Suzuki GS 650 Katana rear wheel removal

[craik]

Does the exhaust (Motad) need to be removed to remove the rear wheel for tyre replacement? It seems that the wheel spindle can't be pulled out unless the exhaust is removed. Or am I missing something?
Thanks in advance.

[fossie]

The easiest way is undo the top shock mounts ,and pull off shocks the swing arm drops to the floor .
Takes minutes .

[craik]

Thanks. I took it into a bike shop a while back to have a new rear tyre fitted. Half way trough they phoned me up and said the exhaust had to be removed to take the wheel off.
I queried it saying no bike shop had to do that before but said ok, do what you have to do.
When I collected the bike, they said in the end, they hadn't had to take the exhaust off. But when I drove it home, the engine sounded like a tank - like there was a hole in the exhaust.
After a bit of head scratching, this was finally rectified by fitting some new copper exhaust gaskets I had lying around. So it's possible they did in fact take the exhaust off and used the old gaskets which caused a small leak at the cylinder head.

[fossie]

It really dosen't take a genius to see that you only need 3" under the Motad silencer to slide the axle out. So releasing the shocks has got to be easier and less time consuming than taking off the exhaust , espiecally a Motad that won't fit back in place without much jiggling!
Muppets
I swapped wheels over on my 650 last weekend and it took 15 mins .