For a number of routine and repeated maintenance jobs, you need to raise the bike. Here is a classic cheap Airhead approach to getting the bike high enough into the air to easily remove a rear tire, work on forks, etc. and to do it alone.

Basically, we are going to put some blocks under each foot of the centerstand, tilting side to side to get the blocks underneath. But centerstands and bike geometries vary some and so you might wish to experiment a bit before rushing ahead to cut all the lift-blocks.

The idea is to tilt the bike away from you, far enough to slip a block under the centerstand, but not so far over as to have the bike fall over after the block is put in place. On my machine, that is about 20mm or 3/4 inch. 5/8 inch would be fine too. The footprint of the blocks can be as small as you dare (but there is a lot of force touching on a small piece of block so it has to be big and strong enough) or as large as you want; mine are about 5×7 inches of Formica covered bookshelf wood; Unfortunately, Home Depot was out of a color matching my paint code.

Grab the bars and tilt the bike over then rest the bike back down on the first block under the nearby centerstand foot. Walk around to the other side, lift the bars to tilt it towards the other side and kick two blocks under the centerstand foot on that side. Walk around again and tilt and kick under three blocks. It is left as an exercise for the reader to calculate the minimum number of blocks needed to get three under each side using this “Brahmin Puzzle” approach.

I can change rear tires with a height of three blocks, four for extra ease.

My bike always rests on its rear tire. As long as a bike does that, the centerstand is secure. But if you tilt forward, then it would be wise to tether the centerstand with a rope pulled tight around the front cross-over pipe or frame. Science has not yet conclusively established the number of blocks at which an untethered centerstand will terminate in disaster.

After sitting on the blocks, to tilt the bike forward, I have a nice screw scissors Toyota jack with a grooved fitting on top the snuggles securely under the frame cross-piece just ahead of the swing-arm cross-piece.