stuff not to be tampered with, without enough knowledge about it. Also I know while elaborating it to SparkyMJ I might have confused you with what I'm trying to say.

So the main aim here is to avoid scraping the exhaust pipe which is the lowest point of the bike to avoid scary bills later on. Now the scrapping happens at two time from my limited period observations:
1. Due to less GC of 140mm, even at almost crawling speeds with a pillion the exhaust scrapes on our towering speedbreakers.
2. If I have good speed and suddenly spot our unmarked (or sometimes I'm unable to judge the random speedbreakers here) speedbreakers, I brake hard and then start going on the speedbreaker, the pillion weight first shifts ahead under braking and then shifts to the rear thus bottoming out the suspension much more easily than the condition when I'm riding solo.

So my point was, changing the preload won't help in my conditions. I need a geometry change to increase ground clearance in my humble opinion, hence the need of shorter length dogbones.

Hope this answers your question and I didn't make it worse to understand what I'm saying!😅

 

[Ghostt]

Okay I got what your talking about now.

Let me think on this for awhile, need to some math and science 😁

 

[Paavan Shetty]

Hey @Topaz , so I have ordered 30mm lift kit from bikefarmMV Germany and waiting for it now. Once I install it on the bike I'll post the results here. Thinking of laser cutting a similar one to yours (eye to eye of 6.25 inches) to study the results of the same to give me a better understanding of the relation between the linkage length and corresponding increase in GC and seat height.

 

[Topaz]

Sure thing! Post the results so others will have it as a reference.

 

[Paavan Shetty]

Update: So unfortunately that Germany Dealer/Company was not able to deliver me the product on time (my friend was returning from Germany to India) and now my money is stuck with him with no product in hand. So this week I'll be starting to work on my own with some permutations for the Eye to Eye length of the link taking reference of the value given by @Topaz and hope to get it right where I want it to be. Fingers Crossed!😐

 

[Topaz]

You can try to make something like these adjustable links in the pictures. You may find these parts on a hardware store. Once installed, you don't need to pull them out to adjust.
They have two cons. First, they are heavy. Second, if you later decide to put a GSX shock, which is wider than the stock, it probably won't fit because these links are also wider than stock links.

 

[Paavan Shetty]

Hello @Topaz , so after 5 months of trial and error and experiments I have come up with the following: Increase Ninja 300 Ground Clearance | SQUAD-E

So the above website has been created by me to help out other fellow riders of the bike here in India. I got the motivation to do it when I meet a fellow rider at the service center who faced a oilpan damage due to stone hit during his long trip caused by the low ground clearance and the rough terrain. His pain was much greater than mine that I face here in the cities. And so I decided to commercialize the linkage that I designed with the respective center to center distance.

After u gave me a small head start value of increase in seat height of 10mm corresponding to decrease in center to center distance by 0.25 inches (which did not exactly reflect in the ground clearance numbers), I did a lot of iterations to get the corresponding increase in ground clearance numbers and did material testing of the stock linkages and decided upon a material better than that to manufacture my own linkages, as the shorter length linkages will face greater amount of force (torque applied in the system remains same for the given load; decrease in moment arm increases force on the linkages).

You can go through the only post in the Blog section on the website to read my whole story of riding and solving the issue with the respective value of Center to Center distance Vs Ground Clearance numbers given in the post.
Let me know your thoughts on the same.