1974 kz400 seat/tire conundrum

[cafedallas]

I am currently finishing up a kz400 cafe project and have come to the sad realization that the little Chinese cafe seat I got may not work. The PO had hacked the rear frame, making this a cafe, not a resto, project. The original seat pan bottom molding had a curvature that allowed for the up and down movement of the rear wheel. This new cafe seat is flat, so I now lose about 3" of needed space.

I've poured through the DTT archives for possible solution but without much success.

The only obvious options appear to be to raise the seat 3" or more but that would leave a pretty non-elegant gap between seat and frame rail or weld a rear hoop and try and find a longer seat that could be in some way manipulated in the middle...

Longer shocks might gain me some needed MMs but not enough to fix the problem.

I know this is a common issue on cafe builds.

The first pic is the seat/tire at rest
The 2nd is 3" compressed w/out seat and the the 3rd is 3" compressed w/ seat.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[1fasgsxr]

Its gonna rub

 

[farmer92]

Ahahahahaha
If DOHC was here to see this...
Is building your own seat pan, with an indentation in the hump to make room for your tire?

 

[teazer]

Obviously you need more clearance, but how much travel do those shocks have?

It surprised me to see what looks like almost 6" of travel on an OEM shock. What is the actual range of those shocks and do you have room for slightly longer shocks with less travel?

 

[coyote13]

I agree, the picture in your build thread shows quite a bit of space between tire and seat. It would likely still take a beating if you bottom out the rear, but to Teazer's point, how did you measure the amount of travel?