KPX Side stand mod

[pathn]

I put a milk crate on the rack of my KPX so I could get a garaphone of water (22 liter water bottle, almost 6 gallons). I've had milk crates and buckets and ammo boxes and $$$ of bmw bags on other bikes.

I've whined about the side stand being too long before, after I took the preload out of the rear spring. So I'm at the store and put the too heavy water bottle in the milk crate, which made the bike squat a bit more and it was really close to tipping over on side away from the stand (and not much fun to ride either). I made it home fine, but I had to lean the bike against a post to get off it and unload the water.

Of course I didn't take any photos while doing, but I did afterwards..

So I leaned the bike up against a wall and took the stand off. I cut the foot off with my chop saw and used a thin disk to cut the bracket that holds the rubber good deal off too. I put side stand back on (w/o the spring), checked the angle of the bike and put a scrap piece of plywood down next to it and scribed the angle with a hack saw blade held flat against the plywood. The thickness of the plywood controls how far off the surface the marked angle is going to be.




After cutting the angle with a thin disk, I checked length again. I made a new foot out of 1/8" bar stock and welded it on and then guessed the position and welded the rubber good deal bracket back on. I'm not a great welder, but it worked. I thought about cutting the top mount off and moving pin that the spring is anchored to, but I wanted the foot in better contact with ground.



The side stand it now 13 3/8" from the ground to the center of mounting bolt. I put the spring back on with vise grips and my foot braced against the foot peg.

Of course I'm not saying anyone else should do this... But it worked for me. I'm not going to put another jug of water in there to test, but at least I can park on a sloped street with out going to the other side of the street.

Update:

I measured the the diameter of the side stand, it's 1/2 NPS pipe. That's 0.84 or 27/32 ish inches.

[JerryHawk250]

Looks like a good fix.

[Megadan]

Should trade with a Hawk owner. We tend to have the opposite problem 🙃

[pathn]

MegaDan,

While the stand is not solid like I read on another post re another bike, it would be correct to call it pipe, not tube... I didn't measure it either, but I think it matched some other pipe I have as scrap. It's welded. Take look at yours, it may be available at Home Depot in the plumbing section. Mine is plenty thick enough to weld anything to it, a tombstone welder with just about any rod isn't going burn through it. Check out the cut off foot, some of the thickness is grinder cruft, and it's cut on an angle, it's still thick stuff.

[Megadan]

Originally Posted by pathn

MegaDan,

While the stand is not solid like I read on another post re another bike, it would be correct to call it pipe, not tube... I didn't measure it either, but I think it matched some other pipe I have as scrap. It's welded. Take look at yours, it may be available at Home Depot in the plumbing section. Mine is plenty thick enough to weld anything to it, a tombstone welder with just about any rod isn't going burn through it. Check out the cut off foot, some of the thickness is grinder cruft, and it's cut on an angle, it's still thick stuff.

Oh I don't need to lengthen mine. I dropped the back a couple of inches to relax the steering geometry and level the rear control arm for better ride quality. The stock stand is perfect now lol. I was just making a joke about how nobody can seem to make a bike with the right length side stand.

I just like posts like this because I am still considering trading up to a KPX

[kcdano2022]

Why not buy an adjustable stand from Amazon?

[pathn]

Originally Posted by kcdano2022

Why not buy an adjustable stand from Amazon?

Well, because:

I have all the tools in my shop here to do what I did.
I know how to use them
I don't live where Amazon delivers in an hours or even days
I didn't have spend any money, I already have the weld wire, wire wheels, paint etc
I could care less about having bling looking stuff on my bikes, cars, trucks, boats etc
For this application, I would adjust it once, and have think/worry about it un-adjusting itself...

And most importantly:

I like doing stuff like that

Just to pile it on deeper, I have bought too many things from Amazon that were trash, as in not suitable for the purpose I bought them for. So, it's a coin toss that I would have to wait at least a week see if it's heads or tails.

All that aside, after finding out how heavy the stock side stand is, I would consider something like that if it's significantly lighter AND I could look at it before I bought it.

And I also contributed a bit to the community of KPX owners.