Hi all I'm starting to think about building a bike workstand - the sort of thing with a pivoting frame clamp so that it's easy to turn the bike upside down or at an angle for easier working. Before I go too far down the design road, has anyone done anything like this and is willing to share how they did it? I don't like reinventing, erm, the wheel...
I don't currently have any welding equipment so was originally thinking of making something out of wood with metal fittings ... but it might be a good 'excuse project' to set myself up with some cheap welding gear ;-) ...
IME, dreadful on thin stuff like car bodywork (difficult if not impossible to get the current and feed right), not so bad on thicker stuff like tubular steel or angle. I was knocking up perfectly adequate frames and welding up broken steel framed chairs with very little practice after I bought a cheap Clarke MIG welder.
Plus, you get to use an angle grinder to prep and clean up (if necessary).
Dave Plowman (News) presented the following explanation :
I cannot see the OP so my apologies for replying to yours...
If by bike you meant a motorbike, then I built one a couple of years ago. I used some scrap stainless steel box section of several different sizes to lift my VFR. I used two F shaped sections, each sliding under each wheel from the side, with the bottoms of the F a slide fit in some slightly wider box section. This all mounted or rolled up and down a vertical post with fixed arms which slide under the middle of the bike. The two F brackets with the bike on it was then lifted by a cheap hand cable winch which was bolted onto the top a plate welded on top of the vertical post. I took pictures and posted them on the Honda VFR online forum, which might help explain the basic idea.
Prior to using a winch to provide the lifting force, I tried a long threaded rod and nut. Turn the thread and it winched the frame up. This worked, but was extremely slow and hard to turn.
There is also a type where your ride the bike onto a steel table, then the top of the table is lifted in the air by a cheap hydraulic car jack. The plans for this can be found on the Internet.
I didn't use that idea because the table needed as much space as the length of the bike, plus and extra three feet or so available on the end. Whereas mine just slides straight under the bike and lifts vertically.
clashes with bottle cage, gear cables etc. and the BB support also fouls the gear cables. It won't take an aluminium-framed bike as the bike's tubes are too big. A stand that could take modern bikes would have to be very versatile.
Yes, but I can arrange the clamp to be compatible with the bikes I'm going to be using it on...
There are a few American designs out there using 3/4-inch 'threaded black (iron) pipe'. This sort of stuff seems to be dirt cheap in the States. Any suggestions for a cheap alternative over here?
Are you going to make the clamp too? If not, then Park Tool have some decent clamps for sale separately. I'd be tempted to clamp onto the seat post, rather than the frame in any event.
Yup, I don't like that type of workstand, for the reasons you state.
I have a Minuora W300.
Which is of the style the OP is thinking of.
The clamp opens wide and is easily adjustable to fit a wide range of tube sizes. It doesn't get in the way of cables and can easily be rotated so as to make working on the bike easy.
DIY-ing a frame clamp that does similar seems to be a non-trivial task to me.
That looks better. I wouldn't want to clamp anywhere that is too out of balance as it could damage the tubes; 531 would be OK, but
753/ally/titanium might be damaged.
When I was doing a lot of work on bikes (500 miles+ a week, often in bad weather, causes a lot of maintainance) I put a couple of hooks in me bedroom ceiling, then old innertubes are very versatile. This set-up could also be used for working on bikes ;-)
No, modern conduit is (usually) welded and that will give up and crimp on you in this application. US "black iron pipe" (wonderful stuff) is intended for pressure so it's seamless drawn, thicker walled and useful for mechanical jobs. Shame you can't get it, and it's getting hard to find '60s vintage thick-wall conduit too (industrial scrappy).
I'd regard both of these are far too thin and far too light for this job. You end up with a stand that jumps about when you lean on it (the main reason why I prefer a "bolt to my workbench" bike stand).
753 certainly, but ally for cheap bikes is pretty robust (thick walls) and you won't get a dent in my Ti frame if you jumped up and down on it (I've bust ribs on it and not scratched the finish).
I half agree with this. If mine didn't rotate I'd probably not really notice it didn't do it, but I do sometimes find it useful to rotate the clamp on mine.
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember jkn saying something like:
It's nothing more than steel conduit or gunbarrel heating pipe and it's reasonably cheap. You missed the chance to get a conduit threading kit from Lidl, but it's bound to re-appear sometime soon - the last time was about a year ago.
Hi all Thanks for all the comments - I've been away for a few days and haven't had chance to reply. You've given me some useful things to be researching a little further.
I did know about the Park clamps but wasn't sure if you could get them separately over this side of the pond. And it may well be true that a rotating clamp is not as useful as I'd like to imagine it is. I'm going to chase sown the scaff pole and also the padded plywood approach. A nice 'getting-towards'winter' project...
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