Home Makeover Singletrack Style: Park Tool Workshop Wonderland

You may recall that some time back we were subject to a ram raid attempt. Nothing was taken, but the would-be raiders (never caught, by the way) did make a right mess of our workshop.

Since then, we’ve had new walls and windows installed, so there are no longer any almost-car-sized gaps for anyone to be tempted to drive into. But our workshop had never quite recovered. James had done a good job of getting it functional, but without a place for everything, everything was most definitely not in its place. Makeshift boxes and shelves have a habit of developing into chaos, especially when your employees are not of the naturally tidy persuasion.

Our workshop does get used a lot – you may have noticed that Wil is not capable of just riding a bike. First he has to check every possible pressure with something digital. If you don’t drag him away from the workshop at that point, he’ll probably also put some tokens into a fork or shock. Maybe he’ll just do a quick stem swap while he’s at it. Oh, and has he checked the torque of every nut and bolt? Hmm… those grips are just a bit fat, maybe there’s time to swap them over too…

With all Wil’s fettling and spannering – plus Ross and Andi’s stream of essential repairs – some of our tools were looking a bit tired. ‘Please could we order a new 2.5mm Allen key, a internal cabling tool, and Torx set?‘ we asked Madison, UK distributer of Park Tool. ‘Sure‘ said Nick Davie, rep for Park Tool and Wheels MFG.

‘Or I could just come and re-fit your whole workshop?‘.

Unfortunately we don’t have a video clip of the little dance of joy that Wil did at this point. Or the little weep of relief from James at the prospect of not having to try and devise some means of arranging the workshop so that the mess-mongers of Singletrack would be able to keep it tidy.

And so there was a palpable buzz of excitement in the air as James cleared all the old kit out of the workshop, and then Nick and his team appeared on Monday morning to do the refit.

First, we needed to be the right colour. Which is great, except now the rest of the walls look even worse than they did before, and the rusty radiator is particularly upsetting.

With the paint dry, panels went on the wall to give us a big flexible area for mounting tools.

Obviously when you have tons of little boxes of exciting stuff, the first thing you have to do is open them ALL and spread them all over the floor. And OMG, what a lot of exciting things there were.

Having emptied everything all over the floor carefully laid the tools out, Nick had a plan for just how everything was going to fit onto our walls.

Then there was a bit of a Rain Man episode, while all of this chaos on the floor got transferred to a whole array of mounts on the wall panels.

Oooh! And look! There’s a complete set of Allen Keys and Torx wrenches and sockets. James has an arrangement with the Russians to deal with the first person who doesn’t put one of these back.

All the things! Some of us might need to go on a course just to find out what they are.

Madison is the distributer for all the Finish Line products, so we’ve also been supplied with an array of cleaning, lubing and polishing products, each with a neat holder. No more nasty sticky shelves!

So that was our wall of Big Tools for workstand job sorted. But there’s more! We also have a little workbench corner, with even more tools. The observant among you will notice that there are some red tools there – these are by Wheels MFG (which we’re pretty sure is short for Manufacturing not My F’ing God Those Are Cool) and they are presses for bottom brackets and headsets.

Lots of these tools are held on with super strong magnets. Which is exciting because, well, magnets!

Our workbench also got the blue paint treatment, before being stocked with a new wheel truing stand, and even some Park Tool gloves in matching blue.

Almost nothing was spared the Park Tool makeover. Even our clock was stickered – professionally, on the inside!

If you want to keep things tidy, it’s a good idea to have a bin. It’s our own bin though, and it’s even escaped the Park Tool makeover. But never mind that, what’s that on the left?

Yes! It’s important to stay hydrated in the workshop, so we’ve even been provided with a tea tray and mugs, plus…

…for those celebratory moments, like successful internal cable routing, or a brand new workshop, there are beer receptacles!

Park Tool really does have a tool for everything. Behold, the bottle opener. Not a multitool with bottle opener attached. It’s just a bottler opener. A nice one.

And then they were done. It was time for pizza. And then our sharp knife was a bit pants, so Nick said ‘we’ve got a tool for that’.

A huge thank you to Nick and Louise for bringing shiny blue order to our lives.

Wil is away on holiday, so you are spared the footage of him embracing this amazing professional workshop. Instead, here is Mark, look how happy he is.

Disclosure

All equipment, tools and fitting was provided for us by Madison