Dorsland
Bachelor Dog
- Joined
- Apr 15, 2012
- Messages
- 12,883
- Reaction score
- 5,008
- Location
- Nie van hier nie
- Bike
- Honda CRF 300L
I did a trip to a friend who farms against the Botswana border north of Mareetsane a while ago. You guys how know that area, know there is thick sand and no stones. This means looking for a branch to put your sidestand on or carrying something to use. Not ideal.
After my bike managed to slowly bury its stand into the wet lawn a few weeks back, falling over and breaking my left mirror, I decided that's it. So I started looking around at a few options and saw guys selling round plastic discs bolted onto the foot, pieces of conveyor belt bolted on, others carrying a thingamajig to put under the stand when you stop. Wild@ Heart makes a nice big foot for the 800GS but nobody, it seems, makes a big foot for the XR. I didn't want a Heath Robinson fix either.
So the other day I dove (dived?) into my scrap bin and found a piece of flatbar that I measured slightly bigger than the stock foot. I didn't want to go too much bigger in the interests of keeping the weight down (a heavier foot might give problems with the cutout switch on the stand) as well as wanting it to clear the swingarm easily. Took me about 45 minutes to cut it, grind it to a similar shape as the stock foot, disconnect the battery and weld it into place. (OK so my welding is a bit dodgy on this job
)
It works pretty well, maybe it could have been slightly bigger but my aims as listed above were met. Stands solid on a soggy lawn and on my irrigated pastures but I haven't been back to Craig in the Kalahari yet which I reckon will be the acid test. Much better than the stock foot.
After my bike managed to slowly bury its stand into the wet lawn a few weeks back, falling over and breaking my left mirror, I decided that's it. So I started looking around at a few options and saw guys selling round plastic discs bolted onto the foot, pieces of conveyor belt bolted on, others carrying a thingamajig to put under the stand when you stop. Wild@ Heart makes a nice big foot for the 800GS but nobody, it seems, makes a big foot for the XR. I didn't want a Heath Robinson fix either.
So the other day I dove (dived?) into my scrap bin and found a piece of flatbar that I measured slightly bigger than the stock foot. I didn't want to go too much bigger in the interests of keeping the weight down (a heavier foot might give problems with the cutout switch on the stand) as well as wanting it to clear the swingarm easily. Took me about 45 minutes to cut it, grind it to a similar shape as the stock foot, disconnect the battery and weld it into place. (OK so my welding is a bit dodgy on this job
)It works pretty well, maybe it could have been slightly bigger but my aims as listed above were met. Stands solid on a soggy lawn and on my irrigated pastures but I haven't been back to Craig in the Kalahari yet which I reckon will be the acid test. Much better than the stock foot.
