Biking can be an incredibly rewarding hobby, but what do you do with all of your expensive pieces of metal and composite when you aren’t hitting the trails? They take up space that you could use for more bikes! [Chaz] figured there had to be a better way and discovered the unlikely solution of the humble garage opener.
Garage doors are made to lift high with moderate weight, exactly what one would expect from a bike lift. If you have high ceilings in your garage or wherever else you store your bikes there can’t be much easier than pushing a button to get your bike out of the way.
To assemble the unusual bike rack, [Chaz] mounted the motor to the wall with a few scraps of wood, and built a wooden platform that rides along the rail. This additional board allows you to use a traditional bike wheel rack to gently raise the bike. While initially [Chaz] had some questionable results, this was quickly resolved with removing the rotational elements of the mount and allowing a slight slant in the bike.
While not everyone may need to raise their bikes to the heavens, this type of simple hacking is always rewarding to see come together. If you want to see how some more bike specific tech works, check out the insides of this expensive bike seat!
Anything moving selfpropelled is fun.
A bike not so much.
Bike be gone!
Add a hub motor!
I am glad he can afford owning a 20 feet ceiling garage.
Makes me think he can afford another garage just for the bikes.
So, he has to build another floor, maybe stairs and a parking spot for the n bikes he’s got. Orrr, to fix some electric capstains on the “roof” to grab and keep the bikes out of the way till you need ’em.
Yet another ideea pops up: a vertical carousel parking for bikes. (see car parking)
That ceiling height could just be luck. As my house is built back into a slope, the garage floor is 8′ lower than the front door. And for appearance the builder put the garage ceiling at the same height as the first floor ceiling, so I also have 18′ ceilings in the garage. A couple of my neighbours put rooms there, but for me some something like this would be perfect. For years I have stored canoes etc, but this is a great idea.
hacked server down
You can pull the bike sideways so high ceiling is not a prerequisite.
I also fail to see the excitement over garage opener motor when plain rope you pull and tie to an eye bolt would suffice.
Your comment reminds me of this old meme of this girl who said
“If you’re homeless, just buy a house. Duh”
Just because he can afford this garage, doesn’t mean he’s rich and can afford another garage. If you live in a house, that doesn’t mean you can afford a second house, or four houses, or eight. Why don’t you just buy 512 houses if you can afford one!
He has a garage and finds a solution for his storage problem, which makes it interesting for the rest of us.
I had similar fix in my garage since 2005. It is a standard low-ceiling 8 feet one, but there is a half-roof open crawl space above it, so I utilized that. Years back there was no hackaday, so I invented and built things myself without sharing with anyone – the solution was a winch a block and some steel cable. Later, when we no longer needed bikes, the same 300lb rated solution was repurposed to raise/lower a punching bag instead. Works fine to this day, 20 years later, slightly upgraded (safety hook and beefy rachet stop were added so that it won’t just suddenly decide to unwind itself under tension).
Point being, I respect others sharing their inventions, but not all of us are in the same boat due to choices we are sometimes FORCED to take.
As a side note, I also grew up in a different culture where it is rather uncommon to share accomplishments that are considered obvious. It’d say it had lower vanity ceiling than that in the US, at least.
Until you learn that those decades of “staying fit” have ruined your testes and now you can’t get it up anymore.
Your experience is not a common one.
ahh… and there it is… another medical “expert” scaring us with with an opinion formed by googling, youtube videos and other forms of bad information, superstition and prejudice.
Darwin ?
And I’ve been heading the same thing all the decades I’ve been riding. 60+, still waiting.
How are those decades of being sedentary working out for you?