A centre (or main) stand – got to have one, right? Tyre changes, chain maintenance, avoiding flat spots on rear tyre, and oil level checks – all so much easier with a centre stand (for you stateside visitors, that’s a center stand). So I had to get one – yes, Honda should make it as standard, but, hey, costs…

Shopped around a bit. OEM one – £190+, ouch. A few others available, typically a little cheaper, £130 to £175, but then found Motea, the outlet for Constands in Germany. Nominally around the £130 mark, but they have frequent 30% discount days, and with one of those I got mine for about £99, including P&P, plus Euro GBP conversion costs. Not bad. It took about 2 weeks to get to me, but I wasn’t in a hurry, so no problem.

Checking up installation on youtube I found that most people managed to do an install in about 45 minutes, so off I went to the garage with great optimism…

First thing to do was clean up the bolt holes on the frame, then grease up the bolts with water resistant grease and apply a bit of thread lock on the ends.

And pre-assemble the bolt assemblies. The half nuts shown above are not part of the assembly, I just used them to keep the assemblies together and stop losing washers etc while I moved things around.

Lifting the stand into position and inserting the first bolt proved a little tricky, so after about twenty minutes of trying I tried the other bolt. It went straight in… Something was wrong.

The bolt only wanted to go in at an angle…

There seemed to be an alignment issue.

Took it out and checked. The bolt hole on the left was 1-2mm nearer to the ‘stop bar’ than the one on the right, causing the frame bracket to jam on the stop bar. Moving that hole was out of the question, and the thought of returning the stand to Germany wasn’t a good one. So, adjusting the frame to fit seemed like the only reasonable option.

The shiny wear marks showed the problem from the bike’s point of view.

A bit of ‘adjustment’ with a good file made the bolt fit.

At last, both bolts in!

But it was still tight and jammed a little on stand on full lift up. Took them out and regreased them. By now there was grease everywhere, so I didn’t bother trying the thread lock again. Such is life, never straight forward. So, now it was time for a quick check on functionality…

BTW – note the rusty threaded hole above the bolt head – I’ll mention this later.

Well, the stand worked, but it was a hard lift – not to be attempted with soft shoes on. Time to add the springs and bumper stop. But first I coated the springs in white lithium grease to try and help keep the corrosion bug at bay (probably just wishful thinking). Oh, and I had to tap out the spring anchor bolt hole in the frame as there was too much rust in it. A note here to others – the spacer on the anchor bolt goes on the outside of the frame – the sequence is bolt, gap, nut, spacer then frame.

A good pull and the springs jumped into place. Can’t actually see the point of the curved spring anchor link being curved – a straight link wouldn’t have hit anything as far as I can see. Anyway, a bit of grease on the rubber bumper stop should have helped get it in, but pushing it in straight didn’t work, a bit of jiggery-pokery with a small flat screwdriver did the trick.

Now it was altogether and working! I did add some black insulation tape around the stand’s cross bar in an attempt to keep muck and stone scratches off which may start corrosion prematurely. Hopefully, it helps keep the rust bug away for a bit.

The lift is about 2 inches, which seems a little high from others that I’ve seen, and it is a real heave to get it up there. I can’t believe that can be right when so many others report the ease with which it goes up on the stand. I’ve had two Goldwings and both were much easier than this to get up on the stand. Is this the right stand for my bike? Or has my bike been lowered at the back? I doubt it, but I will check the seat height against specs to see. It is very, almost too, easy to get off the stand, which makes me think the angles are wrong (is being too high tilting the bike forward, this geometry helping to push the bike off the stand?).

Anyway, it works (sort of), but it did take about three hours of fiddling and head scratching, so I’m not overly pleased with the stand and that job. But at least I can now get on with the next job…. 🙂

BTW – while I was under the bike I did spot a few areas of surface rust and general corrosion – things I will address later. You can see it in the photos above.

Next, installing a Scottoiler…