‘I bought a factory lowered Tiger’
IAN SOUTER 5FT 6IN TRIUMPH TIGER 1200 XRX LOW Lowering methods Factory lowered bike (but tried everything over the years)
Ian’s overall stature isn’t the problem so much as his inside leg. It’s 27in. “My missus is 4ft 11in and she has the same inside leg as I have,” he smiles. “You can imagine, buying a pair of trousers is tricky; they start at 30in inside leg.”
This means Ian has lowered every bike he’s owned, including Fireblades, a Bandit, a Blackbird and a brace of Honda Crosstourers, before finally arriving at the Tiger 1200 XRX Low he owns now.
“I wanted to get into adventure bikes because I was getting a bit older and with the miles I do, it was getting a bit uncomfortable. But the Tiger is the first bike I haven’t had to make any modifications to. It’s the same height now, from the factory, as my Crosstourers were after a lot of modifications — low seat, lowering kit, dropped yokes and shortened sidestand. It’s down to 790mm and although the seat is a little bit on the wide side for me, I’m absolutely comfortable on it in terms of confidence.”
Ian’s lowering method of preference has always been sculpting and reshaping seats, and/or lowering suspension with longer tie bars. “It’s not so much the seat height as the width,” he says, missing the chance for an easy joke. “But it means everything I’ve ever ridden up until the Tiger has been a compromise, in terms of comfort. Take too much height off a seat and you reduce the distance to the pegs as well as the ground. So generally, I stick to getting the seat reshaped, and use gel packs, rather then memory foam.” Ian has had all his seats modified by cmseats.co.uk.
Speaking of comfort, Ian recalls a time when he tried some new Daytona boots: “Back when I had one of the Blades, Daytona made a boot with a 2in instep in them and I thought great! I can touch the ground with both feet! But then of course, just like a low seat, they put my feet 2in higher on the pegs and it was crippling; I’d ride 20 miles or so and I couldn’t feel my feet any more!”
Ian’s pleased with his factory-lowered Tiger: “My first instinct was to get a normal bike with a lowered seat, because I was worried about the resale value. But it turns out, the market value is just the same.”