Kickin' Kickstands

One of the most important things about mods to the bike, is the law of unintended consequences.  In this case, shortening the suspension also required the kickstand to be shortened.  Now, the kickstand doesn't appear to be magically complex part (in fact it has no moving parts), so this ought to relatively easy task.  Except it's not.

For one, I am sure there is some fancy smancy correlation between running length of the kickstand, bike lean angle and suspension sag, but I for one don't have the stomach to dig all those numbers up.  So, instead we do the next best thing.  We intend to cut the kickstand in bites to get the correct angle.  This would have been a flawless method, had we not got a bit greedy, and taken that last 1/2" off.  

So you ask, why does it matter that the kickstand is too short.  Perhaps the most annoying thing, is that when you mount/dismount, the bike can pivot around the rear tire.  Additionally, when you park it on anything, very.slightly off true flat, you'll likely barely get off to and stand up so you can watch the leaning tower of pisa.  Except your learning tower of pisa actually falls! 

But once you get the correct length, you can't just weld the kickstand back together.  Instead, the proper way is to reinforce the hollow tube with a metal pin which provides strength, and also something to weld to. Here's the pin being lathed.

Inserting Pin and tack welding for final mock up

Pin Installed