After having some trouble with the previous kickstand on my main road bike over the course of a few (the BV KA36 Adjustable Bicycle Kickstand for Bikes 24″-28″ – see my blog review here) I decided to start looking around for a different model.
My wife had done some research and bought the very popular Greenfield SKS2-305B ‘Stabilizer’ Stay-Mount Bicycle Kickstand.
The Greenfield ‘Stabilizer’ wasn’t my favorite; design-wise nor was I thrilled with where it mounted or how it looked when mounted. But after smacking the edge of my heel on my existing kickstand after having it work its way loose more times than I can remember, plus a breakage of the extendable mechanism – I decided to go with the Greenfield kickstand and give it a try.
After a couple of days, thanks to Amazon Prime, and the kickstand was in my hands. The container bag touts the company name and all the parts are neatly packaged, along with the multilingual instructions.
The instructions are plain and simple, short and sweet, and the kickstand installs easily enough. There are included a few cylindrical pieces of plastic for installing it on thinner chainstays and seatstays, and the specs say it fits tubes up to 7/8 of an inch.
Greenfield makes a ling of various kickstands and accessories but apparently, according to the company, this model is the kickstand of choice for many law enforcement bike officers. I can see why, as it’s pretty beefy, and likely capable of holding a fully packed bike upright – whether it is a bike with lots of police equipment, a fully loaded touring bike or a heavy mountain bike. Just don’t sit on the bike while using it and lean on the kickstand, nor on any kickstand for that matter.
It’s fairly light, with a weight listed at 340 grams, maybe twelve ounces. Its construction seems to be black aluminum alloy, and all parts look to be machined well. The bottom of the kickstand arm comes with a nice good-sized rubber foot, which can be replaced (the company sells replacements). There is no way to adjust length but it could easily be sawed off to shorten it. The specs also mention that it will not work on bikes with disc brakes but after looking at some of the reviews and comments on Amazon it seems that the kickstand may fit some bikes with disc brakes, but not others.
I used a couple of strips of 3M electrical tape (get the real stuff) where each piece of metal touches the bike to protect the finish – you can wrap the tube or put it directly on the surfaces of the parts of the clamps that are going to touch the bike. The bolts can be tightened with a flathead or Phillips screwdriver but the kickstand arm itself requires a metric allen wrench. The bolt that attaches the kickstand arm also comes with a locking washer. Unfortunately even with the locking washer the kickstand arm loosened up on my wife’s bike once, dangerously swinging the kickstand arm forward toward the spokes before she noticed it. Possibly I just didn’t get the bolt tightened enough as it has not happened again.
So the install went quickly on my bike, just as it did on my wife’s Trek. A note here – the instructions explain a proper tightening sequence – something you should heed as people have broken the clamps from not following the directions included.
The first thing that I noticed after installed it is that the bike does not stay in one place as well as a mid-mount kickstand. The bike, even on a level garage floor, wants to rotate or pivot around the kickstand shaft foot with any slight movement to the bike. But stability-wise, outside of this, it seemed to hold the bike upright just fine.
A big positive with this kind of kickstand is that it is very easy to tip the bike a bit onto the kickstand and be able to easily turn the rear tire and/or move the pedals forward or backward as needed in a completely unobstructed way – which you can’t do with a chainstay bridge-mounted (mid-bike mounted) kickstand. Very useful for chain lubrication, cleaning, and checking the movement or adjustment of the derailleurs and rear brakes.
The kickstand arm snapped down satisfyingly (dual springs according to the info from the company), and back up again securely.
With the kickstand down it looked okay, just strange as I was not used to it visually. With the kickstand up though – I definitely didn’t like it aesthetically. It just kind of stuck out the back awkwardly. My wife likes her’s though, so this is more of a totally personal preference.
But how well the kickstand worked or looked was moot after I got it on the bike and tried to ride it…
The heel of my foot squarely hit the top of the kickstand, the angled outwardness of it was directly under where my heel was when the pedal on that side was rotated to the back. And it wasn’t even a close thing – I would have had to ride severely pigeon-toed with my heel out at an extreme angle to even spin the pedal once around. And there is no adjustment possible with the angle of how the kickstand mounts onto the bike. There is a bit of leeway forward and back, but not much and certainly not enough for my foot to ever clear it.
So, even though the kickstand seemed to be nicely built and designed in general – it didn’t work for my purposes due to my particular bike’s and/or body’s geometry, nor did I like it visually even if it had worked. Amazon of course was great about returning it.
I ended up going back to my original kickstand (a BV KA36 Adjustable Bicycle Kickstand for Bikes 24″-28″ – see my blog review at this link) and re-adjusting it, which did the trick.
My wife likes her Greenfield SKS2-305B ‘Stabilizer’ Stay-Mount Bicycle Kickstand, though we have had the kickstand arm work loose (possibly due to not tightening it enough) and the bolts holding the bracket have loosened a few times as well. I don’t want to tighten these bracket bolts TOO much as there have been bracket breakages that have happened to other users of this kickstand. But I believe that this problem can be solved with some thread lock on the bolts (as suggested by one blogger), of which I have yet to give a try. Unfortunately before I got a chance to put thread lock on one of the bolts fell out of my wife’s kickstand and was lost. But the company was a real champ when it came to sending out a quick replacement for the missing bolt and now all of the bolts are thread locked on, in fact the president of the company took care of it!
In conclusion – discounting my personal visual dislike for the mounting location and how it physically did not work on my particular bike, I’d say otherwise it’s a fairly well-designed and usable kickstand. Just watch for those loosening parts.