How to Lift a Motorcycle Easily and Effectively

Once you have your jack ready for use, this is how you use it to hoist your motorcycle properly:

What you’ll need:

Step 1. Prepare your working area

We said that a lifted motorcycle could be a matter of life and death. If you want the whole lifting process to be safe for you, then you need to start by preparing an ideal working area for lifting the bike.

The perfect area for using your jack should be a level floor, preferably the concrete floor.

Don’t even think of lifting the bike on a carpeted floor—this is a bad idea that could easily cause the lift bearing the weight of motorcycle to slip. If the bike doesn’t fall on you and leaves you severely injured, it hits the ground and sustains serious damages.

Step 2. Know where to lift your bike from

With the bike still on the ground, inspect its underside, and familiarize yourself with it. Look for the most supportive place from which you can easily lift your bike using the jack.

The idea here is to find a flat surface under the engine to lift without making any adjustments. Hoisting the bike on the uneven spot might lead to unbalanced lifting, prompting your bike to fall.

If you’re working with a cruiser, you might consider the frame rails. For a sports bike, the frame sliders will offer you a safe lifting point.

Step 3. Prepare your motorcycle for lifting

Get the bike straight up and well supported before you start lifting. If your bike features a center stand, prepping it for lifting becomes even easier. Simply place some wood blocks under the stand before lowering it.

If possible, get a second pair of hands to grab the front of your bike by handlebars and straddle the front wheel with their legs. Then, stand at the rear and help your partner guide the motorcycle to an upright position. Ensure your partner is tightly gripping the front brake lever when conducting this adjustment.

SAFETY TIP: If you’re the kind that doesn’t leave anything to chance, then you must know how to tie down a motorcycle with ratchet straps! because you might consider securing your bike to the stand with ratchet straps. This is a safety measure that keeps your bike from falling in case it gets off-balance when you’re working on it.

Step 4. Do the lifting

Now place the lift jack at the place where you settled (in step 2) as the safest spot to lift your jack from. Start raising your bike slowly and evenly. If you feel that your motorcycle is unsteady at some point along the way, don’t hesitate to lower it and start all over again—better safe than sorry!

Most of the motorcycle lift jacks out there come with adjustable height starting from around 11 inches and ending at about 16.5 inches. Choose what height to lift your bike, depending on the parts you need to access and what you need to do on it.

Step 5. Put the jack stands in place

Congrats! You have successfully hoisted your bike off the ground with a jack and not it’s ready for repair or route maintenance.

One more thing you need to do before you start working on it is deploying the jack stands. These usually come with the lift, or you can buy them separately, and they enable you to do more than light maintenance tasks on your bike.

Place a jack stand underneath each wheel of your bike. Afterward, you can release the jack without fear, unlock its wheels and slide it from under the bike.

How to lift your motorcycle without a jack?

If you don’t have a motorcycle lift nearby but need to lift your motorcycle, you can still lift your bike. In this case, however, you’ll need to get around your garage and see what you can use to hoist your bike up for easy repair and maintenance.

Here are a few tips for lifting your motorcycle without a jack:

1. Using a set of stacked boards

One tried and tested ways of lifting your bike involves lifting it on a set of stacks. This is a good trick if you want to lift the rears in order to work on them…though it can also work for lifting the front part.

The method is even easier with two people, where one does the lifting of the bike’s rear and the other slides the boards. With the boards in place, you should consider strapping the front end of your bike to prevent it from tipping off the boards.

See the video tutorial below on how to do it:

2. Using a car jack

A car jack can be a good alternative for lifting your motorcycle if you don’t have a motorcycle lift jack. Just like in the previous method, you might also want to slide several boards across the bike to assist with the hoisting. You can then strap the other end of your motorcycle or have a friend hold it in place for security.

A car jack alternative:

You can also try a combination of car jack, wheel chock, and some ratchet straps to come up with a setup shown below to see if it helps lift your bike.

photo: hdforums.com

Check out this article on How to Build a Motorcycle Lift? by Joshua D. Mattie.

Conclusion

If you have decided that you’ll be doing repairs and maintenance of your motorcycle on your own, then you must first learn how to lift it off the ground safely. This enables you to access various parts and components for comfortable, hassle-free repairs.

You’ll need a jack to lift your motorcycle for easy repair, as we have explained above. If you don’t have a jack, you might come up with other ways of lifting the bike for repairs.

Ultimately, the best way to lift your bike is by using a motorcycle lift jack. It only lifts your bike to your desired height for easy repairs but also safely holds it in place to prevent possible falls.