Sport Bike Stands – Harbor Freight with Skateboard Wheels

In my not-so-humble opinion, Pit Bull makes good stuff that’s insanely well built BUUUUUT their stands are heavy and cost too much damn money. I’m not about to give $180+ for rear stands for each one of my sporty bikes. I store my bikes on stands because some of them don’t have kickstands because they’re track day only machines that’ll never see the street.

Harbor Freight sells a similar stand for $49.99 + tax, and you can usually get one the same day locally at the store near you.

Pop a set of spools on your swing arm, and your rear wheel is in the air so you can do whatever you need to do on the same day you thought to do it. They’re light weight (aluminum!), cheap, and they work for years and years and years. If you want to be super fancy, pay someone (or DIY if you have a spare oven lying around) to powder coat your Harbor Freight stand and put your company’s stickers on it like the race teams do!

But they have one silly problem. The wheels go out-of-round after many years of use.

I popped the old wheel out and saw that it used the same size bearing as a skateboard wheel, so I grabbed some old 51mm skateboard wheels I had laying around, popped the bearings from the old crappy wheels into them, and installed them in both of my stands.

They roll over the garage floor and pavement in the paddock a lot better than the old wheels, and they look pretty trick since they only extend past the stand a tiny bit.

So that’s a simply trick you can use to extend the life of your Harbor Freight stand without having to buy new wheels if you have skateboard stuff lying around from yourself or your children. If you don’t, skateboard wheels come in many different sizes and colors and I’m sure there’s a skateboard shop somewhere near you. Get creative!