Motorcycle gadgets
For every ‘lifestyle activity’, whether it’s mountaineering, windsuiting, keel hauling or whatever, there are brochures filled with associated gadgets. These promise to make your chosen ‘thing’ more fun, or at least to make it look more fun on Insta. Motorcycling is no exception (but it’s not quite as bad as the world of cycling, where £300 for a carbon fibre water bottle holder is not unheard of. No wonder I can never get those guys to smile or wave…)
If you really want to look like a transcontinental motorcycle explorer, than you certainly do need that £700 titanium handlebar mount for your satellite-based auto translation loudspeaker (“WHERE CAN I BUY LAXATIVES?”). Then there are those essential aero canards and the gearshift support adaptive seat massage pro pack and the Inconel shield for the shield on your desert protection engine cover bars. Even the aftermarket bits now need their own configurators.
In our house, most of this stuff gets made out of old Meccano. For anybody under 55, that’s kind of like an old-guy version of Lego but from the primitive, pre-iPhone period, when we still believed in manufacturing. Did I mention that I’m an Inventor? It’s not a job, because a job pays you some money, but I do it for fun and it goes some way to maintaining what passes for my mental health. I don’t usually admit to this, since it’s about as popular a conversation starter as “Didn’t we meet in Broadmoor?”
Every day for seven years I published an invention on my blog. Some are now products, most are deranged but I’ve selected half a dozen motorcycling-related examples.*
* Ed (AKA the responsible adult in the office): These ideas are for the entertainment of lawyers and public liability insurers only. Do not attempt to re-create any of these inventions yourself. Almost no animals were harmed. May contain nuts.
#2778: MotoMachete
Stuck on a jungle track blocked by a fallen tree? This idea is a set of sharp teeth which can be fitted through a motorcycle chain. Push the chain into contact with the wood, engage first gear and open the throttle.
#2546: ThiefGrief
This is a folded-up sheet of steel, small enough to be carried on a bike, and intended to make the machine unliftable. It also makes the lock on the back wheel inaccessible to e.g. disc cutters and angle grinders. Click on the link above for a bonus video of how this works (and ideally to invest several $Million in a feasibility study for me, in Bali.)
#2485: ShrinkSkin
Don’t you hate it when your racing leathers flap about just as you accelerate to 135, after the humpback bridge outside Douglas? No, me neither. I’d be concentrating on that oncoming hay bale, whilst not filling my underpants. Anyway, this idea is for daredevils who need less drag. A vacuum pump is attached to a valve in the back of an airtight suit, which evacuates it like a coffee pack. [Ed: Could be useful in the filling-the-underpants scenario too…]
#2373: JetTraction
Each wheel of your machine is fitted with a hub-mounted, down-pointing set of rocket motors. These are free to maintain their orientation as the wheel itself rotates. When a burst of intense acceleration is demanded of the engine, so the rockets fire briefly, forcing the tyres into very high-pressure contact with the road surface. What could possibly go wrong?
#1893: PocketSprocket
Another anti-theft device. Both sprockets would have slightly irregularly-spaced teeth, in exact correspondence with the pattern of links in the chain, which would be unique to an individual bike. When an owner leaves his motorcycle, he slips off one sprocket and takes it with him. This makes the bike unrideable, but also requires the manufacture of a new, one-off sprocket, if the thief wants to sell the machine on. If it is stolen, at least you have one component around which to centre your new build project…
#454: Lidspeak
A microphone to be worn inside a helmet which then feeds to a loudspeaker on the outside. This allows more deeply empathic communication with fellow road users, traffic police, bank tellers and emergency room nurses.
Anyway, if you still have any faith in inventiveness (or humanity), I dare you to google “funny inventions for motorcycle riders.”
