I’ve worked in bike shops since the age of 15, worked on the World Cup DH and XC circuit and taken care of fleets of rental bikes.
Over the years, there have been many tools I’ve come across that have gathered dust in the toolbox, but a few were used so much they practically wore a groove in my hand.
These are the tools I wouldn’t be without in the workshop, which could also make useful additions to any home mechanic’s arsenal.
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Carbon hacksaw blade
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Cutting your carbon steerer tube, handlebar or seatpost to length can be nerve-wracking stuff. They’re expensive and delicate, and you can’t add that length back on once it has been cut.
One way to give yourself the best chance of success is to use the correct tool for the job. A carbon-specific hacksaw blade will cause minimal damage to the area around where you’re cutting and make the job as quick as possible.
They use abrasives instead of cutting teeth, which causes less stress to the individual carbon fibres around the cutting area. It also gives a smooth edge, which makes deburring after cutting easier.
- Park Tool CSB-1 Carbon Cutting Saw Blade: £8.99 / $10.95
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Air compressor
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Pumping tyres up is no fun, particularly if you’re trying to seat a tubeless tyre. The speed of an air compressor when inflating tyres is staggering, and if you’re maintaining a fleet of bikes, this is something you’re going to notice.
Seating tyres is easy with such a high air volume on tap, and requires zero effort. Because of this compressor’s maximum pressure of 100psi, you can even use it to pump up road bike tyres to their full pressure.
It’s also useful to have a nozzle for blowing off dust and dirt from bike parts you’re working on or to dry your bike after a wash.
And that’s not to mention the plethora of peripheral tools available for any air compressor, including impact wrenches, saws, sanders and spray guns.
This Hyundai compressor is small and very quiet, which is welcome if you have to keep your compressor in the garage or workshop with you. I’ve lost count of the number of times a noisy compressor has made me jump when it cuts in just as a tubeless tyre is about to snap onto the bead.
It’s a luxury for a home mechanic, but a very useful piece of kit.
- Hyundai HY7524 air compressor: £129.99
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Hex key multi-tool
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A good multi-tool is essential if speed is of the essence. As a former World Cup mechanic, I can think of many occasions when running back and forth to a toolbox to get different-sized T-bars to complete a job would have been the difference between a racer making it to the start line and going home with a DNS on their results sheet.
Park’s AWS-10 is my go-to for many important reasons. It’s cost-effective, small, compact, ergonomic and impressively robust.
You can get enough torque from it for almost every job, and even as the primary tool for a full-time bike shop or race mechanic (I have been both), you can use it for years with almost no wear at all.
It contains hex keys from 2mm up to 6mm, and includes a 2.5mm, which is often missing from many tools but is important for parts such as lock-on grip collars and the set-screws on derailleurs.
An 8mm would be useful, but if you need a hex key that large, you will probably need more leverage than this tool can offer anyway.
You could upgrade to the Park AWS-11, which includes 8mm and 10mm keys. But you lose the 2mm and 2.5mm hex keys in the process, and it’s a whopping 246g compared to the AWS-10's pocket-friendly weight of 103g.
If you feel you need a T25 torx key (think SRAM parts and disc-rotor bolts), you could get yourself a Park AWS-9.2 instead.
However, I would really miss the 2, 2.5 and 3mm keys it forgoes to fit the T25 and flathead screwdriver instead.
- Park Tool AWS-10: £10 / $12.95
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Hanger-straightening tool
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This tool is useless for anyone with a gearbox bike or SRAM’s direct-mount hangers, so perhaps it will go the way of the dinosaur, but to me, this should be part of any workshop’s arsenal.
A hanger-alignment tool enables you to measure the straightness of a frame’s hanger against the bike’s wheel. You can then use the tool to lever the hanger into the correct shape if you discover it's out of alignment.
Even a small misalignment of the hanger can make a big difference to how the gears shift, and straightening the hanger without the proper tool is very difficult.
The Park DAG-3 is a good choice; well-made and easy to lean on when gently coaxing a misaligned hanger into place. I’ll keep swinging off this one until gearboxes take over.
- Park Tool DAG-3: £130
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Disc-rotor straightening tool
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Bicycle disc rotors have to be light, and therefore thin, compared to those on motorcycles or cars. This means they’re prone to getting caught and bent out of true easily, particularly in larger sizes such as those fitted to modern electric bikes.
Thankfully, with the right tool, it’s easy to coax bent rotors back into true. Unior’s Rotor Truing Fork 2.0 has three different inserts for the rotor and is a simple one-piece steel construction.
For the home mechanic, a thoroughly degreased adjustable spanner or using your hands are valid options, but if you can afford the proper tools, it makes the job easier. If you use the same tool often, you'll develop an affinity for how much force is needed to get the rotor to change shape, which means you can improve your rotor-straightening technique over time.
- Unior Rotor Truing Fork 2.0: €20.48
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