The Remco Bike Lift with Feedback Sports Pro-Elite Clamp is a pro-workshop-grade electric bike lift that is also at home in the garage or shed of any cyclist needing to lift bikes for maintenance without risking damage or injury. With a modular approach there are options to suit many needs and the price is very competitive for what you get.
Let’s begin by recognising that cycling is a very broad church indeed, and that function, necessity and the value of empowerment are very much in the eye of the beholder.
We also need to recognise that e-bikes have opened up cycling further and more frequently to a huge section of the population who never saw themselves as ‘cyclists’. Research tells us that these are now people who ride bikes further and more frequently in recreational, transport or utilitarian settings.
An electric bike stand is analogous to a ceiling-mounted hoist for fitting roof racks, tent boxes or other things to your car, or having motor movers on your caravan. Strictly speaking you don’t need it, but it makes life easier and you’re less likely to slip, drop something or injure yourself.
So – heavier bikes, being ridden more often, by a much more diverse population than the stereotypical younger healthy male on a sub-10kg road bike. That’s where we begin.
Your average e-bike weighs at least 20kg, with many running well over 25kg – before we begin to look at cargo bikes. The UK Government-recommended maximum single-person lift for a male is 25kg and for a woman 16kg – so you can see that even if you have an e-bike and you owned a decent workstand, over time you’re putting yourself at risk of injury lifting your 25kg+ machine into and out of a workstand.
Factor in that you need to have a third hand to close the clamping mechanism, and you understand that e-bike maintenance means a new approach to home or pro workshop safety. If you own a bike maintenance business it’s there in black and white: if you ask a female employee to regularly lift 16kg or a male to lift 25kg, you’re wide open for prosecution under HSE legislation.
Hence the professional world has been an enthusiastic adopter of electric workstands, and pretty much every pro brand – Park Tool, Unior, EVT, Feedback Sports – has one or more powered lifts in its range.
Before the comments fill with people who are fit and able, who think such e-assist to be the workshop equivalent of equally derisory e-assisted cycling: just don’t. There is a perfectly justified and growing case for home use of workstands like this, to keep people of all ages and abilities riding more. If you’ve spent £5,000 on a decent e-bike, the price of a powered workstand to keep it humming along is a fraction of your initial e-bike outlay. If you ride often, you need to do maintenance like – at the very least – regular chain cleaning and lubrication, possibly changing tyres, checking and adjusting brakes and the like. As mentioned, with e-bikers riding three times as far and frequently as non-assisted bikers, staying on top of drivetrain maintenance is critical if you want to avoid frequent and costly bills.
Of course, pedal-powered bikes can be very heavy too – my beloved Dutch Workcycles FR8 weighed more than 30kg with no motor in sight. And I remember back in the day fondly rigging a dual block-and-tackle hook system off my garage roof to be able to work on it.
A quirk of most higher-end mid-drive e-bikes is that you can’t pedal the chain backwards, so chain maintenance means getting the rear wheel off the ground. Of course there’s a spectrum of ability and desire to DIY, and some of us are perfectly happy letting their bike shop do it all.
These pro stands are not cheap – as with all manner of tools, you can easily spend many thousands of pounds on pro kit. Unior’s Electric Repair Stand 2.0 and Park’s PRS-33.2 both come in at more than £3,000 – and that’s before you factor in Park’s base plate.
For context, our Remco Bike Lift with Feedback Sports Pro-Elite Clamp purchased through its UK distributor RS is yours for just £1,300 – and that includes the 32kg base plate and delivery.
The whole Remco lift and clamp setup weighs close to 50kg. This spend is well within the scope of a reasonable cycling-enablement investment for many people – proportionally akin to owning a £1,500 road bike and spending £300 on a decent Feedback Sports workstand, for example. Yes, over a grand is a lot for a workstand – but if it gets you riding more and saves you bills at your local bike shop, it’ll be worth it.
After possibly the longest intro of my reviewing career, we now get to the stand itself.
Remco Tools is a Belgian company, with the founders having backgrounds in ergonomic furniture design. After one of them injured his back and couldn’t lift his bike to work on it, the idea was born for the Remco Bike Lift as an affordable alternative to the pro models. Remco spent nearly a decade developing the concept, working with one of the world’s foremost linear actuator makers to deliver a maintenance-free, powerful, smooth and quiet lifting experience.
Modularity is key to the Remco design.
Don’t need a base plate because you can bolt your stand to a concrete floor? Already own a Park Tool base plate? Fine. Although the Remco one is larger, heavier and comes with levelling screws. Already own a pro chuck to clamp the bike, or found one on eBay? Use your own. Need more height because you’re taller than the average bear? Buy the adaptor to lift the stand. Need a tool tray? Add to basket. Want to have USB charging that runs off the stand? Plug it in.
This modularity is represented in how the Remco Lift arrives – in a number of smaller boxes. Assembly is straightforward, and you get a five-year warranty to boot.
Options, options…
At the heart of the Remco system is the orange ‘lifting column’ that comprises the motor, controller and display. The motor is rated to lift bikes up to 45kg, all day every day. With the Feedback Sports Pro-Elite Commercial clamp fitted that nibbles the lift capacity down to 38kg (Feedback Sports’ limitation is for warranty purposes) – which is still plenty for even a hefty fully-kitted utility ebike with panniers etc.
No, this is not the lift for a longtail or bucket-style e-cargo bike that’s likely to be north of 50kg. Similarly, you need to be sensible about lifting an e-tandem – I’ve done so by rigging a non-powered stand to clamp the frontmost top tube (yes, yes, I took care) so the Remco stand could do the heavy lifting of the back half of the bike.
The power cord is 3m long, and Remco will sell you a cover to reduce the trip hazard if needed. The power gets to the motor via a coiled section of cord that expands and contracts as the stand moves, and the display and controls are very simple.
There are three memory position buttons, and two manual up/down arrows. Memory positions are easy to set, so you can do so for each bike you’re working on. Often the lowest position needs setting, so you don’t over-drive the bike into the floor and lift the base plate against the bike. The mid-point you’d set for working on handlebars, and the highest point for drivetrain. Pressing any button during motion immediately stops the motor – a good safety feature if you aren’t using the press-and-hold manual buttons.
The travel has a range of 66cm, from a minimum of 86cm up to 152cm. In practice this is a sweet spot for all sorts of bikes. You quickly get to know where it’s best to clamp for the weight of the bike and the job at hand. For example, I clamp my 26kg enduro eMTB on the top tube just in front of the seatpost, as it’s a very strong part of the bike (alloy frame), and every ride I’m cleaning and lubricating the dropper post. As above, if you need more, height adaptors are available to add 100 or 150mm (4in or 6in). I found it to be just right without any additional height adaptors,and I’m 6ft tall. If you were clamping via a seatpost, you may find it too low to comfortably work on the drivetrain.
What the Remco Lift lacks is a lowering load sensor. So if you lifted the bike level, pivoted it in either direction, then lowered it again without levelling it, it’s going to try to drive the bike into the floor if bolted down, or more likely try to lift the base plate up against the bike. Either event is not good, so you need to pay attention when lowering. I got into the habit of loosening the chuck clamp before pressing down, so the bike swung back to neutral balance and if there was excess weight on one end or the other the bike pivoted flat by itself as the first wheel touched the floor. I’m not seeing a load sensor as a critical omission on Remco’s part – there are a thousand other ways to break your bike through not paying attention.
Something for home users to appreciate is that the Remco stand uses a pro clamp head. Pro heads slide into the ‘clamp chuck’ and are then secured by a lever that fixes the angle of the clamp. The clamp can pivot freely when not locked – but can also pull out as it’s just the clamping that retains it. You get used to this pretty quickly, paying attention not to exert a pull force on the bike when the clamp isn’t locked by the chuck.
The chuck handle is machined steel, and is very sturdy. It flips over allowing fast tightening or loosening with one hand, critical as you move around a bike and need to change frame angle for different jobs. The original handle was a different design and the new one is a vast improvement.
I’m a huge fan of the Feedback Sports ratcheting clamp designs, but you can use clamps from Park Tool, Unior, EVT or any other brand using the 2in or 45mm chuck standards.
Two other accessories to consider are a cork-lined tool tray (shown below) with a magnetic section for tools or bolts and the like, and a 65W USB-C/USB-A charger that plugs into the bottom of the lift motor, for charging bike components, powering a tablet, laptop, phone or whatever.
The charger can be mounted to the stand, tool tray or be nearby on a table thanks to its 1.8m cable.
The lift arrives in a number of boxes depending on your options, and assembly is very straightforward. The base plate comes with threaded holes and spikes to allow levelling for movement-free contact, which is something the Park plate doesn’t do.
Daily use
I’ve been using the Remco Bike Lift with Feedback Sports Pro-Elite Clamp daily for the last six months on my own bikes and customers, and I’m sold. It has performed flawlessly, never slowing or grumbling even as I pushed and sometimes exceeded the spec limits lifting carefully-balanced longtail cargo bikes and tandems. The controls were intuitive and easily managed, and the speed of the travel was just right – neither frustratingly slow nor recklessly fast.
On most bikes I was able to find a happy compromise of clamp location and angle, so the stand lifted and returned the bike to the floor just right. Sometimes on smaller-framed bikes I needed to lift the bike slightly to clamp it – but with one wheel on the ground as a pivot point that’s a simple ask. The combination of pro clamp head and the Remco chuck clamp meant a heavy bike could be lifted off the floor with wheels level, worked on and returned to the floor without a millimetre of slipping.
As mentioned, the action of the chuck clamp to secure or release the clamp head was both smooth and solid, and didn’t require excessive force to clamp fast. Once tightened with one hand, even the heaviest of bikes at the most extreme angles didn’t budge. But if you need to pivot the bike, a simple flick of the lever loosens the clamp just enough to do so while still retaining control. This solidity then means work where force is being used on fastenings goes smoothly and without worry – the worst thing for component safety is a sloppy workstand.
Obviously you need to be sensible – no-one’s putting 400Nm through a breaker bar to free a stuck bottom bracket with the bike still in a workstand. But there’s no issue tightening components to around 40Nm when you’re using the Remco Lift.
Value
As mentioned, every pro brand now has an electric workstand, and the consumer-facing brands have started following suit. I’m staying under £2,000 for comparisons here – you can easily spend twice that on professional workshop-grade models.
The Feedback Sports Pro E Lift Workstand is the closest competitor to the Remco Lift and it also costs £1,300, but there are some key differences. Firstly, the base plate – there isn’t one. Instead you get four flattish legs, one featuring a snazzy foot-operated up/down switch. It comes with built-in wheels to manoeuvre its quite light 24.5kg mass about the place. Rated to 45kg, the range of travel is from 83.7cm to a whopping 193.7cm – so both limits are further than Remco, and a crazy high lift out of the box. If you are looking for a movable stand to heft bikes high, this is a great shout.
The £850 Topeak Prepstand eUp Pro isn’t an electric lift, rather – like the gas struts on a car boot or bonnet – it assists you with 17kg of uplift force. So your 25kg bike now seems to weigh 8kg. Unfortunately as John found, the clamp only lowers to 112cm off the floor – so you need to lift your bike the first distance and then clamp, all with just the two hands. This will be a deal-breaker for many folks, as it was for his partner.
Also worth considering at this price is Park Tool’s new £750 PRS-30. This isn’t electric, instead you wind it up using a crank handle, which you can replace with a cordless drill.
It’s rated to a huge 54kg, but is less stable than a full-on stand because of its lighter 20kg weight and biped leg design. You can buy the lift without the legs for £625 then add the £215 Park Tool Plate, so a better comparison with the Remco would be that £840 total, giving the Remco a £460 premium – so it depends on how much you value the convenience of the electric lift.
The PRS-30’s lowest clamp height is 74cm, which compares with the Remco’s 86cm, and you get a max height of 132cm – considerably lower than the Remco’s 152cm that can be added to by using height adaptors. Once available in the UK, the Park PRS-30 is a strong contender if you’re on a budget, don’t need the range and you can live with the faff of a crank handle or electric drill.
The Bike-Lift LEB-50 is a £1,975 lift that goes to 198cm – the tallest lift in this list and at 50kg load also the strongest-rated. That 50kg capacity and high lift should be of interest to hefty cargo bike owners for sure, and may justify the extra outlay.
Other options are covered in our best bike workstands buyer’s guide.
Conclusion
The fact that the Remco lift has proved very popular with pro mechanics since its launch and appears frequently in the same sort of workshop spaces as the £3,000+ models from Unior and Park is high praise for its design, function and options. That it is priced comparable to other prosumer brands like Feedback Sports or Park’s lower-priced offerings is exceptional. I’d like to see the Remco Lift go a bit lower, and a foot-mounted switch would be cool, but I can live without either. If you’re finding it a challenge to maintain your heavy e-bike or cargo bike, or maybe even a heavier non-electric bike like a Dutch monstrosity, the Remco Tools Electric Bike Lift is a very compelling candidate for your cash.
Verdict
Excellent way to work on heavy bikes – and at a price that’s very competitive for its functionality
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road.cc test report
Make and model: Remco Bike Lift with Feedback Sports Pro-Elite Clamp
Size tested: n/a
Tell us what the product is for and who it’s aimed at. What do the manufacturers say about it? How does that compare to your own feelings about it?
It’s for people working on heavy bikes.
Remco says: “The Bike Lift is an electric bicycle repair stand that can lift bikes up to 45 kg. with the press of a button. Because let’s be honest, bikes are awesome, lifting them into a repair stand, not so much.
Introducing the Bike Lift Electric Height Adjustable Bicycle Repair Stand – the perfect solution for working on any bicycle. The Bike Lift adjusts with the press of a button, featuring three customizable memory presets for your favorite working heights.
The core of the Bike Lift is a motorized lifting column that can hold up to 38 kg. with the Feedback Pro-Elite Commercial Clamp and offers 66 cm of height adjustment from 86cm to 152cm.
The Bike Lift is compatible with existing systems on the market and can be retrofitted to work with your existing base plate and your Park Tool horizontal tube, Part # 124A.
Although the Bike Lift can support up to 45 kg. It is not intended to lift cargo bikes with very long geometries like front buckets or extra long tails.”
I found it an excellent lift with very few downsides, and the price is impressive too.
Tell us some more about the technical aspects of the product?
3 programmable height presets
Weight capacity with Feedback Sports Pro-Elite Commercial Clamp: 38 kg
Travel: 650mm +/- 10mm
Min Height: 866mm +/- 7mm
Max height: 1516mm +/- 8mm
Speed: 50mm per second, unloaded
Power Cord Type: G (UK plug)
Power Cord Length: 2980mm
Powder coated finish on all metal components
The finish and build quality are excellent.
The speed, smoothness and quietness of the lifting action is great, as are the controls.
After six months use it’s still in great shape.
It’s reassuringly heavy.
Compared to lifts costing twice the price, the Remco lift holds its own. This is reflected in its popularity with pro shops.
Tell us how the product performed overall when used for its designed purpose
The lift performs flawlessly. Like any tool you need to be aware of limitations and best practice – such as when lowering.
Tell us what you particularly liked about the product
The three preset heights, and the grip of the clamp when bikes are at an angle. And the 5-year warranty.
Tell us what you particularly disliked about the product
Only that it could be a bit lower.
How does the price compare to that of similar products in the market, including ones recently tested on road.cc?
Very competitively. Other pro-level, modular stands cost considerably more, though the prosumer Feedback Sports stand comes in at the same price.
Did you enjoy using the product? Yes
Would you consider buying the product? Yes
Would you recommend the product to a friend? Yes, but with caveats.
Use this box to explain your overall score
This is an excellent workstand if you work with e-bikes, cargo bikes or the like. The modular design means you can adapt it to your own spec, it makes lifting heavy bikes a doddle and it’s well priced.
About the tester
Age: 52 Height: 183cm Weight: 80kg
I usually ride: Sonder Camino Gravelaxe My best bike is: Nah bro that’s it
I’ve been riding for: Over 20 years I ride: A few times a week I would class myself as: Expert
I regularly do the following types of riding: cyclo cross, general fitness riding, mtb, G-R-A-V-E-L
1 thought on “Remco Bike Lift with Feedback Sports Pro-Elite Clamp”
The Feedbakc clamps can be a
The Feedbakc clamps can be a bit of a pain. I’ve had several – including the Pro Elite, and after a while the clamp doesn’t engage the first time so you are left turning the tightening paddle and the clamp doesn’t engage, which is a hassle when the bike is heavy. On the third of fourth attempt the clamp will thread and thence tighten.