I am not sure if I understand what a hack is
But since SUSE is a rpm based system, you can always have the rpm as a backup. If you would like to test a new kernel, you may want to install it in parallel to your old kernel. This is no problem for a manual kernel installation (copy bzImage to /boot), but also no problem with kernels on rpm basis if you delete the actual kernel from the rpm database (rpm -e --justdb <kernel-rpm>). The kernel selection is done from the bootloader.
So what's my point: you don't need to backup if you do not replace your kernel.
I hope I understood you correctly