Easy Motorcycle Ramp

It's simple to create your own ramp for moving motorcycles in and out of vehicles with a few pieces of lumber and special ramp bracket. The hinged design makes a compact, sturdy, portable ramp that folds out to 16 inches wide. We use ours to transport our bikes to and from our winter storage facility and also when they break down.

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Materials & Tools

For this project, you will need:

Pressure-treated 2×8 lumber (8-foot length x2)
Ramp top bracket pack
Ramp foot bracket pack (optional)
Hinges (x3)
Drill with bits to match bracket bolts and hinge screws
Socket to match nuts or adjustable cresce n t wrench
Circular saw and/or chisel (if bracket is not a perfect fit)

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Cut Boards

To create a perfect fit for our brackets, and also a smooth surface for tires transitioning from the wood surface to the metal bracket surface, I cut the corner out of one end of the boards. I carefully aligned them and clamped them in place before drawing a ruler line. I then adjusted my circular saw's blade depth to only about 1/4 inch, and made a few passes in the area to be cut away. I then followed up with a hand chisel to break away the remaining bits of wood. Take a look at the video in the first step to see this process in action.

I also made an angled cut at this end of the boards to provide an even tighter fit for the bracket.

Install Hinges

I flipped the boards over and swapped their positions, maintaining the same orientation relative to one another as before, and re-aligned them before installing three hinges along the edge where the boards meet. First I traced the screw hole locations, then drilled small pilot holes. Finally I used the included screws and drill driver to affix the hinges into the pilot holes.

Affix Ramp Brackets

While holding the brackets in place, I traced the positions of the holes before poking their centers with a punch (drilling a small pilot hole would achieve the same affect). This stabilizes the bigger drill bit needed for the large lag bolt holes.

After drilling the larger holes, I inserted the bolts through the wood and metal and secured with a nut. I put a socket on my drill to tighten these bolts, but a wrench would also suffice.

The bracket kit also came with some adhesive foam to affix to the underside of the bracket tabs. This protects the surface of the vehicle and also provides some traction.

Optionally install the ramp foot brackets, if desired. We skipped this step, choosing to leave the foot ends of our boards bare.

Use It!

To use the ramp, we unfold it and place the bracket lip on the vehicle entryway. The ramp kit came with two metal pins that can drop through holes in the bracket and vehicle to secure it in place. We keep these pins in a bag taped to the ramp itself. Not all vehicles have an opportunity to use these pins, however.

Thanks for reading! If you have any questions or tips, I'd love to hear them in the comments below.

If you like this project, you may be interested in some of my others:

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