Mad Skillz

 Well, not a bad effort for a clumsy, unskilled amateur...

The ute has a pretty long deck but not quite long enough to get two bikes on and shut the tailgate.  This means that the bikes need to be loaded so that they sit back on the tailgate to hold it down and prevent it from flapping around as we tear up the highway.

But, what also is needed is something to hold the front wheels steady because if the front wheels are allowed to move around (say when you are bouncing your way across the Molesworth) then they will eventually work the tie-downs loose (especially the worn out ones I had at the time).  Colin and I got a wee bit sick of stopping to sort things out on our trip down South earlier in the year.

When Mark and I had the two bikes on a while ago we used the ramps in front of the bikes but this wasn't perfect and could have damaged either the tough-deck or the ramps.

Anyway, Chevvy and I are planning a WR adventure this weekend so I decided to sort it out.  I did a bit of nosing around the web on Sunday and eventually tripped over some wheel chocks that I thought might do the job.  I could even get them cheap in town so I ordered some and then went and bought a piece of ply.  What you see below is version one and hopefully it will be the only version we need.

I'll trim up the ply once we've given it a decent test.

You can see in the above picture that I have mounted the RHS chock forward as far as I can and brought the left one back.  I did this because I figure the weight of one bike should be enough to hold the tailgate down and by having the bikes offset to one another then it's a bit easier to load the bikes on and not have the handlebars getting in the way of each other.

Anyway, my miserable skills seemed to be up to the task and I actually knocked it all up pretty quickly.  I think it took longer to get the two bikes up and sorted out - not that easy to load the second bike by yourself...

As I kind of expected it was a bit hard to find a place for that tie-down on the RHS of the WR (LHS in pic) and you can see I attached it to the chock the RMX is sitting in.  Not ideal, I think it would be a good idea to see if I can get an anchor point or two in the top-centre of the wellside (to the left of my hoof).

Anyway, we'll give the setup a whirl this weekend and see how it performs...

Oh, and I invented a special tool:

This gadget allows the operator to put a motorcycle in gear while standing on the RHS side of the bike and load the bike on the LHS of the ute...Yes, loading is an interesting and ever so slightly dodgy process...