Have-a-go heroes rejoice! Here is a bike repair stand that lets you fool around with a drill and screws, before you get down to the main business of torque-wrenching your Pinarello into so much monocoque scrap. Wait, no...

The bench mounted repair stand from Black Dog Bikes is a sturdy piece of kit for "serious" home or professional mechanics, i.e. those in possession of a dedicated workbench. Once fitted in place it has a pleasingly permanent air to it - there it is, in your shed, workshop or spare room, ready whenever you need to carry out a spot of casual bike cleaning or maintenance.

The stand comes in three parts: a base, a vertical stand that slots into the base, and the clamp itself that holds your bike. The stand needs to be fixed in place with four screws (not supplied) so you probably won't want to use the kitchen table for this; a waist-height vice is the sort of thing that could easily be turned against you to painful effect by a sufficiently angry/imaginative cohabitee.

Anyhow, once you've found your spot installation is straightforward: just attach the base to the surface of your choice, slot in the stand and the arm, and you're ready for action.

The stand allows for a good range of adjustment: the arm can be raised or lowered as required, and the clamp can be rotated through 360 degrees. Adjustment is by means of quick release levers. These are satisfyingly chunky, and the entire stand feels extremely durable in construction.

The rotating mechanism is particularly neat - flip up the black lever and you can rotate the arm to the required angle, then close the lever to secure it by means of two plates of interlocking teeth.

As repair stands go, this seems a pretty sophisticated specimen. One area that worries me - about stands in general, not just this one - is the clamp itself and the need to ensure the bike is being held securely, but without marking the paintwork on the frame or even - Rapha forbid! - causing structural damage to delicate carbon tubing.

By way of allaying such fears, the clamp on the BDB stand is described as follows:

"Its PU jaws will hold any frame tube shape and we have tested it on the most delicate carbon fibre frames with absolutely no marking at all. The clamp has spaces left to allow free running of "on frame" cables whichever tube you are clamping to."

In practice, the PU jaws feel pretty hard (rather than soft and rubbery) and the angle at which the clamp jaws meet the top tube of my bike meant I was cautious about clamping them too tight. It would probably be fine, but I wrapped an old cloth around the frame before clamping it fully tight - better safe than sorry and all that. Used in this way the clamp afforded a secure grip on the frame, certainly enough for cleaning purposes and general maintenance. For repairs requiring the application of Herculean force - such as swapping out a bottom bracket, say - I would be inclined to keep the bike on the ground rather than risk stressing the frame at the clamping area. Those of a more trusting, less superstitious nature may have no such qualms.

I encountered a minor issue with the external cables on my frame. The rear brake cable on my Bianchi is offset to the left side of the top tube rather than directly below or above, so fitting it into the provided "cable slot" on the jaws required a bit of manipulation to avoid the cable being clamped against the frame. Again, simply tucking a piece of cloth between the frame and cable before clamping was enough to set my paranoid mind at ease. If your bike has internally routed cables then this is of course not an issue.

In use, the clamp did its job without fuss. I hadn't used a repair stand before, and was pleasantly surprised. Common jobs, like adjusting brakes or gear indexing, are made so much easier when you can spin the cranks without having to hold the rear wheel off the ground.

Overall, this repair stand is another practical and high-quality product from BD Bikes, and well worth defacing my vintage workbench for. If you don't have a spare horizontal surface in your life, check out their wall-mounted stands (as reviewed here) or the versatile floor-standing version.

Locking Tilt Bench Mounted Repair Stand, £27 from amazon.co.uk

 

0 Comments