The Granite Design Hex Stand is the perfect portable bike work stand for stashing in the car or even in the bike bag to help make these little jobs easier.

When you’re travelling with your bike at some point inevitably you’ll have to give to some TLC or affect some minor running repairs. When that happens it’s always a little awkward without a work stand.

Granite Design Hex Stand review

Made from strong but light 6061 aluminium, it uses a folding tripod design to retain stability despite the small size and weight. You just flick the quick release on the back of the main strut and slide the two legs downwards. There’s a handy indicator to tell you where to lock the legs in place to make sure they are flat and in a stable position. Then lift up the retainer arm until it slots into place.

Unlock the quick release to open the stand and set the height.

So your bike just slots in?

It works simply by using the hollow axle of your crankset, where the sprung-loaded arm simply slots into place to hold the bike snug. This arm can be adjusted for height to accommodate bikes of differing bottom bracket heights and is set in place using a single 5mm hex bolt. It also has a removable sleeve to enable it to fit axles of varying diameters. Slide your bike onto the arm and it easily raises the rear or front wheel enough to allow full access.

It easily lifts the back wheel of this Specialized Enduro and keeps it stable.

The sprung-loaded arm simply slots into the hollow axle.

How to: Sort out your gears

How does it perform?

In use the first thing you notice is it requires flat ground to function properly and preferably hard-packed, any slope and the bike can slide off the retaining arm. Once you have this sorted the Hex is actually pretty stable, even when working on 14 kilogram+ bikes. The arm also places the bike far enough out so you can fully spin the pedals, making gear maintenance a cinch.