As you probably know, after my accident last year I replaced my 750S3 with a V7 700cc. I’m back riding and enjoying the new beasty. My problem is that I’ve been left, at least temporarily, with a weak right wrist. This means that I feel very insecure holding the bike up while getting off it before deploying the side stand. I can’t stand astride the bike and hold the stand down with my foot while leaning the bike over as my right foot would leave the ground. The stand is a short type with bracket welded to the lower frame rail and snaps back like a rat trap when the weight is taken off it. If I were able to put the stand out, move my left foot away from it, then lean the bike over all would be fine.
Here it’s tied down
Has anyone modified the stand so it will just but, only just stay down? I don’t want to make things risky by it locking down. I’ve thought about some sort of wavy washer in the hinge to add some resistance to the mechanism or relocating the spring mounting.
At the moment I’m just about ok if I’m on a good level-ish surface and have the bike in gear as I get off.
John - mine stays down - I’ll take some photos so you can see how it differs from yours. No issue with flicking it down, but a bit of a stretch to retract it. Ian
My Eldorado Police, has a police side stand (believe it or not 
) this is a much longer affair and is rock steady - the bike just cannot fall over on any surface - same as on my Convert and on the T3 California. Would one of these fit?
The harley-esque police stand on that beautiful Eldorado is great but hard to find and I’d need to change the crashbar to fit it meaning I wouldn’t be able to have the leg guards.
I’m interested in what you have Ian so a photo would help. Mine is basically a standard side stand with an extra long peg on it to clear the leg guards. Being long of leg, I would be able to reach to flip it back up.
I’m going out to the garage now to take another look at it to see what could be done.
Feeling a bit stupid!
Took the side stand off, cleaned it up then added a washer under the head of the pivot bolt to close the “fork” a bit. That made it slow to retract rather than spring back with full force. Deployed the stand a few times and found that if I push the stand out with the toe of my boot on the arm, I can get my heel on the ground as I tilt the bike and all is good. I had been tyring to push the stand out with my instep. 
When I used to have the chocolate fireguard type stand
I was told long while ago not to oil the pivot, then it will stay down, and he was right.That wasn’t for a loop tho (a Tonti).
Yeah, you’re right Mike. Degrease a Tonti type side stand then take the paint off the hidden bit so it rusts! For me, they were ok until I started using panniers. I put a honkin’ great ugly sidestand on the S3 but it worked.
I think the “police” stand for the loops is the same arrangement but fixes to the crashbar. My experience with Tonti bikes led me to degrease the V7 stand as well but the spring is 'kin strong. Unless you over ride it completely by bolting the pivot up tight, there’s no way this one will stay down. Never mind. It seems I just needed practice!
Nice you’ve come up with a solution…x
Couple of photos attached. Bike has both wheels out and not much room so I was a bit limited on what I could do. Only 1 spring which passes over centre, so holds stand down and also up. Makes my bike look very tatty…
Ian
Thanks Ian. Those photos are really useful. As you say, your stand takes the spring over centre as the top of the spring is in front of the pivot point. On mine the top mounting point for the spring is behind pivot so this can’t happen. Shouldn’t be beyond me to make something up to bring the spring mounting point forward.
Well, I reckon I’ve spent about 15 hours making a bracket that does the job! I thought there would be a simple solution but there wasn’t.
The new spring anchor point looked like it needed to be exactly where a bolt passes through to hold a complicated plate with the existing anchor point on. I made up a special bolt to fit in the hole. This worked in that the stand would now stay down but when retracted it didn’t feel secure. I was concerned that I could go aver a bump and the stand could flip down!
Second attempt involved welding a bent stud to a replica of the original spring plate. The bend would bring the pivot point up as well as forward so that the spring would go over centre both when the stand was up and down. This worked but the spring was now too short so a tab was fashioned to extend the length of the spring.
However, this plate wasn’t quite right and so a final version was fabricated this time using 2 bolts with their heads chamfered then welded together and to the replica of the old spring plate. Old arrangement below, my new version above. 
Now the stand stays down and stows away securely.
I’m not sure if it would flip up if I rode off with the stand down and it caught on the ground. I’ll just have to make sure I remember to raise it. I didn’t have any problem on the S3 with a cali stand and no interlock switch.
The only thing I might need to change is to cut the extra length off one of the threaded sections as I can see it will get in the way of removing the sump.
