Kimjon

Whats better than one awesome bike lift platform...2 of course!! Oh, and its air over hydraulic for the super dope street cred. I was half pie tempted to post a photo of my bigger one, lifting the smaller one, with the vespa on top...

Added a cheap hour meter, so I can keep track of those services I won't do, then I can feel guilty about not doing them on time... That bracket for the hour meter was a nightmare to make. I stuffed up by drilling the wrong size holes, but persisted with trying to make it work after realizing what I'd done. Would've been much quicker starting again - but I didn't...FML On the plus side, it does look tidy now its done.

Fancy new grips, stuck on with the old spray paint trick. I had to carefully cut the ends out enough for the bash guards to fit. Looks 1990's cool, which is the period correct look im after.

I made a plate for the other side, to prevent the riders foot from going into the front sprocket. Probably not really an issue, as the way its tucked away, plus the near impossible chance something could squeeze into the gap between the upper/lower chains - but hey as I've always said "Saftey 3rd"... I also set the rear suspension up. Google tells me around 25-30mm of bike sag, plus around 100mm of rider sag is about where I want it. I measured: As it was when I brought it to be 32/120 which did feel a little droopy? 1st adjustment I made got 22/100 sag numbers, which made it corner like it was on rails...but felt too hard for me after riding it for the past month on the Cadillac suspension settings. It felt like it would bouncy me off when landing my epic jumps (***my jumps are less than 1m high). 2nd attempt I split the difference and ended up at 30/110. This still feels a bit hard and bouncy in the rear compared to the ride I'd become accustomed to...but I figured I get used to it. The bike corners, handles and lands pretty well, it doesn't feel as droopy as it once did. So I'm leaving it like this for now. I may re-look at this in the future? But keen to just send it for now.

Built a heat shield, after all 3 of my kids got burns from the pipe. Slow learners - but so am I. Beating the flat aluminum into submission. Speed holes and file finishing. Tadah!! Pretty happy with it, should do the trick.

Rear so big it doesn't fit the guard, so I cut it so it's somewhat protective, but functional.

Much bigger rear sprocket. Should do the trick, along with the 11T front

Had to machine this out. Didn't fit like it was supposed too. But sorted now

Added neoprene fork gaiters. I think its a good preventive measure to take. Pretty cheap and easy to fit.

Such a cool day yesterday. Went to a mates farm, my son was able to ride in big flat open areas at full throttle for the first time, so awesome for his confidence learning to ride in an environment like that. Then we did a few trails through tree lined tracks following a river. He loved this, however it was quite a step up in skill level, which he handled it like a champ. By the end of the day his confidence increasing more and more. We probably overdid it with the ride from the farmers house to the river trail. This was about 2km each way. My son was exhausted on the return leg. Next time I'll shorten this up so it doesn't tire him out as much, lesson learned on my part here, its gotta be fun for the kids otherwise you risk putting them off.

All dressed up and nowhere to go... Fuck it, let's go somewhere and try it out!!

I gave the carrier some absorption time overnight. I was trying to take shortcuts, and just bolt on that solution for the dirt bike, while keeping the vespa channel as well. It increases the moment something terrible. It was already pushing the limits and the additional channel increases it by 30%, something i wasn't happy about. So... Tears to my eyes cutting this masterpiece up. Additional rail welded in. This took a lot of thought. But the solution was easy once I got the idea squared away in my head. Sorted!!

A mates farm had pylons replaced with bigger pylons. They got to keep the steel. Ive always tried to think of things that you could make out of it. Today I found a use: Sweeeeet!!!

The boy keeps smoking the clutch. These bikes aren't really suited to hills like we have, that plus he's only just learning techniques like throttle control, not stopping halfway up a hill, conserving momentum etc...so I'm going as extreme as I can on the gear ratio. You think there'd be one that works in this pile...but nope Pretty much the same as whats on the bike. So I've ordered some shit off trademe: •11 tooth front sprocket (currently 14T on there now). •68 tooth rear sprocket (currently 54T on there now) • some T8f chain and joiners. That should improve things a lot, as 54/14 = 3.9:1 ratio 68/11 = 6.1:1 ratio So my new setup should be 2/3rds the torque, a third less strain on the clutch, but 2/3rds the current speed. Im not worried about the loss of speed as he's not skilled enough to use it all anyway. Later I can adjust it back in stages if required. Or by then he may need a bigger bike at the rate he's growing?

Solving problems with beer, since ages ago...

Toolbox art? Well if putting stickers on shit constitutes "art"? Was quite the mission to do and if I did it again I'd probably position it slightly differently...but meh, it works and looks basically like what I had in mind.

Cheers guys, yip same boat. Juggling life, work, kids etc and when the stars align will go to these when I can. I went to a couple of events at burger fuel, but yeah, the struggle is real...

Link is broken i think? What date?

Proud father/son moment, my boy following me around the section like a puppy on his bike. Totally fucked the clutch...but well worth it. Easy fix. Makes all the shit days feel good. Can't wait to see him flying by me, giving me the bird, pulling a wheelie and saying FTW...

This edge banding is brilliant. Such a simple addition, but makes such a great improvement: The ramp slides effortlessly on the concrete now. It protects the ramp and it gets rid of the horrible noise it used to make. Sweeeeet!!!!

There's only about 15m run up to that "jump" so its full send, but just 2nd gear. It is what it is unfortunately. Need to buy a bigger property and/or get a digger...hmmmm????

So lame...but still fun for someone as old, tired and shit at riding bikes as me. In my mind it was much higher...expectations v reality?

Im such a product whore. I've always wanted one of these stands, so went shopping today... Gives the bike some street cred, and is actually pretty handy getting the wheels off the ground for maintenance etc. I already sorted a binding issue with the front end, where the forks where too close together on the axle. And identified the front brake is always rubbing, but yet to fix that problem.

Got the bike up on the hoist, so nice to work on when up at that level. My son wanted to be lifted up as well, so he joined in on the ride. I managed to extract this broken bolt. Then broke the new bolt off in the same fucking hole!!! Take 3, and you wouldn't fucking believe it...I snapped the bolt a third time!!! Finally I found a grade 8.8 bolt, retapped the thread size to suit and that worked great. Days like this are just ridiculous, I wanted to push the bike into the sea and leave it there... #bikelife #bikesarefordicks #fuckbikes #bikesareshitcunts

Its from Machinery House. Its still Chinese made, but the fundamental difference is the design of this one is a much better concept. The action of the new one (Machinery House) works like a scissor lift, where one end is a pin joint, the other is free to move on rollers. The safety pins go into the roller channels, so if it were to fail...there's 2 more than adequately sized pins that block and stop the rollers. The TopmaQ deathtrap has a guillotine action, and the arm its trying to stop has a huge amount of leverage on it. The "safety" pin has a huge gap between contact points, which creates a massive bending moment in the pin itself. I ran some calculations and found it woefully inadequate. The force on the TopmaQ safety pin is 6x that of the Machinery House pin, and that's in share force, then there's the huge bending moment acting on it which is the main cause of failure. The Machinery House hoist has negligible bending moment and share force due to superior design. But I don't need to show the calculus...this picture speaks for itself.