When shopping for a bicycle workstand, you usually make your choice based on price or the mounting option. BikeRadar recently took a look at the Cyclo Modular Stand, a portable workstand with plenty of interchangeable options. We've now had the time to carry out a full test.
The stand includes a foldable base and clamp head. Setup is extremely quick, thanks to a plastic lever that locks the two base legs in place. The stand offers reasonable stability if the bike is held at an appropriate angle, but placing the bike at an unusual upward angle can weight the stand unevenly and cause it to topple.
A large quick-release lever provides an adjustable working height up to 140cm.
Grabbing the bike in the clamp (and releasing it) is a two-stage affair. To tighten, the clamp needs to be first shut by hand and then the long-side lever creates clamping force. Undoing this long handle releases the clamp tension, and there's a button on the opposite side to allow the final release to quickly open the jaws to full width.
The clamp’s easy to use lever doesn’t offer the same user control as a spin-knob style clamp. The clamp is secure without death gripping the item and is safe to use on a carbon seatpost. We don’t recommend you clamp a lightweight frame in it, but that's something you shouldn’t ever do anyway.
Solid quick-release levers ensure easy adjustability on the Cyclo Modular stand
The clamp works well, but we feel the plastic lever could have been made more solidly. The stand’s function remained reliable, but the crunching sound that came from within the clamp was unnerving. It also took a fair amount of force to operate the long lever at times.
Clamp angle adjustment is done with the rear plastic lever – a toothed design ensures the clamp angle won’t change once locked in, but limits adjustment.
The clamp’s opening width could be the biggest limitation of this stand. It's 68mm at its widest, nearly 30mm shy of common Park Tool clamps. Large tube profiles, such as those on high-end triathlon bikes won’t fit in the Cyclo clamp, but we had no issues fitting more commonly sized carbon aero seatposts into the clamp.
The clamp head is easily removed with a quick-release lever, but is not foldable, so the 5.45kg stand isn’t the smallest stand to travel with, although it's not too obtrusive.
The modular design is a real bonus. It lets you to move the clamp head to one of the many other mounting options. For a dedicated home-mechanic, this could be a cost-effective way to have a more stable workstand at home, with an easily portable option for event-day.
While we have our reservations about the clamp’s versatility and durability under professional use, it’s a feature-packed consumer option at a respectable price – the lifetime warranty doesn’t hurt either.