By Joe Gresh
One of the many disadvantages of big, heavy motorcycles is the extra strain they place on your body doing routine maintenance. Oiling the chain, a simple task on a lightweight motorcycle (you just lean the bike onto its kickstand and spray away) becomes a chore lifting and spinning bit by bit. God help you if you get a flat or need to remove a wheel.
Motorcycles used to come with center stands (a few still do) and seeing how obese modern bikes have become I don’t know why manufacturers don’t tack on a bit more junk that would be actually useful. I’d rather have a center stand than a thin film instrument cluster, ride mode selector or ABS brakes. Here’s a link to the Amazon motorcycle jack.
This El Cheapo, Chinese 2-ton hydraulic Jack is slightly shorter than the other El Cheapo Chinese jacks and as such it is low enough to fit under your swing arm or front frame rail. Positioned correctly, you can rig a stable 3-point setup to lift either end of your portly motorcycle.
But the thing isn’t exactly travel friendly. Weighing in at a stout 4 pounds, 5.7 ounces it is not the sort of thing you want to carry around on your motorcycle unless you’re taking a long-ish trip. Of course I’m taking a long-ish trip so I decided to trim some excess weight off of the jack.
As delivered, the jack’s working end isn’t ideal for round tubes like a swing arm or frame so I chopped the sides off and ground a swale into the face in the hope of preventing the jack from slipping when in use. This worked pretty well it turns out, and while I wouldn’t jump up and down on the motorcycle while suspended it was fairly stable. Saving a few ounces was an added plus.
Since I’m using only a fraction of the jack’s 2-ton capacity I decided it was safe to Swiss cheese the extension lever and pivoting mechanism. This included drilling the pivot pins and connecting rod.
All this drilling removed a satisfying amount of weight and the jack was no worse for the damage. I know what you’re thinking: “Why stop there?” The base of the jack is a cast iron affair with plenty of ribbing and surface area. Again, I’ll only be lifting a few hundred pounds at most so I don’t need quite so much strength. I attacked the base with a 4-inch cutting wheel and removed everything that didn’t look like an elephant.
Trimming all that excess fat felt good and the resulting 3-pound, 15.5 ounce reading means I got rid of around a half-pound of useless weight and the jack looks better, has lower cholesterol, and can fit into its old high-school clothing again.
As far as the jack function, it works as you’d expect although it will slowly lose pressure overnight and lets the bike back down. Plan accordingly if you want the bike jacked up more than 5-6 hours. I see a few more places that I can trim but my recent experience grinding through a 200-dollar brake caliper gave me pause. I don’t want to hit an artery. I’ll need to look inside to determine how far I can go with the grinder but I believe I can thin the base at least 1/8 inch and cut a lot more metal around the pressure release valve. I’d like to get the jack down to 3-1/2 pounds just to see if I can. This will do for now, I’ll bring the jack along with me to Laguna Seca next week so if you’re in the area you can stop by and check it out.
Never miss an ExNotes blog:
See that 10mm threaded boss on the bottom of you swing arm? Take a piece of 1/2 inch EMT a foot long. Squeeze the end in a vice. Drill an oblong hole large enough to clear a 10mm bolt near the end of your pipe. Grind or file the sharp edges where you drilled so that there’s 1/8 inch metal left above the oblong hole. Instant bike stand. Use a Velcro strap to lock your front brake lever. Loosely bolt the stand into the boss. Tilt the bike to the left and the EMT will fall vertically and hold your rear tire about an inch off the ground. If you want to pack it for travel, cut it in half and use a steel 1/2 inch EMT coupling. It’ll fit into a soft eyeglass case (secured tight by Velcro strap) and fit snugly in the tool box under the seat. Good for lubing the chain. Takes fifteen minutes to make and a minute to use.
Marcus,
How do you jack the front wheel?
Yeah, well, my EMT is mainly for lubing the chain on the road. I use a steering stem lift at home for the front. I haven’t thought about something portable for the front.
Tirox Snapjack. Lightweight, packable and easy to use.
I like the dished piston top.
Functional!
Drilling all those holes is ridiculous.
You haven’t saved enuff weight to justify it . Imho of course.
Then again I wouldn’t dream of carrying this on a bike.
Saving weight is always justified!
how much time do u have left in your life to justify wasting it on a few oz?
run around the block a few times if you want to save weight.
Nice work,handy to have!
Kudos Joe, very KLR Kardashian I’d say.
If you can unscrew the threaded anvil bar thingy that screws up and down from the jack you can put it in your lathe and drill a good size hole clear through it and save some more weight. Might be able to stash a favorite cigar in the hole???
Or make a new anvil screwy thing out of aluminum.
You could spend a lot of concrete time making aluminum jack handles and connecting flat bar too.
Just saying.
Rob,
I’ve already thought of that. When I get time I’ll take the jack apart and really go at it. Under 3 pounds is my goal.