Be still your beating hearts, because for this edition of Back From The Dead, Dieter is giving you an in depth look at his tools. Oh yes. Here we go with the deep dive tool box love nerd fest. We know you love it.
Tools! Toolkits! How tools work! How tools are made! Where tools are made! What they’re made from! Who makes them! Who uses them! Basically if it’s got to do with tools then I’m interested, if they’re bike tools? Even better!
My toolkit is one of my most treasured possessions, something that I love almost as much as the machines it helps me build and a project that I’ve had going for as long as I’ve been a mechanic. A project that will in all likelihood still be going strong by the time i eventually leave this mortal coil and hand it down to my cats!
There’s a lot to talk about with a full toolkit so I’ll go at it in a couple of chunks starting with…
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The Box
The actual box itself has had the full Back From The Dead treatment, starting life as a Park Tool EK1 event kit (I think that’s what it was called) back in about 2009 it’s certainly less event ready now thanks to its various bolted on wings (more on those later) and broken latch so it now lives permanently on my workbench.
It was an upgrade from a little old American Pro toolbox that wasn’t practical to move around due to its non locking drawers. That’s now used for all the rusty, slightly bent, totally out of date but still unthrowawayable tools in my collection.
Before I started bolting bits on I was mulling over replacing the box entirely and building myself one of those fancy toolboxwars style boxes with shadowfoam trays and all the bells and whistles. I even made myself a little proof of concept to see how I liked the foam in my workbench drawer, of course in true BFTD fashion i used a couple of cheap floor tiles rather than actual shadowfoam.
My issue with the foam approach is it just feels slower and less efficient to me. With my Park box and its various pouches and slots every tool is super easy to grab and also super easy to reinsert after use. With a foam filled box you have to reach for the tool in just the right spot and peel it out then push it back in in the exact right orientation every time. It only slows you down by a split second each time but we all know how important marginal gains are in cycling! Also, in a slight side rant, almost every time i see one of these fancy foam filled boxes they look like brand new! Do these guys all have separate kits? One they use for working on bikes and one for the ‘gram?
Either way, I like pouches. Pouches allow for easier mixing up of the kit so the layout of the box can evolve as I find more tools that I just don’t know how I coped without…
Another thing I like about this style of box is that I can add patches. (as well as 10,000,000 stickers to the outside). Everything is better with patches! Especially the High Impact Cycling Club ones that all the profits go to supporting Female Afghan cyclists with evacuation and resettlement! Go buy one now from High Impact Cycling Memes on Instagram.
Anyway, I’d made the decision to stick with my trusty old box, the only problem was more real estate was needed. My ever growing toolkit was already far exceeding the capacity that my little box had and a solution was required.
The temporary stopgap solution presented itself in the form of a sheet of nylon covered plastic that was supposed to fit in the bottom of our MucOff jet wash bag. Our jetwash lives with the rest of our wash kit in a big ol’ plastic box though, so the little sheet of nylon covered plastic was surplus to requirements. A bit of jiggery pokery with some bits of various rack and reflector mounts and a drill my toolbox had a whole new wing! Freeing up space for me to buy more new tools obvs…
The second addition was the flap at the front. This was made from a cheap tool roll with a piece of thick card duct taped to the back of it for rigidity. It’s not pretty from behind but it does the job perfectly and once again more space equals more tools.
The final addition are the side flaps that sit out from the bottom tray. For these I ended up buying a cheap set of files just for the zip up case that they came in. A quick slice and a few staples, a couple more bolts through the side of the box and a couple of bent disc rotors to act as supports and the box is in its final form. (Unless anyone reading has a spare one of those MucOff dry bag bottom thingies that they don’t want anymore! In which case, hit me up!)
Oh, and there are lights…
So as much as I may have ranted about fancy looking boxes above, I’m a sucker for neon lights. Nothing says understated class like neon lights, unless you also add leopard print to, you know, set off the neon or something… now that’s real class!
Anyway I was looking for some insulation tape for wrapping bar tape at our local B&M. Just as B&M are one to do with their indecipherable store layouts they drew my eye to a product I had no idea I needed: LED strip lights for backlighting a TV set! Well a toolbox is about the same size and shape as a TV. So now it needs a mains supply the box has finally given up all vestiges of portability, but look how fancy it looks!
The Tools
I’m not gonna go too deep into every tool that I use and why I chose them, there are enough articles and videos like that out there. I’m just gonna focus on a few that I really couldn’t do without that i don’t see mentioned too many other places, and then a few that I’ve made/customised myself because this is still Back From The Dead after all!
My box isn’t laid out like a World Cup box that only has to service one type of bike. This box does just about any job on just about any bike. The workload is HIGHLY variable at Happy Days – I could be doing bearings or suspension servicing on some beautiful carbon exotica in the morning and then smashing some cotterpins out of a dusty old barn find after lunch. As such my kit has to be carefully laid out to be able to accommodate that easily and efficiently.
Park Tool AWS10
I have my most used tool, my trusty Park Tool AWS10, at the very edge so when I inevitably forget to pick it up while I’m trying to hold something together before tightening it I can just flap my hand in its general direction and hopefully grab it without dropping whatever I’m holding. In my eyes this is the most useful tool in my box. I love how easily it fits just about any fastener on a bike (that’s not running SRAM, but that’s a whole ‘nother rant!) And the length of the hex bits is a real happy medium between nice application of torque and maximum ugga duggas.
The hex’s are great quality and really last. I usually replace mine once every 6/8 months when they start getting a little loose in bolt heads but for a home mechanic one of these little bad boys should last for donkeys years. It’s made for Park by Bondhus and they do their own version as well that’s marketed as a gorilla grip. You can find them in most engineer’s merchants or some hardware stores and they’re a usually a few quid cheaper than the Park version.
Shimano CT-10 cable cutters
I’m not going into these too much because they don’t make them anymore and I don’t want to make you want what is no longer available. But just know they’re the best outer gear cable cutters ever and the new version is a pale imitation. Let’s start a petition, bring them back, Shimano!
Knipex mini bolt cutters
These are the best for cutting brake cable outer, also for firing spokes at co-workers, er, i mean, carefully disassembling wheels that are beyond repair.
Engineer bolt removal pliers
These ain’t your grandad’s pliers! These bruisers are designed for removing bolts with stripped heads. Thanks to the vertical serrations in the jaw of the plier and the perfectly flat face, they can grab at things normal pliers would just slide off. The satisfaction level is high when that rounded out rotor bolt just undoes without having to reach for the Dremel!
Zip tie gun
Once upon a time I worked at a factory making wall ties for the building industry, and they had these real fancy zip tie guns for tying the bundles of wall ties together nice and tight with a flush cut. These guns cost a few hundred quid and I often wondered why my boss didn’t buy the cheap version that was so easily available online. It’s because the cheap version doesn’t cut your tie flush! Well it doesn’t until you go at it with a Dremel – after that it’ll work great, flush cut every time!
But not as flush as…
Flush cutters!
Not the non flush cutting flush cutters that were in Fresh Goods Friday a few weeks ago, these are the real deal!
Available from various internet outlets for incredibly low prices, less than a fiver will get you a set and any bit of skin that you have that could possibly get snagged on a jagged edge of a zip tie will thank you for the rest of your life.
I also use a blunt set to mark a nice little X in my cable crimp ons, that way I know when I’ve worked on a bike before.
I’m about to order myself a new fancy set of flush cutters but I can’t decide between the Knipex offering and the Engineer version from Japan. Both are far too much money for what they are… decisions decisions…
Tools What I Have Made
A hammer
Made purely because I spend altogether too much time looking at various tool related instagram pages and it’s apparently fashionable on there at the moment to build yourself a home brew hammer, and I’m nothing if not a style icon.
I had a length of track pump shaft left over from the trees we made at Christmas that was just the right size to become a hammer head. I then tapped an M6 thread into an old front wheel axle and added the stem caps and filled it with ball bearings to make the head.
The handle was made from a set of ancient Easton EC90 road bars that had been donated to the shop by everyone’s favourite recent expat Chipps, with a strong advisory that they were no longer suitable for riding. Plenty suitable for the lightest hammer handle going though! (Hopefully, fingers crossed eh?)
The whole thing is tied together with an old PlanetX headlock from the 90’s and finished with a beautiful 90’s ODI/Yeti grip, which brings me to…
Dummy pedal
One of the first tools I ever made myself, my dummy pedal, was born from frustration at how crappy the Park Tools offering was. If you’ve not seen one before, it basically fills the empty pedal thread on the drive side of a bike with a rotating rubber handle, making the delicate balancing act of trying to shift through the gears on a bike without pedals much easier and less perilous to finger tips!
Although many mechanics prefer to just fit pedals in the first place and be done with it, I really like the idea of a dummy pedal for at demo days or similar when I might be checking over 20 bikes in a row some with, some without pedals. Park may have been the first to the table with a dummy pedal, and while their offering may have worked, it was a little rudimentary in its design. Being essentially a screwdriver handle loosely secured to an axle with a little rubber cone that wedged into the pedal thread it didn’t have a particularly comfortable or tactile feeling to use and improvements could be made.
My dummy pedal started life as an old Burgtec pedal axle that two 608 skate wheel bearings fit onto perfectly. I then added a single Lizard Skins grip that was lying around from an old grip display and also the plastic tube that the grip was displayed, on meaning that a rather fetching vintage X-lite bar plug could finish the whole piece off in style.
A much more solid, smooth and just generally nicer to use tool than the original. It should last forever, right?
It should, but not where my colleague at Happy Days, Drew, is concerned…
One day whilst using my dummy pedal, the bike that I was working on was removed from the workstand with the dummy pedal still attached, Drew managed to somehow kick my beautiful dummy pedal, snapping the tabs that sit into the lockrings on the end of the grip and rendering it totally useless! What would I do? I didn’t have any more display grips and i didn’t want to use some skanky worn out lock-on that’s already been used for its workable lifespan. I did however have another 90’s ODI/Yeti grip in non lock-on flavour. After far more time than I’d like to admit spent stripping the rubber from an old lock on grip shell and a bit of the magic airline trick to get it stretched over, I now had the world’s first lock on ODI/Yeti grip! The perfect accoutrement for my dummy pedal and matching hammer!
Hose clamp pliers
Less of a homemade tool and more of a combination of tools that are kept in permanent combination and only used for one job. There are plenty of dedicated hose clamp/ barb fitting tools available now but none that I like using as much as these simple mini vice grips with their permanently attached yellow Shimano hose clamp blocks. Used in combination with a pick to open up hose ends and the flat face of my pliers (not a hammer!) to tap the barb in. It doesn’t perform any other task, but the job that it does do it does very nicely and that’s all I ask of it!
Wingnut spinner deelie
Not sure what this one’s called or really what it’s even for when I already have a variety of perfectly fine ratchets or hex key sets, but I had an old wingnut off a trashed wheel that I didn’t want to just throw away. After spending five minutes with a drill and a tap and one of those little bolts that holds a road insert brake pad in, I’ve got this little spinner tool. At first I thought it would only get used once or twice and tucked away at the back of my box. However it’s found its way into my regular rotation, it lives with a 4mm bit attached and is great for rack and full length mudguard bolts.
Lever height setter
So all credit to Abbey bike tools here, I stole their idea, as have a few other tool brands since. But it was Abbey who did it first. When Abbey came out with its lever height setting tool I was well impressed with the simplicity of the design and knew I wanted one, but I’m an impatient person and couldn’t be waiting around for UK stock to arrive. There could be levers at odd angles all over West Yorkshire and no way of levelling them off! I’d already worked out how I was gonna make my own before finishing the article about Abbey’s new releases so the next day at work I got crafty with a couple of headset spacers, one of those rear mech hanger extender deelies, a nice long bolt, and a locking nut.
It’s definitely lacking a bit of the polish of the Abbey version but it does the job ok and will fill a gap I didn’t even know there was, until I can buy the Abbey version.
If you only buy one tool…
Finally, it’s not a tool I made and it’s one I resisted buying for years. I didn’t want to include it in this list but the more I thought about it the more I decided it needed adding. I’ve spent my whole life believing that the correct tool for the job is always the best one, and that these were overhyped seeing as every pro wrench seems to rant on about them, but the Knipex pliers wrench is possibly one of the most valuable tools a bike mechanic can own. I wasted more time than any foam filled box would cause by not buying a set of these years ago so go get some, you won’t regret it! They almost take the place of a full set of spanners and don’t come with any of the drawbacks of a normal adjustable spanner, in fact the more force you apply to the fastener with them the tighter they grab! They also work beautifully for pressing small bearings into linkages when I’m too lazy to unpack the whole bearing press, and lots of other jobs that I’m forgetting, either way the hype is real and these pliers are awesome. Everyone should own a set, bike mechanic or not!
