I found a wheelbarrow with a broken handle and a flat tire in the alley alongside someones garbage the other day and I grabbed it. Home Depot sells a pretty hefty wooden replacement handle for fourteen dollars, which I installed today.

The new handle was a bit bigger than the old one. I found that one side of the new handle was the same height as the old one, so I installed the new one sideways. First I measure the length of the remaining good handle and then I cut the new one to match. Then I remove the old handle, held it against the new one, and used a speed square to mark the mounting holes. After drilling them out I attached the new handle. I found it’s greater width made the horizontal bar at the front end of the handles a little tight, but still was satisfactory. I had to replace a few bolts along the way as some old ones were a bit rusted and bent, as well as the new handles size changing a couple dimensions.

I removed the tube from the tire, pumped it up a bit and felt around for the leak. It was a small cut, about an eight of an inch. This was easily patched with a bicycle tube patch. After the wheel was reassembled and pumped up, it worked out great.

Fifteen dollars is a bit of savings over the fifty it would have cost for a new one, but it was nice to take an hour and repair something that was going to be thrown out. This wheelbarrow will be put to good use at one of the Alleycat Acres sites.

A few years back I outfitted my 2006 Yamaha XT225 with a set of panniers from Happy Trails for camping. I really liked the solid industrial look that was also clean. I excluded any plastic panniers out of the gate because I’m pretty hard on gear and they’d surely get destroyed. Not a lot of companies made racks for the XT225 at the time, and I’m not sure if that’s changed. I’ve been looking recently for a set for my 2010 BMW F800GS, and I still prefer the Happy Trails look. Many other panniers are riveted together or have plastic pieces screwed on. I prefer a decent but solidly welded box to replacing a plastic trim piece any day. Speaking of dents, the XT went through a head on collision with an SUV years ago and while I had to replace the front end, the boxes came out unscathed.

The biggest failing of the the kit, which also includes the “SU Rack” for mounting, is the bracket for the rear turn signals. The rack used a number of factory mounting locations, which meant removing the passenger handles, but also required moving the turn signals further back. It came with an aluminum bracket that attached under the license plate. At some point all the off-road riding I did caused the bends in the bracket to break. Now shortened, I moved the bracket down under the rear reflector, bent it again and drilled new holes. This worked okay, except that the tail that holds the reflector is not very rigid and even tie-strapping the bracket to the support arm of the SU rack just below it didn’t help a whole lot.

I recently finally got around to a more permanent solution. I took a piece of scrap 1″ angle iron and cut it into two 1.5″ pieces. I drilled a couple holes for mounting the turn signals than welded these pieces to the rear support arm of the SU rack. Then I threw on some paint to protect the steel and mounted everything up. This is a very solid construction. My only concern would be that with the turn signals only a half an inch from the support arm, they could bounce a lot and cause damage to the bulb or the bulb socket, which I recently had to add a weld to repair one of as well.

I probably could have mounted them further out, and given the opportunity to do again I would consider putting something on the 45 degree turns of the rear support arm. I like this placement for keeping the turn signals in tight though, this keeps the width of the motorcycle down when the panniers are off it.