The Surly BFD Project Menu
Prologue
Episode 1: 138L (each) Panniers… Seriously?!
Episode 2: Big Fat Dumb Wideloaders
Episode 3: Kickstand Kaos (you are here)
Episode 4: Add a Flight Deck. And a Hangar.
Episode 5: Leftovers
Episode 6: Electrification
The Surly Big Fat Dummy is a fantastic bike, with one widely acknowledged weakness: The kickstand.
There are those out there – possibly this includes the staff at Surly – who say this is a feature and not a bug. The BFD after all was created as a bikepacking, overland trailblazer. You don’t need no steenking kickstand since you can just lean the bike up against a cliff face, or an axe handle.
Begrudgingly it seems, the Big Fat Dummy is delivered with a kickstand that on any normal bike would be pretty sturdy. Alas on this monstrosity, it is adequate only when the bike is empty, and woefully inadequate when loaded.
How do I know this? Well, ask around any user group, but insofar as personal experience goes: On my first shopping trip with my new freight train, I went to Costco and loaded up four packs of soft drink cans. Since this was Costco, each of those four packs holds 36 cans. Thanks to a total lack of planning and intelligence on my part, I created a load where just the soft drink cans weighed over 100 lbs.
Memo to Me: When shopping on a bicycle, pay attention to how heavy the cart is before you leave the checkout line.
So, my wideloaders were sturdy enough to handle this. My great big panniers were more than big enough. But… how am I planning on loading the bike, then loading the (14 lb, 2-meter) chain and u-lock, and only then climbing on the bike and rumbling across and out of the parking lot? During this loading process, I learned first-hand how important a solid stand was. The next 15 minutes after this picture was taken were a big adventure.
Moving Forward
So, the problem is obvious: If you are using the BFD as a cargo bike and not a bikepacking bike, the kickstand is way out of its league. Has to be replaced. Period. Talking to folks on the various Surly user groups, the Rolling Jackass with its roughly $400 price tag is the best commercially-available solution.
Its DIY Time
I wasn’t ready to fork out that kind of money. I was bound and determined to build my own stand, and I had an idea. How tough could it be?
If you have seen my article on the wideloaders for the Surly Big Fat Dummy, you may have noticed (and seen mention of it in the post) there were some oddball fittings pictured that served no purpose in the published design. That is because I planned an integrated kickstand as part of that project.
The idea went thru a number of iterations. I started with the idea of using simple ‘pegs’: a 3-way elbow on the outside edge, with a length of tubing extending to the ground and terminating in a rubber crutch pad. Place it maybe in the front, or perhaps the rear. Perhaps one on each side, or maybe the front and rear of just one side… what about front on one side and rear on the other?
After mulling the possibilities, I came to the conclusion that every type of peg idea was fatally flawed. There was just too much potential for the bike to fall over while attaching the pegs, or removing them. Especially loaded.
I ended up settling on this: use a 4-way elbow joint on the inner, forward tube joints. Form the actual stand from two pegs attached to one another by another tube to make a ‘U’. And furthermore, make the ‘U’ stand up on its own with another 4-way tee sprouting two short arms that become stabilizing props. This will let the stand be placed in position without someone holding it while the bike is set up onto it.
Its a whole lot easier just to show a picture of the final product than it is to describe in words:
By the way, I used the same marine rail fittings that I used for the rest of the wideloaders, so these connections, with a little Vibra-Tite, are guardrail-solid.
The whole idea of making it self-standing was a happy accident sprouting from my need to turn two leftover short pieces of pipe into a full-length crossbar. the 4-way tee was a leftover itself, that I thought I was temporarily pressing into service. I didn’t think to add tubing and feet to the two unused, open holes until I glanced over at more leftover parts lying on the floor. Adding this self-standing (and load distribution) feature turned out to be crucial once I actually tried to use the stand.
And this is what ended up working. I measured the vertical tubes so they only raised the bike up by a bit off the ground. This was crucial as attachment was achieved by lifting the front of the bike up and simply plunking it down on the stand. This is the part where inadvertently making the stand able to sit upright turned out to be (very) useful.
Attaching the stand is easier to do than it sounds. Load on the bike is on the back wheel. Lifting the front is not very difficult even when the back is loaded. And keeping the rise low on the stand is important because it means you don’t have to lift up the front too high.
Removal is also simple. Lift the bike up and the stand falls away (sizing is crucial for this to happen so the stand doesn’t hang up inside the fittings). Push the bike back an inch and set it back down. Grab the stand and toss it into your panniers.
It Works! more or less…
Success! And I still had $400 in my pocket, but… really… after using it for about a month every day, I found the attach/detach process was kind of a pain. As an exercise in problem solving… as a fun project… it was great. But as an expected convenience used with a daily driver. No bueno. And if you have wondered to yourself if, while lifting that bike onto, or off of, the stand it might just fall sideways… I had a few close calls but it never happened, even with a full grocery load.
Still, if your use of the bike is more occasional, this could be a viable option to add into your wideloader project.
Or skip the wideloaders, do a short front crossbar only, use simple single elbows for the stand pegs and work out how to flip it up and down… You could make just a stand with a little more effort and some smarts.
I ended up relegating the kickstand to a portable work stand, and bought the Rolling Jackass (they can both fit). In Figure 4 above I am at a city park, with the bike up on the ‘work stand’ so I can clean and lube the chain. The work stand does a better job than the Rolling Jackass because the latter can come undone if you mistakenly push the bike forward. Not possible with the fixed stand. I like doing basic maintenance at a park after a ride so the time and effort to make this stand was not time wasted.
A short Afterword on the stand…
I made one more improvement – sort of – that might be more successful for someone more determined than I was to see it through. There was a second issue beyond just lifting up the bike and putting it down onto the stand. That lift was actually fairly easy. The real potential for annoyance was if the stand shifted a hair, or my aim was off by a smidge, and the bike hangs up and sits atop one of the open tubes of the stand, rather than sliding into the fitting. Solution to that was to walk over and give it a little kick which, 9 times out of 10, would work. Sometimes not if my aim was really bad, though, and I would have to retry the process. Like I said: an annoyance.
The boat rail fitting itself has an internal chamfer to make fitment easier. And there is quite a bit of extra material there to allow you to hog it out further to make a much bigger well. That would work great. But these are steel fittings about 3mm thick. My poor little Dremel’s grinding wheels just polished that steel and little else. Something bigger and badder was needed and I wasn’t up to it at the time (the job needs a drill and a big internal chamfer bit).
Instead, I rounded off the ends cheap and easy with 7/8″ round end caps. this worked perfectly, but the caps are so tall they make the stand a bit wobbly, since so much less of the pipe is now in the socket.
Whats Next?
So, we went round and round with the kickstand and in the end, bought one and use the other for a work stand. Fine. I’m not done yet as there is one more goofball problem to solve.
Where I work, I am lucky to have my own private garage where I can park the bike, hook up a charger, turn on a couple of industrial fans to blow the sweat off me and change into proper work clothes. I’ve even got a small air compressor, a big rug and a nice padded chair.
There’s only one problem… to get into that garage I have to make a U turn through a narrow walkway under some stairs.
It was never an issue until I built a bike almost three feet wide and over 8 feet long. Yeah I sort of didn’t really focus on that until after I had the build completed. You’ve probably heard the story about That Guy who bought a pickup and then realized he couldn’t fit it in his garage? What an idiot, right?
Problem Solved!
Use the little dollys that people use to move around pianos and pool tables.
Throw one under each leg of the kick stand and just wheel the thing around as you please. Easy peasy.
Moving the bike into the office garage through that narrow entryway is a snap. Without them its still possible but involves a lot of dragging and lifting and fighting and cussing.
Last But Not Least (At Last!)
Take a close look at Figure 7. At the feet of the Rolling Jackass kickstand. Underneath them. Looks like some kind of disc or foot? Well, it is. If you refer back to the Frankenstein boots for the Ursus Jumbo, I did essentially the same thing here. The idea was the steel feet of the Rolling Jackass – are thick steel. they will probably last a long time, but I want them to last forever. I also park the bike in places where I do not want the floor scratched (like the marble floor of my bank’s lobby. Yes really).
Using the same process I described in my other post on the Jumbo, I layered on about 10-12mm of Shoe Goo… the artificial shoe-leather. It became a flexible but durable sole to the Jackass’ steel shoes. Before applying the Goo, I roughed up the smooth steel surface of the feet with some power tools.
10-12mm may seem thick, but that thickness is necessary to keep the edges of the steel feet from digging into the ground as you lever the stand into the down position.
The security guard at your bank will thank you for taking the time to go that extra mile.