Bike lifts

Makro are flogging off some nice hydraulic bike lifts for 39.99+vat from
wednesday for those who have (or can blag) a Makro card.

It goes under the frame, hopefully with the bike's center of gravity over the
two rails. Lifts the bike using the bottom frame rails...

The item on page 27 did cause a minor "Moore Eyebrow" moment

Well that's all very well assuming your bike actually has bottom frame
rails :-) None of my 3 bikes would fit particularly well, if at all,
on such a device.

And, for a fully faired bike, you'd have to remove the fairing lowers
first, which sort of defeats the object of having a work bench in the
first place.

Well your Turbo should have bottom frame rails, but it's also got an
exhaust that sits below them. I can't think of any >125cc bikes I've
ever owned where this type of lift would be suitable.

IIRC they were originally designed for Hardlys.

They're rather useful if you need to get the wheels off the ground and do
work fairly well even with low bikes like choppers and Harleys. They're also
very useful if you're stripping bikes - when I broke the last Motosport, I
just strapped it to the lift, got it off the ground and it was in bits in no
time at all.

Only problems are their restricted working heights (mine goes up to about 50-
60cm IIRC) and the fact that they don't work well on bikes that have no
bottom frame rails (like, erm, a Laverda). And it's also not a good idea to
try and use them on bikes that have exhaust pipes that are lower than the
frame rails. DAMHIKIJK, OK?

Wot the boxhead said. Mine came with a couple of ratchet straps to cinch
the bike down to the rails of the lift, plus an adapter plate with screw
jacks and vee blocks to adapt to bikes with odd undercarriages. I used
the adapter plate as a starting point for a custom weldment for my SV:

Almost certainly a cheap chinese import, but they look like good value.