The Quickshift
- Hauling a motorcycle or ATV by yourself is a pain, plain and simple
- Meanwhile in the Garage hated it, so he decided to fix the issue
- He built himself the perfect moto hauler
Do you find yourself transporting a single motorcycle often? One that you're not riding, but are instead hauling behind your vehicle for any reason (it's a show bike, or you're headed to the track, or anything else)?
If you have, then maybe you've already found the perfect trailer setup for your machine, and there's absolutely nothing that you wish was just a little different. And if that's you, then bless and you probably don't need to even check out what Meanwhile in the Garage has built to haul his bikes around.
But if you're like most of us, then you'll probably want to see it just to witness the extremely well-edited, competent, and creative spectacle.
For those unfamiliar, MWiG is a really cool YouTube channel where a mechanical engineer with a very well-appointed workshop, big dreams, and even bigger practical skills to make those dreams come to life shares his projects with the world.
Even better, either he or whoever he has editing his time-lapses together truly knows how to put together engaging videos. The results never fail to pull me in, and this one is no exception. Lucky us, the viewers.
While his custom ST1100-based creation might be fun to ride on its own, sometimes MWiG wants to haul it (or other bikes) around behind his truck. And while there are of course motorcycle trailers on the market that you can just go out and buy, he thought it would be a good idea to make exactly what he wanted himself.
A few things are cannibalized from other projects, like an axle from another trailer and parts of an existing ramp. But speaking of ramps, that's one fundamental improvement that MWiG made with his unique moto trailer: It's able to lift the bike up and down on its own with a clever lever mechanism, similar to a paddock stand.
That means it can be lowered to the ground for bike loading and unloading, and then raised up to standard ride height when it's hitched to your vehicle and ready for hauling. Genius!
Because this is a MWiG video, there's a whole lot of bending, cutting, and welding square steel tubing and other pieces to his will. At a few points, he gets his kid in on the action as well, which has to be an absolute blast (A+++ parenting right there).
It's an impressive project, and seeing the way this guy's mind works to create his projects is half the fun. But even though he's really good at what he does, sometimes things go wrong, and we get to see a little bit of that here, too.
Don't worry, it's nothing too drastic, but in a way it's kind of reassuring to see that even someone who's really good makes mistakes sometimes and has to recalibrate to get where they want to go.
