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Bike Stand. Build Your Own.

Joined
Jan 14, 2009
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Location
The Great White North. eh.
I bought this MX steel lift stand made by CRC or Excel Pro for $ 90.00. looks
like a decent quality stand but won't be much good for my 99 Yamaha XT600E. the bike's skid plate limits ground clearance to only 9" which makes the new stand too tall. :ponder:

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A 2" difference may not look like much, but requires a 6" block under the rear
tire just to get the stand under the bike, then with the stand at it's lowest
position (under the bikes full weight) the leverage ratio required to lift the
bike is too great, even with my 185lbs standing on the lifts lever I was barely
able to lift the bike to the locked position, at which point the rear tire is
probably 16" off the ground ! they say this stand works for MXers, Dualsports
and mini's. but really it's more suitable for a 220lb Motocrosser with 14" of ground clearance.

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Since I couldn't find the kind of stand I wanted and low enough to fit under my XT, I decided to build my own. starting with an old scissor jack from the bone yard.

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And some steel.

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Fits under the XT with loads of room to spare.

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The no effort and low effort way of lifting your scooter. : )

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Added a 1/2" x 11" x 7" Rubber Gription/Protector Pad.

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A hinged 1/4" x 10" x 10" steel plate to add more stability.

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Couldn't you just chop out an inch or two on the original stand?
 
I considered doing that and wished it were that easy, but the more I looked at it the more complicated it became and it just wasn't worth it, so I kept it nice and shiny and got my money back.

One of the problems with this type of stand is they drop like a ton of bricks when you let them down, not a problem when your lifting a 220lb 250 MXer with lots of suspension, my XT 600 weighs over 390lbs. many of the later designs now come with a shock absorber to ease the decent, and this was the lowest stand I could find, it's just the wrong application, I can also use the homemade stand on anything from Goldwings to small pickup trucks.
 
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Nice work. I never have paid attention to the height of those stands and I know they make a high one and a low one, but your project looks cheaper maybe than buying one made and you COULD re use some old scrap and an old car jack for it. :)
 
Sweet.

Built a stand similiar but my metal was all a dark shade of rust!
Kinda a cheapskate I guess:doh:

Always good to see good craftmanship!
 
Thanks Bagwell and Greasemonkey, I'm real lucky, not far from where I live is a woodstove manufacturer that doesn't mind if a guy scrounges around in the scrap metal bin. :eat: woot :mrgreen: . It probably cost me more in electricity to run the drillpress than it did for materials.
 
Pursang, where is your avatar taken? Is that the XT in it? Looks like a nice place to ride with beautiful vistas.
 
:hail: your mad fab skilz!

At first I thought those were server power supplies on the bottom.

Dang geeks.
 
Yup that's my XT600E in my avatar, it's a 99. the photo was taken at a place called the Chopaka Lookout on Mount Kobau. 6145 feet up. very close to Oroville. if you have Google Earth you can find the spot at 49°.06'40.26"N -
119°.40'01.30"W. Bagwell do you presently own all 8 of those bikes ?

haha thanks Chirpy it must have been all that time I spent with my tinker toys and mechano when I was a kid LOL. I'm guessing those bottom pieces you mention would fit somewhere inside a woodstove, they look pretty spiffy eh ! all the steel from that place goes through some kind of "pickling" process helps to keep the rust away. once in awhile I find a few pieces of stainless. man the money I've saved on buying steel !!

thanks fastmonstr. that bike is just endless FUN. :mrgreen:
 
Cheap stands rule, a few I built out of some scrap plywood and milk crates. they break down / set up easy and are very sturdy.
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I built this one out of the crate the bike came in!

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A homedepot bucket works great for my heavy pig. Though It don't hold water as well as it used to! The best bucket I like to use is a old shooting or hunting bucket we got when I was a kid. Someone screwed a lazy susan to the top and wala you can spin your bike when your washing it or preforming maintenance. (OK so my riding buddy says that I don't wash my bike)

I run through the puddles on the way back to the truck to make sure my bike is freshly washed by the time we get there.
 
Those are some great very innovative designs!the only thing about them is they seem like they would be tipsy and easy to knock a bike off of. Pursang would it be more stable if you had a set of lift arms similar to a rear stand that lifted the bike by the foot peg brackets? Not being a big Dirtbike guy those always looked like the wind might knock them over.
OK not to thread jack but now I have to show off my home made lift built from a John Deere Backhoe air ride seat frame.
It actually lifts the bike by the swingarm pivot bolt(assuming your swingarm bolt is hollow)
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I just wonder if something like Pursangs lift that had towers like mine that under the footpeg mounts might be a little more stable?
SRAD
HeavyBusRacing.com
 
This thread is filling up with some great ideas for bike stands ! TxSandman I like that simple alteration to the old milk crate thats pretty clever, I always used to add boards to my crates but that makes them too heavy and bulky.
SRADkneedragger that's a really nice stand you've made there I've already stolen all your pics and your ideas to build my own !!! I like how you've bent that bar around to fit into the pipe to lock it, the wider contact points on that stand would make it much more stable than an automotive type scissor jack, mine is solid now that I've added that hinged plate, you've given me a great idea using the footpegs as a lifting point, my bike sways more than I want cause the skidplate is rubber mounted.

SRADkneedragger exactly how does that stand work ? does that shock absorber dampen the descent ? and the wires are those for an electric air pump for the bladder ?
 
The lift is actually a Air ride seat out of a piece of construction equipment.
It has a car style airbag that does the lifting and an 12 volt onboard compressor. the Blue shock you see is exactly that a shock absorber to keep the airbag from pogo'ing/bouncing.
construction was pretty straight forward as all I had to do was rig up switches and levers then build the towers.
My thinking was that something similar would work for you if it lifted by the footpeg mounts. And if you had MX style foot pegs you could have a bolt go through the center of the peg and a nut that clamped on top or if you have solid footpegs you could have a "J" bolt that slipped over the top of the footpeg for extra security.
SRAD
HeavyBusRacing.com
 
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