Whenever I use my park bike stand the clamp is always stuck and I have to break it free with a large bar, I’ve tried grease, hammer, prayers and begging but nothing seems to work. Is there a hack to make it rotate when you loosen it without resorting to a large bar and attempts at pull-ups?
Same thing for me
I hit mine with a mallet
I cleaned and put slickoleum in the cone area where the stand rotates and have found it is quite easy to “unstick” when adjusting the angle. Still can get a little bit sticky, but not like it used to before using slickoleum. Slick honey or something similar would work too I’m sure, but a standard grease did not help in my experience.
I solved my issue with a Feedback Sports stand.
Works every time I use it.
Edit;
Mine was about 30 years old so I got my money’s worth
Crazy. Never had a problem with mine.
I’m going to try antisiese but I’m also really thinking of adding a spring washer to make it unstick when I loosen it, I’m amazed at how much of a pain it is for me
I’d pick up the phone tomorrow and call Park Tool.
I’ve had this problem since the day I brought mine home, years ago. I generally just don’t rotate it, but if I need to I remove the bike, put a bar-like object in the clamp, and tap it on the end with a hammer.
I almost never rotate mine, but I have the same issue. Greasing the cone, mechanism etc. liberally has helped but not solved it completely.
In fact, I’m really disappointed in this over-priced stand in general. The hard plastic jaws scratch seat posts as well.
Here is how I use mine, its the same as I see mechanics doing at the local bike shops:
Open:
Put seat post in and close lever, adjusting the screw drive as necessary:
its now holding the seat post, but not tightly. Final tension adjust to lock it in tight:
When finished, back off the screw drive and open the clamp.
Its never scratched any seat post, carbon or metal.
That’s not the part that gets stuck. It’s the rotation (accessed via that knob on the back, at the bottom of your photo) that seizes up. Your stand considerably newer and fancier than mine, but appears to be the same general design; the knob on the back tightens the convex rear part of the clamp assembly into the concave tube of the main stand body (like a giant pressfit bearing). The blue clamp assembly gets almost instantly seized into the black housing, and completely loosening the screw from the back does nothing to back it out/ let it rotate again.
Gotcha. I only use the rotation lever a few times a year, and never had a problem with it.
Mine is a PCS-10 from 2019. That has discontinued and replaced by PCS-10.2, which has also been discontinued and replaced by a PCS-10.3.
PCS-12 here, circa 2014? also never had an issue with it locking up. I was thinking I had the opposite issue but remembered its not the rotation that slips it spins on the mounting post to the work bench, which seems to have resolved itself lately.
no exploded view of parts for the older version that i can find on the park site only whole head replacement and can’t tell if that is the superseded X.2/.3 head or not (price says no). Seems like a running change to part of that system that is causing the issue.
Mine is a PCS-9 from about 2014 or '15.
I have a 10.3, that’s given me some trouble with the bike in the stand so I never really studied it. I assumed it had something to do with the weight of the bike putting lots of pressure on one side of the cone. But looking at it now, it’s using friction to keep it from rotating, and at first it looks like just that last bit of the biggest end of the cone is where the friction happens. Mine seemed to be sticking and had some dust at the big end, so I cleaned the inner and outer cones, and pushed the cone in just by hand, and it wants to pop itself back out when I stop pushing. I think this is facilitated by the cone it fits into being stiff plastic that is notched so it acts like a bit of a spring when you let off the clamp.
So I put it back together and it was better, but if I clamped it down good, it’ll get stuck every time. Then I experimented with how much I need to turn the screw to get it to hold and still pop back out pretty consistently, and found that the range (and amount of pressure on the handle) is very small (less than 1/8th turn) between “it moves a little” to “it won’t turn, but the cone pops out when released (with maybe just a little finger tip nudge).”
TLDR So I’m gonna keep the cone surfaces clean and not overtighten the clamp for the rotation. Maybe that works for the older versions too?
Oh, and if you usually use it at about 12 o’clock and 3 o’clock (or 12 and 9), I suppose it could be worn/compressed some, so maybe try taking it apart and rotating the inner cone 90 or 180 degrees on the square tubing that keeps it from rotating freely.
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Ai spam, welcome to the future!
It’s been a few month since you gave me this advice, I ordered the stickoleum you mentioned and finally put it on today and it seems to work great. Thank you for the advice and help!
I’ve got a PRS shop stand and base, and the clamp sticks often, but I just stopped over-torquing the clamp lever. It sticks sometimes, but I really don’t want it shifting either. Once it was really stuck. I wondered if Loctite antiseize would help in these cases. Loctite makes a copper and nickle based product. Copper woud be better I assume.
