My woodstove had burned out and it was cold when I got it going today. I went outside to do some work, but it was just too cool for me to be comfortably working out there so I went in the house and got the heat going and did some cooking until everything was warm.
After a couple hours I went outside to check things out. The day looked like it wanted to rain, but it wasn’t. I went over to my work site and looked at things. Before I knew it I’d picked up the drill and was working away on my van’s cycle lift design as I had some ideas.
This is the work area.
The down position
I’m trying to adjust the levers(boards) to make the block at the left be at the right angle when it is in the up position. This is the down position.
The up position
This is the the up position and as you can see the upper block is not right. If a motorcycle was bolted to this block the front tire would hit the back of the van so it needs to be steeper in this spot.
Adjusting the block in the right spot
So I thought about it and decided the easiest way to get it right was to adjust the block where I wanted it in this spot, so I did.
I adjusted the upper block at the angle I think might work for the bike to clear the back of the van and it looks like this all might work with a bit more refining. The bike would be carried in a vertical position, just like it was doing a wheelie so this should work.
Hinged mount plate will work nicely
When I put it in the down position the block was pointing down. That’s not good, but I figure I can overcome this by using a hinged plate that the bike will bolt to so that the block comes up under it eventually and it should work. The hinged plate also has the benefit of making it easier to bolt the bike down.
Just a rough design
I left the bottom lever boards long as I wasn’t sure how long I would need them. This is just a rough model to get the feel of things. They would be cut off and not overhang the end. The unit is resting on my hitch ball where I plan to mount the final unit.
Once I think it can be done
I’ll just leave that there for a bit and study the thing until I’m happy with it and then build it in steel once I think it can be done.
I spent a bit of time getting some firewood in for the night and that was pretty much it for me as the day cooled down and I headed back in the house for the day.
There are over a hundred pictures that are served up randomly every time you visit or change pages. They are of earlier pictures of interest and also some just to remind me of things.
A Sony AX33 4K, a video camera that takes stills too. What am I doing with that? I take pictures from my Kayak a lot. I found I was missing interesting shots, because my pic was being processed in my camera, before it would let me take another pic. Since I like to take what I call action stills, I bought this camera to take videos, that I could make stills out of, but, as a bonus, this camera also came with buttons to just take stills and that's what I mostly do, unless something is real interesting or too far away for my still zooms. My digilat zoom setting for video goes to two hundred x, and sometimes I need that, but usually, I only use the 10x lens zoom. Because this camera is HD and 4K, the quality has to be real good and it has a lot of stabilizers on it which really helps out a lot for taking pics on the water.
The other thing it has that is a must is a view finder and I had to buy Sony's top of the line cam to get it. This is a must for taking pics on the water, as you must hold the camera as still as posible and putting that eye piece to the eye forms a tripod with your arms that helps a lot. The eye piece is also a must as it works way better than a LED screen to see what you are taking a picture of in the daylight as the LED screens wash out easily in sunlight.
I also have another video camera, a Canon VIXIA G30. I use them both to mostly take stills. The Sony takes higher resolution stills than the G30. That was a bit of a disappointment as I bought the G30 to replace an older camera I dunked in the river, but then had to buy the Sony to get higher still picture resolution that the G30 was lacking.
Happy New Year, Bob! all the best in 2018.