Do you use a kickstand?
 

I have not had a kickstand on a bike I've owned since I bought my first good mtb about 10 years ago. I've purchased three more bikes since then and no kickstands on any of them.

My wife however always wants a kickstand.

We just purchased a tandem and the lbs refused to put a kickstand on it - stating it was not made to have one. I was amused but the wife was horrified.

What are your opinions on the subject?

Mark

My dad always thinks that I should have a kickstand. Frankly they bother me though and since I dont park my bike a lot except on the rack in the garage it really doesn't matter that much.

Does a flick stand count?

No kickstand here. Not ever, as far as I can remember. I prefer to rest the bike on the ground, drivetrain-side up. That way it can't fall over... :D.

If your LBS won't put a kickstand on then don't buy your bike there. Go to wal-mart, ALL of their bikes have kickstands!

As a local bike mechanic said "kickstands are for kids"

I'm trying to fit one on my Greenspeed..................just for laughs!!

It looks to me like people's opinion of kickstands is inversely porportional to how much they use a bicycle. Kickstands are very important to people who don't ride at all, not at all important to people who ride lots.

I've got nine bikes in my basement shop right now, zero kickstands. Several of the bikes, like my son's full suspension mountain bike, just won't take a kickstand. The majority of tandems fall into this catagory too. Even if one would fit, on some of them, like my Klein and my tandem, I'd be afraid of damaging the frame or at least scratching the paint if I mounted a kickstand.

Once you pass those hurdles, the fact is that kickstands don't really work all that well. You have to adjust them pretty carefully or they won't hold the bike up. If you're not careful to get it mounted straight, your heel will hit it when you ride. If you don't bolt it on pretty tightly, it'll vibrate loose. (Check the second paragraph on frame damage.)

Having said all that, I still think that having a kickstand on my beater bike might be handy once in a while. I just never think about it when I'm in the bike shop.

I don't have a kickstand on my road bike, but I have one on my hybrid. There's a girl in a group that I ride with who has one on her Specialized Sequoia. It's back by the rear wheel. I don't know if it's attached to the frame or to the wheel hub. I can't really say anything about it to her because she allways kicks my a$$.

One bike does the other does not.

"It looks to me like people's opinion of kickstands is inversely porportional to how much they use a bicycle. Kickstands are very important to people who don't ride at all, not at all important to people who ride lots."

I ride a lot. I guess now I need to start watching out for all the anti-kickstand nazis, as well as all the anti-bicyclist nazis! :eek: ;)

Honestly, all kidding aside, until recently I hadn't used a kickstand on a bike since I was a kid, but now most of my bikes have them. In case y'all hadn't noticed, most modern well-equipped cruiser and commuter bikes now come with kickstands (as did almost all vintage cruisers and Euro-style commuter bikes), and I for one find them quite usable and useful...so much so that I've retrofitted my hybrid, which didn't originally come equipped with a kickstand...

Did y'all ever think that maybe kickstands just have more appeal to certain types of utilitarian urban cyclists than they do to your typical lycra-clad roadie? And I have not had one single problem with a modern kickstand interfering with my pedals, or failing to keep the bicycle upright in normal use.

17 bikes, 13 kickstands.

My bikes won't accept a kickstand and I've found much better alternatives anyways so I don't bother with them. For MTBing, a kickstand is just plain dangerous so I've never had one on my MTB. For roadbiking, I've never found one that's reliable enough to stay put when retracted or keep the bike from actually toppling over anyways when deployed. I either lay the bike down thus lowering its potential energy state to a minimum, lean it against something solid and sometimes secure it using a light cablelock, use the pedal trick, hang it by its handlebars from a rail or by the saddle from a crossbeam or just walk around with the bike.

Here's also another method for holding the bike upright when you're not riding it...

I mean, what else would be considered classy enough to hold up a titanium bike? Why, another titanium bike of course!

http://www.neebu.net/~khuon/albums/2...1/PICT0027.jpg

Now of course, your wife might not necessarily agree but this is one of the best stands I've ever seen for a bike...

http://www.bikeforums.net/showpost.p...&postcount=102

kickstands on the cruisers only. no kickstands on the "serious" bikes (mtn bikes, and road bikes). kickstands are for tools.

does anyone have a bike nashbar coupon for these? i'd like to order a couple ...

:)

-- michael

I take issue with your definition of what is and isn't a 'serious' bike.

Road and Mountain bikes - used primarily for recreational purposes; these bikes therefore are not 'serious' bikes.

Cruisers and commuters - used primarily for actual transportation needs; these bikes therefore are 'serious' bikes.

:p

i dont have a kickstand but that because i very rarely ever encounter times where i would need one...
at home i keep my road bike on my repair stand and my mountain agains the wall.
when im biking and there is a curb/rock/stump/anything curb height where i am stopped i will use the pedal trick to hold up the bike.
if there is a railing i will hook my road bars on it.
if im in the middle of nowhere and there is for some reason flat ground all around me and nothing to lean my bike against then ive biked somewhere ive never been before and the fact i cant lean my bike is not my biggest problem because im lost:D (but if i still needed to i would lay it down).

Your question assume we only have one bike!

We have 7 in the garage.

No kickstands on the roadies, yes on the round-town mtn bikes and the hybrid.

My personal take is that most of the time I put a bike on the kickstand it gets knocked or blown over, falling much harder than if I had laid it down gently.

Wife insists on a kickstand on her bikes - except the roadie!

What kind of tandem is it? If its aluminum, like a Cannondale, they are very thin tubing and adding a kickstand can damage the tubing. A gentleman that added a kickstand to his roadbike (against our advice), wound up sawing through the frame basically, after a year or two, because the kickstand would move a little and scuff the surface apparently. I also think the length/weight of the tandem comes into play... if you mounted it at the back, like a chainstay stand, I don't think it would support the bike due to the leverage from the length. If you put one behind the stoker's bottom bracket I wouldn't trust it much more.

None on any of my bikes --- all road bikes. Maybe someone should develop a Ti or CF kickstand! Or has this already been done?

Yes, my new tandem is a '04 Cannondale Road Tandem. I don't use kickstands and didn't want one on it anyways. I'm glad the lbs guy wouldn't do it - I sure wouldn't want to damage the bike. I've just been leaning it against the wall in the family room when not in use. I sure wouldn't let a beautiful bike like that sit in the old nasty dirty garage with those smelly gas guzzlers. :D

Mark

I believe someone once marketted a kickstand with a CF shaft and titanium mounting hardware. I'm not remembering who though.

well, i use the kickstands on all my big tire cruisers, &
my new schwinn occ chopper. also on my muscle bikes.
but.... on the rigid ,crusty chopper i built......................
no kicker here, i'd have to make a two footer to stand it up. !
so i let it fall or lean on something. this is my "attitude bike"
measures eight feet fron to rear.

the only kickstand i've got is on my huffy cruiser/commuter (yeah, i know), and that's only because i can't find an allen wrench big enough to get the thing off.

I've got two bikes, both with kickstands. One's a hybrid, the others a bent. The hybrid bike has a lousy one. It would occasionally fall over. My bent which is a LWB has a good kickstand and the bike has never fallen over. I asked my lbs about it and he said that the reason most bikes don't have them anymore was to save money and weight. He said the ones that do offer the kickstand as an option charge about $15. Sounds like another way to get a few bucks more out of the customer.

I commute on a mtn bike...so where does that fit in :p

Yeah I use a kickstand, even though it's near useless. Keeps falling over...but it's fine for assisting me with mounting my panniers in the morning. I need to find a motorcycle style stand...the kind that lift teh rear wheel up. Those are kinda hard to find though for a regular bike.

I have 11 bikes in the garage. 5 of them have kickstands. I don't have them on my main riders. What I don't like is that they always scratch up the paint. That and the extra weight is the origin of the "anti-kickstand bias", I think.