Reader Steve from Montreal sent along a great tutorial on how he built his own bike repair stand from spare parts in his garage. Steve is also to be commended because his first language is French and he wrote the following in English. Take it away Steve . . .
As you see, I made the stand with two triangles, a used old fork, two small clamps from the dollar store, a small metal rod and two radio antenna.
A bike will sit in the stand multiple ways - this is one way.
And another . . .
The antenna (both sides) prevent the bike from falling to one side or the other. I used old antenna from the 80's. They made them stronger back in the day.
To support the bike in the center, I used a PVC pipe. Don't cut it in a half, I would recommend "less than a half" for stable support under the bike. If you cut in half, the bike will stand only on the side of the piece of PVC and will put pressure on the cables that pass under the crank.
I still have problem with this part. The fork moves left and right and is not entirely stable. I used a clamp from a reflector light. Maybe I will make a hole in the wooden base that fits the fork. This way I gain 1/2 inch of wood to support the weight.
For the metal rod, the image speaks for itself.
To hold the fork, I simply used two small clamps, replace the spring inside (to release the tension) by a bolt (to prevent the clamps crushing when you replace the screw). The clamps stay firmly open. The duck tape is optional. A simple tie-rap is enough to fix the clamp on the fork.
Awesome Steve! As a reminder, we also did a post on "bomb proof" bike stands that has proven to be a fairly common hit on our site - you can find it here. And we even featured a gravity defying "stand" that you can find here.
Nice work! a real piece of art!!. The bike is grat also!
Posted by: Hernan | 09/02/2010 at 07:58 PM