Knifemaker
Not me
I have decided to come out of the closet here and risk humiliation, teasing, and the usual grief by saying publicly that I can not get it up..... my bike that is, on the centerstand. (And please refrain from jokes off that phrasing , as my , uh, male unit is working fine) But I have not ever been able to get the bike up on the centerstand by myself, and even had a problem with my previous bike , a VN750.
Also refrain from suggesting I just lack the proper technique or don't understand the proceedure. I have successfully instructed others on what to do, only to see them succeed while I still fail. It is not a question of knowing what to do, but I am afraid a simple matter of a few issues working against me.
First off is the fact that I have a lower back problem that makes it difficult to pull or pick up anything if I am just slightly bent over. A possition one needs to assume when reaching for the right handhold under the seat when attempting centerstand deployment.
The next issue , which I feel is the key to my problem , is the fact that soaking wet, I doubt I tip the scales over 150 lbs. I have seen others use their centerstands and have noticed that when they step on the footpad, the bike seems to go up. When I do so , the bike stays on the ground and I find myself standing on the deployment arm with all my weight with no other result. So I simply lack the mass.
Well, this whole thing really is not a problem for me, as there is no real reason for me to use the centerstand anyway. Oil changes are done on the sidestand quite simply, there is no chain to lube or adjust, and I alway felt the bike was more stable on the sidestand when parking it anyway.
There is however one real need to have the bike on the centerstand, and that is when it comes time to remove one of the wheels. Which , several weeks ago I found myself needing to do, as I finally got tired of folks telling me "Racing slicks are not street legal" and having to explain the the rear tire did in fact have tread of some kind on it, it just wore off.
As the PR2 seemed to be the a favorite here at the moment, I ordered said tire from my dealer and was told that it would cost me only 35 bucks for them to mount it, balance it, and dispose of old one.....provided I just brought in the wheel and not the whole bike. For them to remove and replace the wheel was an additional fee that was way more than I would wish to pay ....when I know I am quite able to remove a wheel by myself.
This of course solely dependant on me being able to get the bike up on the centerstand. Something I had not yet , after many tries, accomplished. But was sure I'd figure something out , so an appointment was made for the Monlday after Easter , giving me that sunday to pull the wheel.
Well , sunday found me in the garage examining options. I had tried winching the rear up via a hook on a overhead beam and a cheap 1" ratcheting tiedown strap. Unfortunetly the stamped metal handle on the strap was no match for the weight of the FJR and began to deform long before any significant movement up occoured. Perhaps a heavier duty model would have worked, but I did not have one.
The obvous choice here was just to seek help. Go interupt my neighbors Easter dinner and say, hey, can you help me put my bike on it's stand? Would have likely done the trick, but I was over-ridden with a desire to figure out how to do this all by myself. I sat down and thought of the problem logicly by understanding exactly what caused the bike to go up in the first place.
Leverage, pure and simple. The arm of the centerstand is merely a lever with the two feet that touch the ground as a fulcrum. You push down , the bike goes up. There are only two ways to improve the mechinical advantage of the system, one is to make the lever arm longer , and the other is to add more mass to it. I then saw that if this were true, I could just ask my wife to climb on my back and the added weight now available to my right foot should pop the damn thing up easily. But that would again make me dependant on help and I wanted to do this myself.
So, the answer was to just make the lever longer. I searched around the garage for any possible item that might be able to be used as an extension of the stock part. The foot pad on the arm is 1-1/2 inches wide, so a length of pipe would need that as an ID to fit. No pipe about however, but then I saw a short piece of uni-strut I had rescued from the scrap at work. I was going to use it to mount a heavy fixture to some drywall but that project was cancelled. The piece I had was about 2 feet long, and 1-5/8 x 1-5/8" on the sides. For those who do not know what uni-strut is, it is basicly a U shaped channel made from 12 gauge steel....thus one side is open. Photo:
I took the piece and it seemed to fit over the centerstands arm fine, and only took a bit of adjusting to make sure it would not slip off, as the open side needed to face just right.
I then went through the SOP for putting the bike on the centerstand, pushed the bike up straight, with left hand on the left grip. I them placed my right foot on the end of the strut and as I reached down with my right hand to get a hold of the cutout under the seat....my weight shifted to my right foot...the end of the strut went down and the bike jumped up on the stand with a clunk before my right had ever got there.
Awesome. Not ready to re-test until I got my new tire mounted and placed on the bike, I went ahead with the wheel removal.
Well after getting my tire installed and the wheel safely replaced back on the bike, I went ahead and repeated the centerstand deployment several times with the newly found extension in place to make sure the first time was not a fluke. It worked insanely well each time and after learning exactly how to place it on the stock arm it became fast to do. I was concerned the first time that the strut would get pinned to the ground with the stand down, or get stuck on the arm itself, but a gentle kick with my toe to the strut knocked it loose easily. A photo of it on the stand after the bike got up :
I really can't tell you how wonderfull this is for me, or how helpfull this might be for others that suffer the same problem I do. From what I can tell , one can buy a 4 foot piece of the same unistrut I used from McMaster Carr for about 5 bucks...enough for two extensions. I also see they sell extruded square tubing that fits inside the standard 1-5/8 X1-5/8 unistrut that would make a tellescopic version of this possible, short enough to fit in a sidecase.
If I had the time right now I would work it out and sell them....perhaps someone else can run with this instead?
Anyway, I hope this info is usefull for others and I know this just got added to my own "farkle of the year" list.
KM
Also refrain from suggesting I just lack the proper technique or don't understand the proceedure. I have successfully instructed others on what to do, only to see them succeed while I still fail. It is not a question of knowing what to do, but I am afraid a simple matter of a few issues working against me.
First off is the fact that I have a lower back problem that makes it difficult to pull or pick up anything if I am just slightly bent over. A possition one needs to assume when reaching for the right handhold under the seat when attempting centerstand deployment.
The next issue , which I feel is the key to my problem , is the fact that soaking wet, I doubt I tip the scales over 150 lbs. I have seen others use their centerstands and have noticed that when they step on the footpad, the bike seems to go up. When I do so , the bike stays on the ground and I find myself standing on the deployment arm with all my weight with no other result. So I simply lack the mass.
Well, this whole thing really is not a problem for me, as there is no real reason for me to use the centerstand anyway. Oil changes are done on the sidestand quite simply, there is no chain to lube or adjust, and I alway felt the bike was more stable on the sidestand when parking it anyway.
There is however one real need to have the bike on the centerstand, and that is when it comes time to remove one of the wheels. Which , several weeks ago I found myself needing to do, as I finally got tired of folks telling me "Racing slicks are not street legal" and having to explain the the rear tire did in fact have tread of some kind on it, it just wore off.
As the PR2 seemed to be the a favorite here at the moment, I ordered said tire from my dealer and was told that it would cost me only 35 bucks for them to mount it, balance it, and dispose of old one.....provided I just brought in the wheel and not the whole bike. For them to remove and replace the wheel was an additional fee that was way more than I would wish to pay ....when I know I am quite able to remove a wheel by myself.
This of course solely dependant on me being able to get the bike up on the centerstand. Something I had not yet , after many tries, accomplished. But was sure I'd figure something out , so an appointment was made for the Monlday after Easter , giving me that sunday to pull the wheel.
Well , sunday found me in the garage examining options. I had tried winching the rear up via a hook on a overhead beam and a cheap 1" ratcheting tiedown strap. Unfortunetly the stamped metal handle on the strap was no match for the weight of the FJR and began to deform long before any significant movement up occoured. Perhaps a heavier duty model would have worked, but I did not have one.
The obvous choice here was just to seek help. Go interupt my neighbors Easter dinner and say, hey, can you help me put my bike on it's stand? Would have likely done the trick, but I was over-ridden with a desire to figure out how to do this all by myself. I sat down and thought of the problem logicly by understanding exactly what caused the bike to go up in the first place.
Leverage, pure and simple. The arm of the centerstand is merely a lever with the two feet that touch the ground as a fulcrum. You push down , the bike goes up. There are only two ways to improve the mechinical advantage of the system, one is to make the lever arm longer , and the other is to add more mass to it. I then saw that if this were true, I could just ask my wife to climb on my back and the added weight now available to my right foot should pop the damn thing up easily. But that would again make me dependant on help and I wanted to do this myself.
So, the answer was to just make the lever longer. I searched around the garage for any possible item that might be able to be used as an extension of the stock part. The foot pad on the arm is 1-1/2 inches wide, so a length of pipe would need that as an ID to fit. No pipe about however, but then I saw a short piece of uni-strut I had rescued from the scrap at work. I was going to use it to mount a heavy fixture to some drywall but that project was cancelled. The piece I had was about 2 feet long, and 1-5/8 x 1-5/8" on the sides. For those who do not know what uni-strut is, it is basicly a U shaped channel made from 12 gauge steel....thus one side is open. Photo:
I took the piece and it seemed to fit over the centerstands arm fine, and only took a bit of adjusting to make sure it would not slip off, as the open side needed to face just right.
I then went through the SOP for putting the bike on the centerstand, pushed the bike up straight, with left hand on the left grip. I them placed my right foot on the end of the strut and as I reached down with my right hand to get a hold of the cutout under the seat....my weight shifted to my right foot...the end of the strut went down and the bike jumped up on the stand with a clunk before my right had ever got there.
Awesome. Not ready to re-test until I got my new tire mounted and placed on the bike, I went ahead with the wheel removal.
Well after getting my tire installed and the wheel safely replaced back on the bike, I went ahead and repeated the centerstand deployment several times with the newly found extension in place to make sure the first time was not a fluke. It worked insanely well each time and after learning exactly how to place it on the stock arm it became fast to do. I was concerned the first time that the strut would get pinned to the ground with the stand down, or get stuck on the arm itself, but a gentle kick with my toe to the strut knocked it loose easily. A photo of it on the stand after the bike got up :
I really can't tell you how wonderfull this is for me, or how helpfull this might be for others that suffer the same problem I do. From what I can tell , one can buy a 4 foot piece of the same unistrut I used from McMaster Carr for about 5 bucks...enough for two extensions. I also see they sell extruded square tubing that fits inside the standard 1-5/8 X1-5/8 unistrut that would make a tellescopic version of this possible, short enough to fit in a sidecase.
If I had the time right now I would work it out and sell them....perhaps someone else can run with this instead?
Anyway, I hope this info is usefull for others and I know this just got added to my own "farkle of the year" list.
KM
