We've all had a relationships with kick stands. We hate them for being heavy, not working right, scratching the paint on our chainstays,slipping, hitting the crank and there's probably a hundred more complaints I've forgotten. But the convenience of standing the bike up by itself is hard to ignore.
The best has always been made by Pletscher,
who also make the famous mousetrap rear rack.
They remind me of my first night in Zurich Switzerland after a week in Italy. It is just plain shocking to see a place where every thing is perfectly clean and functions, well, like a Swiss watch. Pletscher's products, as humble as they are, do that. But the kick stand, although never failing to function, would still fail to work sometimes. It's little narrow alloy rod still sinks into soft ground,
or doesn't provide stability on a windy day or uneven pavement.
They reinvented it!
The new Zoom kickstand has an adjustable plastic foot,
which has a wider profile and much larger base than "ole unreliable."
The new model comes with the proper hardware to install it on bikes with or without a kickstand plate.
The mechanism is the same that always functions into eternity, but the arm itself is a much lighter L-channel design with holes to adjust the height of the foot.
As you can see the foot places at least 4 times the area on ground as the old models, and the foot bulges out in a big ellipse which will prevent it from sinking into the ground.
It has some welcome and happy improvements to the old design
and even looks better with a very shiny clearcoat over the alloy.
It's a welcome improvement and I'm glad I took the chance to order one for my Hillborne.
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