Tools

Like other trades, bicycle repair is in most respects a specialty. Some of the skills and tools acquired elsewhere in life may become useful, as we'll see, and others will not. The use of force necessarily becomes much more judicious, to take one example — a fairly obvious point, given the scale of many of the parts involved. Our accelerating tendency to rush is best left at the day job, as well: it is possible to wreck just about anything, done fast enough.

In the ideal, it's best to have one place in particular to fix those bikes in your care — somewhere dry, well-lit, and reasonably calm, if you're especially lucky. A truly exceptional workshop will feature a sturdy bench or table as well, mounted with a vise. There will of course come times when we don't have any of these things — a topic further explored in Roadside Bicycle Repair: A Pocket Manifesto — but given the luxury of planning, it is well worth the time to set things up right in the first place.

The BICYCLE REPAIR STAND is very useful to the craft, though it is not strictly necessary. The improved vantage stands provide makes it much easier to see and interact with a bike's nether regions; over the course of a tune-up this makes for a lot less squatting, bending over, and peering beneath. The stands also accomplish the useful trick of removing the wheels from the ground, which greatly simplifies our work on the brakes and the drivetrain.

A number of companies produce bike repair stands. Those made by Park Tool of St. Paul, MN, as used in most North American bike shops, are perhaps the most visible examples. I have plenty of experience with Park's heavy-duty shop stands, but I rely upon one of their lighter consumer models at home, and things work out fine there as well. The central distinction across their range of stands is in the clamp — basic models employ simple spring-mounted jaws; better ones incorporate adjustable clamps. This detail becomes important with lightweight aluminum and carbon fiber frames, the tubes of which may respond poorly to excesses of compression. In truth, we're really not supposed to be clamping anything around any of that at all — much as cats instinctively carry their young by the scruff of the neck, bike repair stands should strive to clamp the bikes by their seatposts. (Carbon fiber seatposts, available in only a few common sizes, can be temporarily replaced with dummy posts of the same dimensions.)

You may need to raise the post a bit more out of its frame, in order to successfully clamp it. Before doing so, mark its original position with a ring of electrical tape. And if there really is no alternative — as with some of the recumbents, which trade our bar stools for lounge chairs — slip a rag beneath the clamp's jaws, before biting down. Note that stickers and frame decals fare poorly under such pressure. so clamp elsewhere if possible.

This is all a little simpler if you're not working on anything too fancy — a sturdy old steel frame, perhaps, without much paint left to worry about. If the situation does appear negotiable, go ahead and clamp down on the frame's seat tube, just beneath its top tube. Clamping in such a position makes it easier to move the bike around as needed.

Park repair stands, among others, feature detachable clamps for distinct purposes. Park's 100-4X Extreme Range Clamp is wide enough to grasp many of the fat-tubed recumbent frames, but some short wheelbase 'bents such as the Bacchetta will respond better to one of the traditional Park clamp jaws, wrapped tightly around the neutral side chainstay. Moreover, this very same feature allows us to clamp on to the bike first, before lifting the whole package up into the stand — a very useful option to have with some of the tandems and trikes.

Got any old toe straps kicking around? Wrap one of the straps around the stand's base. We'll occasionally need to keep a bike's fork from dropping out of its frame, as when replacing threadless stems, and the toe straps are ideal for such purposes.

Absent the stand, you might want to set up a BIKE SLING: two lengths of rope, strung down from above about two meters apart, long enough to suspend a bike's saddle and stem at useful elevations. I found myself setting up one of these upon arriving to our new home in Atar, Mauritania, and all things considered it proved useful enough. It is only with some of the more torque-intensive tasks — tightening pedals, cranks, or bottom bracket cups — that I need to pull an old-fashioned, flipping the bike upside down to rest upon its seat and handlebars.

WHEEL TRUING STANDS are also key. Here again, my own experience favors those produced by Park Tool. Their TS-2 shop version is pretty much the only one you'll see in U.S. bike shops, and it's all you'd ever need. I haven't yet played with their less expensive TS-8, but the design looks promising in that it appears sturdy. It wouldn't operate quite as fluidly as the business version. Nor would its stout construction allow the wheel to flex around, and this is the critical point — the better your wheel is able to sit still, the easier it is to true the thing. Avoid any "truing stands" with plastic arms. It's also a good idea to bolt your stand to something solid — the bench, for example. (You may secure it in a vise, alternately.)

With regards to hand tools, the choice of what you'll need depends a lot on what you find yourself riding. It'd be good to start out with quality screwdrivers and metric box wrenches, regardless. It is also likely that you'll find use for a hammer, metal and woodworking files, box and needle-nose pliers, and a magnet. Beyond that, it is more a function of your bike's vintage than its brand. Cannondale is pretty famous for doing their own thing, and some of the recumbent manufacturers necessarily have been as well, but to a large extent at least everyone start out contemplating the same pools of technology, which grow a bit deeper with the passage of time. Darker and cloudier as well, one might argue. Your favorite local bike shop should be able to provide any bike tools you might need.

Pick up some metric ALLEN WRENCHES, if you haven't already. The standard metric set includes 1.5, 2, 2.5, 3, 4, 6, 8, and 10 mm keys, any of which might become useful when working on bikes. The better Allen wrenches are ball drivers, which is to say that the longer ends are beveled, allowing us to adjust Allen bolts from slight angles, which can be a very nice option to have. The shorter ends, meant more for delivering torque, can become rounded with extended use; you would need to face them against a grinder wheel to sharpen things up again.

Campagnolo made use of an odd 7 mm Allen wrench for some of its crank bolts years ago, but the standard set should cover just about anything else that...