Gaining altitude: Best motorcycle lifts and benches for your workshop

This simple scissor-lift pad from Draper goes under the frame of the bike or a suitable location and you wind up the screw thread, which lifts the bike off the ground.

Designed for lighter motocross and enduro bikes (which often have no sidestand), this familiar style of lift is foot-operated, so you position the lift under the bike and put your weight down on the lever and it lifts the bike off the ground.

Paddock stands are really useful to get one or both wheels off the ground while also standing the bike upright for any sort of work on it. While you can get ones with wheels on to allow the bike to be moved around, these Premium stands from Oxford are best sellers at Sportsbikeshop and with good reason. The rear comes with pads and bobbin hooks and both have long handles for easy use.

If you need to remove the front forks from your bike, you need to replace the oil seals, for example- then a traditional front paddock stand won't work. One option is to lift from the bottom of the headstock and this stand from BikeIt does just that.

A hydraulic version of the base motorcycle lift, this u2018Amazon Choiceu2019 uses a pair of lifting pads that locate under the bike, on the frame tubes or similar. A long handle and foot-pedal operate the hydraulic lifting and wheels mean it can be positioned easily. It has a huge quoted capacity of 680kg and lifts to a height of 36.8cm.

Potentially moving into the realms of professionals rather than keen amateurs, due to the costs involved, this single-post lift from Sealey locates on four tube brackets under the bike and lifts from the side, using a hydraulic jack.

For many, this kind of table is the easiest and best way to work on a motorcycle. It lifts the bike up to a standing working height and allows a host of jobs to be done with the mechanic standing, instead of kneeling or crawling around on the floor.

This stand lifts a bike from one side using model-specific (this one is for a Honda Fireblade) brackets located on the swingarm mount or the frame. A long lever arm makes lifting the bike simple and it is raised upright with both wheels off the ground, making it useful for both maintenance and storage. The wheels on the lift mean it can be moved around the workshop too.

The Abba Superbike stand is effectively a centrestand for any bike, raising it from the swingarm pivot with model-specific adapters for each particular bike. These costs around £11 so once you've bought the stand, you can easily use it on different bikes.

This lift from Abba raises the entire bike from the ground, making every element of it accessible. It has a hydraulic lift that works on lifting the bike from its swingarm pivot (like the Superbike lift) and can raise the bike level, with the rear wheel higher or the front wheel higher.