Raise your Catrike and reclaim your garage --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The bike hoists are still on sale for $30 at Nashbar (March 3, 2004.) If you raise your trike partway, it makes a nice work stand. A while ago Ian Sims at Greenspeed mentioned that is how they do it there. These hoists are designed for bikes, not trikes, so I thought I would show you how I made some little adaptors. I cut some pieces of nylon rope and made loops. I don’t trust knots in nylon ropes, so I used the pig rings. I used two pig rings per loop, although one would be sufficient. But what the heck, the box of 100 pig rings cost $2.19 at Ace Hardware so I indulged.

The hoist is designed to attach to a 2 by 4. Rather than use the obvious ones in my garage, I attached the hoist to a 2 by 4 above the garage 2 by 4’s going perpendicular to those. I used some scraps of wood to raise the 2 by 4 beam so when the trike is fully raised, I can walk under it and not bang my head. I can even park a car in the garage now if I want.

Here is the trike partially raised, very handy for maintenance

I have three trikes all hanging up out of the way using hoists.

As I mentioned, although you can’t tell from the picture, I can walk under the trikes with plenty of clearance. I’m about 6 feet tall. From left to right are the Catrike, Windcheetah, and TerraTandem. I can actually walk in the garage again instead of climbing, stepping, and tripping over things. It’s almost as if I have a two car garage now instead of one car garage. The bike hoists have changed my life. OK, I do get carried away in my enthusiasm once in a while.

Added later: I also now have two Irish Mails hanging up along with the three trikes.

Byron