DIY Bike Repair Stand, Phase II: Mission accomplished.

First, I knew better. I should have stayed inside and rested. You see, this odd summer cold has stricken me and my family this week and I felt rather low all day today, what with the throat burning and the coughing and the tiredness. But I felt like I hadn’t made any progress and had a tiny bit of energy, so I did it. I went out to the garage and began putting away the camping gear from last weekend (more on that later this week). Then I thought, well, I could at least just get the lumber ready. Oh, and while I’m at it, maybe I could at least cut the pieces… and you know how the rest of that story goes. Having been one of the hotter days today, I think I sweat about a gallon of fluids out, at one point my son looking at me with concern on his face and asking me, “Daddy, are you okay?” Apparently I was sweating a lot.

Anyhow, if you’ve been following along, you saw Phase I of the DIY bike repair stand from last week. As stated in Phase I, I stole a bunch of different ideas from this article and used them for my design. So yeah, Phase I, I managed to get the clamp and clamp arm put together. Tonight I built and tested the stand. It actually took me a lot less time than I thought (I also had some help from my very willing son who was  more than happy to run the chop saw and ratchet in some lag screws). I pretty much just used spare lumber I’d had sitting in my garage for a few years. It actually worked out really well. I used:

• 4×4 Fir Post
• 2×6 fir planks
• Several lag screws recycled from the disassembly of our old deck
• Left over washers from the construction of our play structure

Once done, we tested it out with the kids hanging off it and it didn’t even pretend to want to think about falling over. Score!

Now I don’t have any more excuses to put off the tear-down of the bike, other than time itself. And more importantly, I shall now lay on the couch and curse myself for not having rested, secretly basking in the feeling of success.

Check out some photos (apologies for the photo quality, I had to use the iPhone in low light):