theHit

hey

has anyone ever heard of an automatic kickstand?

something that will lower as the bicycle slows to a stop, and raises as the bike speeds up.....has anyone ever seen anything like this for a bicycle?

i guess you could say it takes the "kick" out of kickstand, but im interested to know if there is one in existence.....

if so, could you tell me what company it is made by?

thanks a lot for the help!

operator

Yeah it is made by mother nature and it's called your dominant leg.

MichaelW

An automatic kickstand would be dangerous to man and beast.
If you really want a New and Improved design, how about an integrated stand that pivots on a suitably angled braze-on bracket, with the spring attatced to another braze-on. You could probably shave a couple of pounds of weight.

thechrisproject

Your pedal usually knocks a kickstand up when you start pedaling, so that part's taken care of.

So why would you desire such a thing?

Smaug

Why on Earth would you WANT something like that?

Seriously, most people here are pretty anti-kickstand... the concept of some sort of powered, automatic thing-a-ma-gigger strapped to your bottom bracket isn't going to get a lot of proponents on these forums.

Just put your foot down when you slow to the point that the bike starts to tip over. Then, when you're ready to go again, take your foot off the ground and apply it to the pedal. There you have it, an automatic kickstand...

capwater

I still remember being at a mountain bike race and some chick comes up all decked out in pro clothes (pretty hot looking) with a low-end Trek. She skids to a stop and puts down the kick stand. Too funny.

roadfix

I've seen them here:
www.dumbinventions.com/bike=kick.st.jpg//

Cerberusgl

At UCDavis someone on the human powered vehicle team built an automated kick stand(s) for one of the full fairing bikes. The motor wasn't strong enough to get it to lock down if the vehicle was tilted some as it deployed. It was not used for the competition.

Avalanche325

If you're that lazy you won't be riding a bike. You'll be driving a Corvette with an automatic.

moxfyre

I think this would be dangerous. Would you really want something to move closer to the ground as you slow down? What if you slow down to make a tight turn, do you really want the kickstand to lower itself and drag against the ground?

It isn't very hard to kick out a kickstand, and it's not something that I would ever want to do while actually sitting on the bike. What do you have in mind?

Guest

theHit

thanks for the replies people

this is not something i want for myself....its just an idea....and im not thinking of some expensive motorized gadget.......im thinking of something cheap and purely mechanical....

because i know there are some lazy people out there who just let their bikes fall to the ground rather than kick out the stand.....and this would solve that problem for them.....hehheh

edit: and for all the smartasses, im not talking about a stand to hold the bike while youre on it obviously......but rather, when you get off the bike, the kickstand is already lowered.......goddamn geniuses here eh

Dusk

Was this a trick question?

Raiyn

You must work for Shimano they're always answering questions for questions nobody asked. Perhaps you should market you idea to a company that sells bikes with shaft drives and airless tires?Somehow I doubt that anyone who takes their biking seriously enough to buy a decent bike would allow this to happen. These are also the people who would have money for your productCould say something about people trying to pump us for free ideas

Phantoj

What the human mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.






(Why, though? Some motorcycles had kickstands that were spring loaded to retract when you lifted the bike weight off of them... led to a lot of dropped bikes, but anyway...)

theHit

pump you for free ideas??

uh, i came up with the idea......i was just asking if it was already made......

moxfyre

I don't think it's such a BAD idea, but I think it adds a ton of complexity to something that isn't a very complicated part. Kickstands these days pretty much only come on kids' bikes and ultra-cheap department store bikes, I can't imagine an automatic wheel-speed-sensing kickstand could be cheap to make.

The trick would be the mechanism for figuring out the wheel speed. Would it be electronic? Mechanical? If it's electronic, which would probably be the cheapest thing these days, then you'd need some power source to move the kickstand in at least one direction, since a spring could only push it one way.

In summary, I think a reliable automatic kickstand would be costly and perhaps rather heavy, and would be of very limited usefulness

dbg

And I'm thinking it should sense weight on the bike, not speed. Lots of times I come to a brief standing stop at 4-ways before continuing on. I wouldn't want a kickstand dropping down while I'm trying to balance briefly.

Anyway, the last time I had a kickstand on my tourer the rattling drove everyone nuts. I ceremoniously removed it and we all spit beer at it (and each other, eventually).

Team219er

The question is - who placed higher in the race? If she is good enough, she can have tassles on her hbars and not have to worry about what people think.

Raiyn

Like you'd be the first to try to test the waters for a product here
Chances are it was already invented and patented in the 19th century

Dirtbike

If you decide to make this thing you are asking for trouble. If you are so lazy that you need a motorized kickstand, then why are you even trying to ride a bike when you could drive?

theHit

ah. and thats exactly what ive figured out......the mechanism for knowing when to drop the stand and when to lift it...and applying the force to do so.......and no electronics would be necessary at all.....the real problem would be reliability.

it would be a very simple mechanism......quite ingenious if i may say so myself

yes, the actual usefulness would be very low, but the gimmicky aspect is high....especially if its cheap to make....

thanks for the replies everyone....at least now i know that this probably hasnt been done before.

theHit

so what other products have people tried to test the waters here for?

moxfyre

Hmmm... my guess is a mechanism similar to that in a machinist's indicator. That's a little tool with a tip... when that tip gets pressed a little tiny bit a needle moves a long distance. This could be done with some kind of spring in the seatpost, so that weighting the saddle would lift the kickstand.

I still don't think this is a marketable product, but good luck

theHit

thats not what i had in mind, but its not a bad idea either......however it would be complicated....and when you stand up while riding, it would obviously not be very good........and it would not be very simple to make or install.

thanks for the wellwishing though! lol