I have almost suffered a brain injury repairing my bike. I have thought about wearing a helmet just to repair my bike. Why you ask? Sound strange? Well, I don't have a repair stand and often times I will contort my body into strange positions to try to fix or adjust something.
The dangerous part is that sometimes when I stand up I suffer from orthostatic hypotension - commonly called a head rush. When I stand up quickly at times I get very dizzy and have almost fallen over. I can just see myself some day in the future trying to explain stitches in my head to all the people at work. "Yeah, well, um, I stood up and fell over."
I have recently moved and might actually have space for a repair stand. I will have to determine if I want to come up with something on my own, we have had some great suggestions, or perhaps just buy a stand. Reader Miguel contacted us and I don't know if he suffers occasional instances of orthostatic hypotension, but he welded his own stand and wanted to share. Thanks Miguel - repair safely!
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I am enrolled in a welding class and road biking is a passion. So I derived a blueprint from ground up for a road bike repair stand. I'm really in to distant riding, not racing. I had the bike but it needed repairs. It's a bit difficult to repair sitting on your ass, or kneeling down. I needed a bike repair stand; after a few minutes of searching the Internet I came to a conclusion...they are way to expensive to buy on my budget.
Of course me being dumb, I didn't think first that I could build/weld one myself! It only took a few minutes to make a blue print. Measuring should have been my first priority, I did it all by free hand. Overall it came out decent, my friend Craig helped me. We experimented with Stick welding first, let's just say that didn't work.
Then we went to oxy-acetylene; worked perfect. My instructor Steve Farnsworth only charged me for the amount of metal being used, averaged out $20. I made it specifically for my road bike. If anyone is interested I can give you tips on how to weld it or more, I can make it. I still have a bit of modifying to do.
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