tired of balancing the bike against a wall to work on it but also unwilling/unable to fork out a shed load of €€€’s on a stand.

anyone knocked something up?

http://lifehacker.com/356596/diy-ikea-bike-rack

My mate built one. He used a Gearbox jack with a bit of 3″ box section bolted to top and a bracket from a building site fence (the bit that ties 2 pannels together) Could be done without a gearbox jack bolt box section to a work bench istead. But make sure bench is secured.

Use an old seat post fastened to the ceiling of you shed/garage

I have made my own bike stand, if my stupid camera would decide to work I would get the pics off it and show you, along with my homemade Avid bleed kit.

**HI-JACK**

home made Avid bleed kit?? How did you do this?? I am about to go and buy one so anything that will save me spending £30 on something that in my opinion is just Avids way of trying to screw people over will be good.

my homemade Avid bleed kit.

“Hmmmm….”
[takisawa scratches imaginary beard & listens intently]
“Please, go on my boy…”

Really annoyed about my camera cos I took pics.

2 x 100ml syringes – free from a kind Vet
Aqaurium tubing – £1 from a pet shop
Fitting things that fit into aquarium tubing – £1 from pet shop
Bottle of brake fluid from a motor factors – £2
Stationary bulldog clips – 10 pence

Get an M5 nut and make threads on one end of connector thing from pet shop, put a short piece of tube on that then connect that to the syringe. bulldog clips onto the tube

Took me 20mins to make and cost me a few quid.

Bled my Juicys a few times, works great.

£30 or £40 quid? no thanks.

uplink, that’s genius my-boy !

With the new fancy shed that’s EXACTLY what I am gonna try !!!!

💡

think I get what you mean. I’ll try and do this over the next few nights and I’ll post my results on the forum. I actually already have most of this stuff in the house/garage so with the exception of teh syringes it could be a freeby (however if teh other half finds out I’ve hacked up the pump from her fish tank she’ll kill me lol

I have Shimano and Hope brakes and never really understood why people need dedicated bleed kits when a shopping list much like BurnBob’s is more than adequate.

I do like uplink’s idea though…

uplink’s idea is sound as long as all the bikes you want to work on have the same diameter seat tube…..

I have posted some pics in a thread on the bike forum which shows my bleed kit but I think you will be able to see my bike stand aswell. Not sure how to post a link to the other thread but its “my homemade avid bleed kit” I think

link

out out of interest, and probably being peculiarly dimwitted, how does one afix the old seatpost to the ceiling of one’s garage, as in uplink’s post?

tip top idea ,is the bracket on the bike stand your own work or can you buy one ?

I use an old climbing belay loop (used be quite cheap from what I remember) and have this hanging from the roof at about head height, lift the bike up and put the nose of the saddle through the loop. The bike obviously still spins round but for most maintenance jobs it makes things much easier.

Cheers,

Ti_Tim

The bracket I just bought from Halfords for £10 I think.
The other two bits are from a garden centre, the bit in the ground is a metal spike which you hammer into the ground and leave, I then just bought a length of post 50m x 50mm, that then slots into the spike. Just bolted the bracket to the post(I put a few extra holes in the post so the height can be changed)
When your done just lift the post out and fold the bracket up into itself, that means when your finished with your bike all that left in the garden in the metal spike which should be flush with the ground not noticable.

I used to use an old tubular tyre over a beam in the garage.

Have you seen this stand made from plumbing bits?

Looks the part

I seem to remember a similar thing being done to hold a load of bikes upright and apart in the back of a van or shed.

I used to use a couple of nylon straps over the top of some beams in my parents garage, one round the stem and one round the saddle. Hight adjustable and you could work on it from both side but it did swing from side to side a bit.

I resisted the first time I saw this thread, but the 2nd time is too much to bare…

Not my finest hour but it worked.

Marine aerial clamp arm purloined from work bolted to the front of the workbench. holds the bike 500mm out from the bench, by the seatpost. Well solid. Even has a built-in magnetic tray for odds and sods.

not got a picture handy though.

midlifecrashes – that’s a neat website. cheers!