Words - Ryan Gardiner

Pics - Ty Fitzgerald

Since Jon Weaving at GripSport is such a nice guy, he decided that hooking us up with some brakes to test wasn’t enough; he wanted us to play with his top-of-line Workshop/Race stand and optional Tool Tray and review it as well.

And who are we to say no? We accepted the offer and after doing a bit of parcel pick up and delivery for Jon, we were left with one Workshop/Race stand on our lounge room floor, ready to be put to work in the farkin.net factory race workshop.

Our old work stand, the famous ‘Couple of inner tubes hanging from a beam’ was put into retirement and the GripSport work stand took center stage. Setting the stand up is child’s play; you simply slide the hinged triangular legs onto one end of the stand and the head and tool tray (if you’ve got one) onto the other.

To be honest, if you can't figure out how to set the stand up, you're probably not the sort of person who should be working on your own bike anyway.

When you stand it up, make sure that the clamp faces between the two open legs of the stand, otherwise you’re stand won’t, well, stand.

A large nut on the back of the head allows you to slide the clamp forward and rotate it through six different positions to clamp your bike at just about any angle.

You can adjust the height the clamp sits at by sliding the body of the clamp up and down inside the legs, make sure to tighten the wingnut that allows you to do this well when you do or the bike will come sliding down and clock you in the head when you least expect it. (Learned that one the hard way)

The clamp is a hinged design and you wind the handle of the clamp in and out to adjust for the size of the part you want to clamp down on. The clamp cams-over on a set of small rollers which are held in place by small locking washers, which we found didn’t do all that good a job of holding the bearings on.

On one occasion we lost the whole washer/roller assembly when they fell off while trying to clamp a bike, surely there has to be a more secure way of keeping these in place? Cotter pins perhaps? Jon will hopefully be willing to explain this choice to us all in the forums.

It must be noted that we had a whole bag of rollers and washers (and extra rubber covers for the jaws of the clamp) at our door within days of telling Jon about the problem, customer service like this can't be faulted and is a credit to Jon and his business.

We also wore the paint off the head of the clamp in front of where the rollers / handle attach to the head, though to be fair this is only cosmetic damage and made no difference at all to how well the clamp worked. Jon has since explained to us that we shouldn't have been closing the clamp from the front anyway, so it was our mistake but one you should be careful to avoid if you want your Workshop / Race stand to stay all purty.

This minor problem aside, the clamp is strong, simple to adjust, can clamp down with a heap of force and has no problem in passing the "what’s the stupidest angle I can clamp my bike at test".

The huge triangular platform the folding legs give makes the stand very stable on any surface and it folds small enough to easily fit in a car, so it would be a great addition to any racer’s kit bag or any home or shop mechanics workshop floor.

The Tool Tray did the job of holding tools well and could slide up and down the body of the stand to keep it out of the way when turning pedals and adjusting gears and such. To my mind the Tray could be a little bigger perhaps to fit such all important bike tools as the gigantic shifting spanner.

For a long time, a quality stand has meant a major investment, with a decent Park stand costing upwards of $700. The GripSport Race/Work stand retails for $349 and offers a clamp that while not as refined as a Park stand, is equally functional and a base that’s just as stable and considerably more adaptable to the different ground conditions found at home and at the races.

Jon’s so sure you won’t be able to break it he offers a lifetime warranty and we’d have to agree with him. The Race/Work stand is an industrial and purposeful looking stand, nothing fancy, just tough, well built and well thought out parts that even the most inept and abusive wrench monkey would have a tough time doing damage too.

A stand is a lifetime investment and a GripSport Workshop/Race stand will last you a lifetime and more, it’s Aussie made, does as good a job as you’ll ever want from a stand and costs half as much as anything that even comes to it in terms of function and quality.

It also looks kind of like a dragon when you set it up properly, specifically it looks very much like Trogdor and is equally capable of achieving burnination. Check out all his majesty!

Farkin.net apologises profusely for being so juvenile and asks that you not use your GripSport Workshop / Race stand to burninate things.

The GripSport Workshop / Race stand plus Tool tray retail for $466, check out GripSports homepage to get your grubby little hands on one.

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