Stand, and deliver!

I use my Pitbull center stands all the time, and I used one a lot on Squid right up until I put the exhaust on. Because the pipe is so low and long it prohibits use of a typical swing arm stand. Honda of course solved this by mounting one to the bike, and that was well enough, but I'm not one to leave well enough alone. So I chopped it off, and decided to make my own.

I've been wanting to do a stand for a while, and I've got drawings of them that I've been kicking around for years. This trouble with Squid provided the perfect opportunity to get the project done.

After taking all the measurements that I thought I would need. I taped out a mockup to scale on my workbench.

Tape's perfect for quick changes and ideation. After that I used the dimensions off the tape drawing to bring it into CAD and create splines to send to Garland Sheetmetal who does all our waterjet work when we need it. At work we're building a project that needs a bunch oh half inch aluminum parts, so I tacked my four parts onto a batch and asked him to bill me separately for those parts. Total cost was about $185 which is a lot for a center stand so I'm not certain I'd do it again, but custom parts are cool.

Anyway, this is what showed up a few days later:

The only post work I've had to do so far is to drill and tap the M6 holes into the ends of the cross pieces.

I hadn't been able to predict where the kickstand would go or how it would interact with the stand as it rotates. As a result I had to chop out one of the rear supports on the left side, this is a bit concerning, but it appears to be handling the task quite well. I might have to bolt in a vertical strut later.

My favorite thing about this style of stand is that the whole thing is entirely within the profile of the bike:

Both bikes in the background are on traditional stands which make them in storage essentially a foot or more longer than they really are, which can become an issue when working with a fairly confined space.

It's quite a bit of effort to slide it under the bike and there are plenty of things I would change if I were to do another. But over all I'm pretty happy with it.