So I really wanted a paddock-style lift stand like the one Bursig and Moto-Mfg make, but couldn't justify spending the money. I work at a company where I can get steel pretty cheap, so I decided to have a go at making one myself. Here are links to the two brands mentioned above. If you're a beginning fabricator, like myself, you might just consider buying one from them. This was a fun project, but it took quite a long time to get it just right.
http://www.bursigusa.com
http://www.motomfg.com/MotoMfg_paddock_stand_Ducati_p/ps-1.htm
Really the biggest complication I had to get past was modifying the motor mount bolt. These lifts work by installing a semi-permanent lift point onto a motor mount bolt. Unfortunately on the M900's, the bolt doesn't stick out of the frame enough to thread something extra on to. I learned that bolts from later Monsters would give me the length I needed, but they had a different thread and diameter. So, I picked two of them up for something like $12 and had my trusty retired-machinist, Earl, turn one down in his lathe and we then re-threaded the end to fit my bike. I now had the length i needed:
After that, I gave him some solid bar stock and he went to work machining my lift point, that is now threaded onto the bike itself:
The last piece of machining he had to do was the plate that the lift pin is mounted in:
From there I was able to cut, bend, weld, and paint my way to the finished product. I ran into some snags, mostly from underestimating the force that 400~lbs was going to have on the lifting components. But now I have a working version. It doesn't work as smoothly as some of the mass-produced ones, but I'm also not using it in a racing environment. I'll just be using it for working on the suspension, cleaning the wheels, and moving the bike around the garage into tight corners.
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