Weather was a little milder this morning so I slapped the shocks on... Took all of about 15 minutes counting rounding up the tools and moving my bike and car around to make room in the garage. Took substantially longer to get the old Beasty running but I finally got it to light up. Much much nicer ride, the new shocks are not nearly as stiff and seem to actually have a controlled rebound vs just bouncing back up like the stockers did.
Front end is still wonky though, so I will have to play with that a bit more when I get a chance. I loosened up the castellated nut on the bottom of the steering shaft as well as the pillow block pinch bolts at the top, but the bars are still really hard to turn (like, really hard!) especially compared to my son's Mini Beast. Still likes to take off to the left... A lot!
Here's a couple of pics in the snow with the new shocks on, not great pics but you can kind of see the shocks.
Cheers,
Stew