Article written by Ken Smale

So, after reading the article in the June Journal, I thought that I would have a go myself. I’ve been keeping myself very busy on whilst on ‘Furlough’, and this small project looked to be a useful idea. Normally the garage is home to my 08’ RT1200se, now with 50k miles and as fabulous as the day I bought it. Also, my ‘Baby GS as I call it, a G650gs Sertao also lives here. In the Winter, I often move one of the bikes into my ‘Man Cave’ to carry out maintenance etc.

The process is very easy indeed. Simply a case of bolting together the 300mm diameter bearing, rated at 1,000kgs! which I purchased from ‘Simplybearings.co.uk. If anyone’s interested, the ‘Model’ for the bearing is a LAZY/12  £12 incl courier delivery.  Www.simplybearings.co.uk    01942 269837.   

The second part to obtain was a ‘Plant Pot mover / Trolley’, made by ‘Diall’ sold by B & Q (also £12) This actual pot mover is rated at 150kgs, but we’re only interested in the top  Aluminium ‘Checker plate’. You could simply use any suitable piece of 5-6mm plate, Aluminium or steal, which doesn’t have to be round, but it does look neater.

First stage is to drill out the rivets on the 3 castors which were fitted to the Pot mover, these casters are not required and will go into the ‘might be useful one day box’. You then have the top plate to mount onto the bearing.

I used two M6 dome head bolts which connected onto matching ‘Nyloc bolts’. Being dome head, less chance of ‘snagging’ on the rotation bearing. The excess removed and then filed down, so all very easy to do. In the first photo, (at the 6 & 12 o’clock positions), you can see two round holes to allow access to screw in these bolts.

The next photo shows the top plate, bolted into position. The other three holes are from where the original casters were removed.

It takes less than an hour to make, and as long as the floor that you are using is flat, this works very well. As you can see from below, the RT centre stand width (32.5cms) just fits on.

The centre stand on my G650GS Sertao is a little too wide at (38cms), but I have a plan, and just arrived today (9^th July) is another bearing of similar design, but 450mm diameter, which after similar treatment should work with the Sertao, and indeed the RT also.

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