Feedback Sports, long known for making some of the best portable work stands for both home mechanics and professional race team staff, have recently introduced their Sprint Work Stand. The Sprint’s crucial departure from previous models is that it is a fork-mount rather than seatpost clamp type. The fork-mount type stands are supposedly more typical in Europe and are certainly more visible among pro race teams. For me, I chose to go with a fork-mount stand because I (and several clients) have bicycles with bladed seatposts or integrated seatposts (ISP) which preclude the use of seatpost clamps.
The Sprint stand has a rubber padded cradle to support the bottom bracket shell, and the fork clamp is easily loosened and slid along the length of the extruded aluminium boom. I say fork clamp, but it is also designed to fit the rear dropouts of the bike. Clever spacers are held captive on the skewer and provide for 100, 130, and 135mm dropout spacing. There is an optional adaptor for thru-bolt forks. Folded up, the Sprint is a small package, the most compact stand that Feedback offers. Of course it would be since the stand only needs to reach to the BB not all the way to the seatpost, which of course would be high up on tall bikes. The lower stance is the key to the fork-mounts other advantage, that of being more stable when wrenching hard on the bike (eg, install/removing BBs). It’s leaps and bounds better than portable, light weight seatpost-mount stands; only full shop stands like the Park units with a 70-lb base plate can do the same with a seatpost-mount. But the Sprint stand weighs under 13-lbs and is 30” long when folded.
Folding and unfolding is not very intuitive if you’re used to seatpost-mount stands; in fact, I’m still trying to decide whether I prefer to first swing the boom into position or spread the tripod. And the stand is a little awkward to carry in the folded position since the boom doesn’t lock down. The stand comes with a travel bag, but stuffing it in and then removing it gets tedious. I fashioned a toe strap to the end of the boom so that I can bind the stand together conveniently. The Sprint stand is adjustable for height, and the telescoping shaft has a clamp that can be opened to allow the boom to swivel 360deg freely, which is nice if you are cleaning the bike or just want to move the bike instead of repositioning yourself and your tools.
It is easy to see why pro team mechanics would like this stand as it is small, sturdy, and allows you to work on bikes with aero section seatposts. If you are a pro mechanic servicing road, triathlon, or cyclocross bikes, I would heartily recommend the Feedback Sports Sprint stand. However, if you work on primarily mountainbikes which may have a variety fork mount styles (100x9mm, 15mm thru-bolt, 20mm thru-bolt), you may find it tedious to reconfigure the stand’s fork clamp and to remove front wheels from the bikes for tasks that might take less time than adjusting the stand itself. Plus, MTBs almost always have nice, round seatposts to clamp to with more typical stands. Finally, as a home mechanic, this stand is not fender friendly; a full front fender comes down too low to get the fork tips into the clamp.
In the photos below, you can see how I added a toe strap to bind the stand together in the folded configuration.
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