I have a confession to make: I’m not as fastidious about motorcycle chain maintenance as I should be. I know it’s important, I know it’s easy, but even on my old F800GS — a bike that had a center stand — I didn’t do it as often as I should’ve. So you can imagine that, when I got my Suzuki GSX-8R, chain maintenance was not the top thing on my mind. In fact, it was far enough down the priority list that I didn’t even stop to think about how I’d do it without room in my apartment to store a paddock stand. Luckily, a niche little product came to my rescue: The Tirox SnapJack V2.
This is not, to be clear, a sponsored post. I didn’t even get this tool from Tirox, but from a Facebook Marketplace seller. I don’t even know what the post-tariff buying process for these is like, given that Tirox is a Canadian company and all U.S. resellers seem to be out of stock of the SnapJack. But if you can figure out how to get your hands on one of these little things, it may just become the most useful took in your travel kit.
A simple little tool
The idea behind the SnapJack is simple. With about a 60 degree bend in the jack, place one end under your swingarm opposite the kickstand and the other on the pavement beneath you. Then, just press the center until the whole assembly snaps into its extended position. There’s a pin to lock its extension and a velcro strap that goes around your front brake to lock the bike in place, but for the best results you should still do it on flatter ground than I did in these example photos. It worked on this angle — it got the rear wheel off the ground enough to spin it — but flatter will yield better results. This was simply the best I could find in some forgotten corner of Greenpoint for pictures, because you beloved freaks don’t get to know where I live.
I’m always reluctant to recommend specific brands of tools rather than vague types, but Tirox is really the only company out there making this. You can get the same tool branded as Oxford in the UK, but it appears to be the exact same tool — it’s likely Tirox manufacturing beneath that sleek black packaging. If your bike lacks a center stand, and you’re tired of walking it all over to clean your entire chain, get yourself a SnapJack rather than a full paddock stand. It’s the space-efficient, weight-efficient, portable way to achieve the exact same goal.
