Motorcycle life: SORTED

How to get your bikes and kit into proper order by thinking on an industrial level in a domestic ga rage arena

Here’s a question for you: How do you improve your motorcycling life?

Do you get another bike to add to the collection? That winter project that’ll keep you busy in the darker months? How about that new set of kit? Or a top-of-the-range helmet?

Or how about you give your garage a complete, motorcycle-friendly makeover for less money than an average winter hack would cost, in just a few hours? Without the need for a single nut or bolt? Honestly, it’s that easy.

I’ve been riding bikes for 32 years on the road. I’m a motorcycle journalist and have been writing and riding for a living for 25 years.

Over that time me and my mates have accrued (as have you, most likely) our personal collections of motorcycles that mean something to us and keep us nicely busy.

We’re all agreed that whilst we all fall under ‘Bertie’s equation’ (you know the one, A< N+1 where A represents the amount of motorcycles you have and N represents the amount of motorcycles you want… just one more) the truth of the matter is that we’re all out of room.

We’ve named the equation after Bertie Simmonds, the Editor of Classic Motorcycle Mechanics, effectively a dream-pusher who feeds our addiction monthly via his excellent magazine. Try it if you haven’t seen it already.

Anyway, we could hire a storage unit and keep going with our two-wheeled hunt, but that could quickly get out of control. And one of our group in particular wanted to get his mess sorted out, so I stepped up to use an industrial idea to make things better for him in the domestic garage arena.

In short, the plan was to make his garage a better place to be for motorcycle sand motorcyclemaintenance-related things and all for about the same cash as a really good textile two-piece or a snotty winter hack bike.

Let’s start with the floor

Looking at a several-bike collection the problem I’ve got to overcome is that David not only has to have a working area that’s easy to keep clean, but is also resilient and resistant to things like oil, fuel and the odd hot bit of metal dropping on it (obviously, not a usual thing, but you know, sometimes you drop things, especially when welding… and Dave’s an amateur welder of the enthusiastic kind).

First problem to be covered (ha!) is the floor. In a standard garage that’d been clearly built by bored brickies this is bare concrete, which produces dust at a horrendous rate. Covering the concrete is the first thing that needs to happen.

I could go down the route of sealing it over with an epoxy-type paint. It’s a definite option and at around £120ish to cover a floor of this size, plus the costs of a roller or two and a pole handle, etc., it’s not too expensive either. I’ve used this type of sealant before in my own garage and whilst it does look pretty good when it’s freshly down, I found that moving motorcycles around on it (and normal use of their sidestands) lifts the paint off the concrete floor. And once that seal is broken, the dust is back.

On top of that, it can take a few hours to set before you can put anything like the weight of a motorcycle on it. So if time is of the essence, this can really become a pain

in the derrier. One of the pluses of the paint option though, is that you can touch in any areas that are damaged and lifted because of use. That’s worth bearing in mind. And I’m supposing that you are vigilant enough to keep doing that across the life of your garage floor.

Having been down this route before though, it’s not for me to try this time at Dave’s garage. I could get a rubber garage flooring roll, but to fit a 10mm thick floor across the garage would come it at around £1200. That’s out of Dave’s price range. It looks nice, though.

Polyurethane (PU) and epoxy floors look serious and very cool, but the costs prohibits these for Dave, plus I simply don’t have the time to clear the garages out, apply the flooring, allow to dry fully and then get the very vulnerable motorcycles back into safety. PU and epoxy floors are very tough wearing though, but not overly thick, so they’d probably be up to the job.

No, with all these considerations made by Dave I fell upon what looked like the ideal solution – tough, quick, easy to fit and with the much needed resistance qualities. Here’s how we did the garage transformation – with all the info so that you can pick and choose to suit your own needs and motorcycle collection.

Let’s start with getting the floor sorted then…

What we used: One set of the Double Garage Interlocking Floor Tile Set Mega Deal (GTSD1CH). This covers 6m x 6m and comes in a combination colour of Black and Grey tiles, which can either have stud marks on them or pressed-steel plate types of marks. The 12mm thick tiles are also available in single garage sizes and you can have them all black or all grey. What it cost: £898.00 inc. VAT

Where we got it from: BiGDUG (www.bigdug.co.uk).

Score out of 10: Nine.

Pros: Easy to apply, a one-man job. Doesn’t need anything other than a rubber mallet to get going (mallet included). Re-layable if you need to. Looks good. Thick. Resistent. Black tiles made from recycled plastic. Can take a pounding.

Cons: You’ll need an angle grinder to cut these tiles, really. Black tiles make a lot of smoke when cutting, grey tiles make less smoke but are a bit melty if you drag your heels with the grinder in any particular spot.