I'm looking fora little guidance here.  I am going to get some pretty large saddlebags, so I need to move the turn signals back to the license plate mount.  I started looing at it yesterday, and though it would be cleaner to run the wires along with the brake/tail light wires that run under the seat and through a hole in the middle of the fender.  

I started then looking at how to get the wiring out to do so, and decided I would need to remove the side rails.  When I started to work on this, I found the obvious problems with hand/tool clearance under the fender.  I jacked it up, and started to pull off the shocks to see if the wheel would drop some and I realized I was not sure if the shocks were under tension/compression, and would I be able to get them back on if I removed them.  So I thought I would ask before I just yanked them off and had things flying around, or was unable to get back to a rideable bike.

The other question, of course, is will this do me any good?  Will jacking and shock removal get me additional clearance to get at the bolts that come from the inside of the fender?

Thanks

I did mine without jacking up or removing anything. It was tight and would have been easier if I had jacked it up but it was do-able.

AL

You don't need to jack it up to get at the side rail bolts under the fender. It's a bit tight but not hard at all to get a wrench on those bolts.