[Video Transcript]
Hello! I’m RyanF9 and these are my top 5 motorcycle life hacks, part four . I mean hell, we’re gonna catch Fast n’ the Furious soon.
First up , we’re going to solve the problem of sinking side stands.
Every motorcyclist knows what I mean. You go to park your bike on some dirt, grass, whatever – this guy won’t have your back. As soon as I turn around, the kickstand sinks into the ground and lets my baby fall over.
What we need is more surface area. You can actually buy special little kickstand feet, but those are for suckers. SW-Motech sells one for seventy two dollars! Seventy two dollars! I could rent a servant to hold my bike for that price.
Instead just nick a hotel key card the next time you stay somewhere. Keep it in your wallet and when you need to park on the soft stuff, leave it pinned under the sidestand. That’ll boost the surface area enough to keep your bike rubber side down.
I’ve seen riders use everything from hockey pucks to beer coasters. But this is the most convenient solution, since you’ll always have your wallet along anyway.
Now, we’re going to hack this Tim Horton’s Take 10 to make a collapsible jerry can . But first we need to drink all the coffee.
So now that’s done, we open up the cardboard and rip out the internal bladder. Timmies makes these out of aluminum to keep the coffee hot. But for our purposes, aluminum will also keep the gas in. See gasoline has a similar chemical makeup to plastic, which is why it’ll eat right through most bottles and leak everywhere. But with this aluminum bladder, I have 1.4L of collapsible storage space that should hold gas just fine.
Orrrr at least fine-ish. The gas will still eat through this plastic cap at some point. And I don’t know what these seams are sealed with, so that’s a potential leaking point.
But this is good-enough for emergencies. Fold it up, stick it in the tiniest corner of your saddlebag, and if you need to carry some gas for a while it’ll get the job done.
Now I can already hear Ranger Danger freaking out, saying you should never use anything other than a proper gas container, because this doesn’t have the legal symbols so someone will drink 10 cups of gasoline by mistake, then it’ll tear and leak and the world will catch on fire and everyone will die.
But chill . Â This is an emergency, one-time fix.
Also if you’re not Canadian, don’t worry, I’m sure your inferior coffee shops use a similar design to Tim Horton’s.
Our third life hack uses a potato to help me see on a rainy day.
More conventional wisdom says to use Rain-X, or some knockoff version like I have here, to prevent droplets from accumulating. One squirt of this stuff and a twist of the wrist, and the water will bead right off your face shield at speed.
But Rain-X costs almost seven dollars. What am I made of money? | Even worse, chemical water repellents tend to strip anti-fog and anti-scratch coatings, leaving your visor brittle and defenseless.
I present a more organic alternative. This is a Yukon Gold and it cost me 89 cents. But I paid a dolla because I’m a high rolla.
I need to cut the potato in half to treat my visor. But I won’t bore you with the long and tedious process , so here’s one I prepared earlier. You want to rub it all over the visor. Potatoes are starchy, and water doesn’t like starch. It prefers to bead off, leaving your visor and vision clear.
You’ll actually see potato starch listed in the ingredients of some store-bought water repellents. So yeah, it works.
Mother Nature even makes a potato for doing large windscreens, and another couple for doing cool little retro goggles. (looks at camera and nods).
Next up , I’m going to waterproof these riding boots using a candle and a blow dryer.
Real simple here – just rub the paraffin all over the boots like you’re waxing a surfboard. My Icon Patrols were waterproof once upon a time, by the way. But a few years down the road and these things are leaking like a sieve. Anyway, when I’m done I take the blow dryer and melt the wax right into the shoe. This works best on old boots by the way, because when the surface is all roughed-up it bonds better with the wax.
And look! My little Patrols are waterproof all over again.
But oh no! Now my boots are wet and I forgot to put my rain pants on first. That means I’ll be a one-legged man in an ass kicking contest for the next 10 minutes.
Or maybe not! Because life hack number 5 uses our trusty plastic bag to ease the process. If you’re not making a waterproof saddlebag from one of these, like we talked about in Part 3, then you can put it over your boot. Now my foot can slide through the pant smoother than Barry White on a Slip n’ Slide.
Plus I don’t get the inside of my rain pants wet. So that’s nice.
And that’s it for part four of my motorcycle life hacks. One more sequel and we’ll outdo The Twilight Saga so… I’ll see you in Part 5.