MIDSOUTH MASTER CYCLING CLUB

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RACING TEAM

Product Review:

Ultimate Bike Stand (now called Ultimate Support Sport-Mechanic Stand)

I rely on the mechanics at my local bike shop, Bike Zone, to do quite a bit of work on my bikes.  Things like changing bar tape always seem to look better when a pro does the job.  I do handle some of the minor tasks and am anal about keeping my bike clean and the chain lubed.  It is because of this that I use my Ultimate Bike Stand almost daily. 

I have always done a good job of taking care of things that I owned and bikes were no different.  When I first started riding, I purchased a separate two-legged kick stand device that fit below the bottom bracket allowing the rear wheel to move freely off the ground.  This low tech device was functional for lubing the chain but not ideal when washing the bike.  There were quite a few times that my first bike would come crashing down on the driveway when the wind picked up.  I don’t think I actually ever crashed this first bike but you wouldn’t know by looking at the derailler and the paint.

I  purchased the Ultimate Bike Stand at Bike Zone for around $150 three or four years ago.  The company name has since changed names to Ultimate Support but the products look the same.  The model I have is now called the “Sport-Mechanic”.  It has a spinner knob to open and close the clamp mechanism verses a ratchet system like their higher end models.  The clamping head can swivle 360 degrees so it is easy to clamp on the seat post, top tube or any other locations.  It only weighs about 13 pounds which is quite a bit lighter than my brother’s Park Tool bike stand but it is every bit as stable.  The stand is adjustable up to 65” tall although I don’t need it anywhere close to that height.  I don’t typically take it on the road with me but it definitely is portable enough collapsing down to 44” that I easily could.

I use the stand on both my road and mountain bikes.  The clamp is gental enough to handle the carbon top tube of my road bike.  I was able to easily apply enough pressure to securely hold the bike without any worry of crushing the tube - something that would rank up there with smashing a bike on a roof top car rack into a garage.     The stand is plenty strong enough to support my 30 pound mountain bike without swaying.  I did find that the stand dinged the paint on the bottom of my time trial bike’s top tube.  This was due to the fact that the tubes weren’t round (aero shape) and the top tube ended up resting on the bottom of the clamp.  I am not sure if I could have prevented this by being more careful when clamping.  I never had this happen with any other bikes I owned and it is only in one spot on my TT bike.

I was a little concerned when I purchased a new Trek Madone bike this year.  The bike has an aero seatmast that is not round.  The top tube is also aero shaped and curves which made clamping it more challeging.  Fortunately, Trek already had a solution with a repair stand adaptor made by Bontrager pictured below.  The adaptor is hinged and opens to fit around the seatmast.  It then provides a round tube which you can now clamp in the repair stand so that it doesn’t even touch the bike.  A slick solution that ran somewhere around $25 – 30 at Bike Zone.

Bontrager repair stand adaptor for 2008 Trek Madone Bikes

I wouldn’t want to be without my bike stand.  I would rate this as “something you don’t know how much you need until after you start using it”.