Your favorite Macgyver moments\tricks

No good reefer heads. That's madness, I tell ya.

Parepin will need to stay far, far away from border crossings with that bike. It would suck to have a drug dog "hit" on the bike, and end up in prison for trafficking.

Fixed a KLX 110 (my son's) like it was a KLR.

He dropped his bike on the first day out and broke the shifter peg off the lever. I dug through the tool bag and found a ducati spark plug tool and a small screwdriver. I bent the screwdriver and hammered the first bit of plastic through the hole, and then hammered the whole assembly onto the shift lever. the lever butts up against the screwdriver inside the tube, and doesn't move around. It was enough to get us through the weekend's riding.


IMG_4734 by MotorCade77, on Flickr

I still laugh about my buddys K.B. and John coming back from a bicycle race in StLouis thirty years ago in K.B.'s VW Type3 Squareback. When the throttle cable broke, they slid the engine hatch cover off and clamped the cable with a pair of Vicegrips. John, facing backwards, stretched over the back seat and worked the Vicegrip throttle based on K.B's panicked audibles "MORE!", "LESS!!", "LET OFF!" as K.B. worked the clutch, shifter, and brakes. They made it home through 45 minutes of hot and humid StLouis summertime stop-and-go construction congestion! Ya gotta love it!

If teaching a kid to ride is about instilling life-lessons, your son just learned the best there is.

If doing it right leaves you with nothing... do it another way and keep having fun!

Now you just have to teach him that doing it right when there's time will help keep the next weekend fun too.

David...

Years ago my boss described having broken throttle cable on his Beetle while on a trip to Maine. He tied some twine to the throttle arm (which rotates towards the rear of the car when the throttle us opened), ran the twine out through a vent slit in the engine cover, over the roof, and tied it to his left index finger. He drove all the way back to Boston this way, using his right hand to steer and shift.

The throtle cable history reminds me of another McGyver moment.

Had an Honda MB-100 which has a bigger carb (XR125 I guess) and had the choke lever installed in the left handlebar with a MTB brake lever (as it was a decomp lever, get the pic?)

My GF asked to drive a little as we was in a non traffic backroad, so I let her just to hear the little bike go biim biim biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiim brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr and note GF was fighting her right arm "It won't accelerate" she screams while pulling over. Took a quick check and the throtle cable has come out the throtle assy with as the hitch stretched out (she pulled the throtle way too much and kept forcing it) so I tried to fix it, but every time you accelerated the cable come off. So I scratched my head give a quick look around the bike and BINGO took the choke lever, move it to the right grabbed a cable end (the brass thingy with a screw) cut the cable and fix it to the lever so I had a finger throtle.

Thanks! He had to dig in his piggy bank for his own funds, and he bought a replacement shift lever with a folding tip for next time. We install it tonight.

It's called an aglet

(Thanks Phineas and Ferb)

Power just went out during hurricane sandy. Before setting up the generator I took a flashlight and taped it to the bottom of a water bottle filled with water. Makes an instant lantern.

I saw this one on my way to get a pizza tonight:



I thought "where did he get yellow panniers" right up until I saw the logo on the side...

Thats brilliant.

Great idea.

I had the same problem. Just stapled some roofing shingles. Super grip.

Long ago, some boy scouts wanted to have storm-proof, extra large backpacks for staying in the backcountry longer. They took some ordinary pack frames and mounted large, tough, plastic kitchen garbage containers to them. Not the round containers but the squarish ones. These things pre-dated tupperware with the snap on lids. The scouts just threw a piece of oilcloth over the top opening with a turn of rope to keep it there.
Sometime later, I saw bicycle pannier baskets that folded flat against the bicycle when not needed. With that idea, I wondered what it would take to craft such baskets to accept some useful sized plastic containers? If the plastic containers are sized to be common and cheap, it might be easy to crash 'em and buy new ones at a big box store. Farm & Fleet sells nice tough feed bins in various sizes.
No, I am not a KLR rider. But I do like that down&dirty, proven-tough, post-apocaliptical look as it wards off those pretentious GS clowns. Kitty Litter panniers with a cuppla ADV stickers looks like useful pretty good fun to me.

I do that all the time for night hiking when I go with friends.

I need one other key in addition to my ignition key, the key for my top case.

What I do is screw them tightly together with a small nut and machine screw, and grind off any protruding screw past the nut. I assemble them together at about a 120deg angle, so they clear everything, and the ignition key can turn in the lock.

The other key touches nothing, so no scratches, but is always available. No problem with the small keys in my pocket.

Also, as on all my bikes, an extra set is hidden inside the headlight shell, inconspicuously taped with black electrical tape to other black taped wires.

The hidden keys saved my butt big time in Europe once.

Here's a link from the CIty of Portland OR on how to make your own kitty litter buckets.
http://www.portlandoregon.gov/transportation/article/250784#bucket

Changing out the cams on my V strom and found that using a pickup magnet for removing the buckets over the valves works great. Also using a tire marking pen works for marking the cam gears to the cam chain is great for putting them back in place correctly.

Used a kitty litter lid for the front number plate on an old Yamaha IT175, painted it yellow to match the side plates, worked great. We named that bike "Cat Scratch Fever"

to protect a wire that gets bent a lot , use the spring out of a old pen . twist it over the wire and volia .
this can be used for wires that rub , or cables for your phone /gps that get bent near the ends .


i also had a valve cover bolt strip and work its way loose , DPO stripped the threads . It was spitting oil all over me and the side of my bike . i pulled over and had a look at what junk i had with me . I had a rubber bunji that a guy gave me on a trip east . I used a nut and bolt that i had to remove from my dash cut a piece of rubber and using my swiss tool reamer put a hole in the rubber . i stuck the bolt through the rubber and threaded on the nut . it was just tight enough to slide into the hole where the bolt was . i tightened it up , it expanded and plugged the hole . i rode it that way for a week till i could track down the proper size heli coil for the head .