The perfect tools for finicky fettling

If you’re a bit of a grease monkey and like fettling in the garage, you’ll no doubt have a few decent MTB tools in your selection, but there are a whole bunch of interesting tools out there to make mechanical life easier. Not only can they make mechanical jobs easier, but quite often they’ll save you from skinning your knuckles or boiling your blood in frustration. We love having the right tools for the job – and don’t need an excuse to stock up when something quirky comes along.

Here’s our top 12 tools for making your mechanical life easier:

1: Park DT-2 rotor truing fork  £17.99  www.madison.co.uk

Many people use big clumpy adjustable spanners to straighten out the kinks in their disc brake rotors, which is OK for bigger adjustments – though you need to make sure the spanner is clean or you could contaminate your rotors. Park make a tool specifically for the job though – with long and short slots for fine tuning your rotors. As with all Park tools it’s impeccably made and finished with a blue vinyl hand hold.

2: Syntace speed-cutter 1.5  €39.80  www.syntace.com

Though saw guides that are clamped in to a vice are accurate, it can be a laborious task to trim down bars, seat posts and fork steerer tubes. Using a pipe-cutter can get the job done far quicker and easier. Syntace make this high quality cutter which cuts tubing up to 42mm, and comes with a retractable de-burring tool to smooth the tube after cutting. If you shop around decent tool shops you can find similar specced pipe cutters – though they tend to be a bit clunkier.

3: Finish Line Chill Zone spray  £11.99   www.madison.co.uk

We’ve lost count of the amount of jockey wheel bolts; crank bolts, bike locks and pub-bike chains we’ve freed up using this unique spray. As you cover the offending part in the spray, the propellent freezes metal as low as -45degrees centigrade which contracts the metal and cracks the rust. A releasing agent then breaks down the rust and flushes it out. It’s surprisingly effective and a winter essential.

4: Park Tools AV-5 vice insert  £39.99  www.madison.co.uk

Though you can use rubber vice inserts or good old fashioned blocks of wood, specific clamps for the job will serve best. This insert from Park Tools is made from extruded aluminium and features magnetic tabs to keep it in place, and has 5, 9, 10, 12, 14, 20, 25, 30 and 36mm jaw openings. It can also hold a hydraulic cable without damaging it, and a cassette removing tool in the middle. A vice insert like this makes servicing bike components a lot easier and you won’t run the risk of damaging something.

5: Park CNW2 chain ring nut wrench  £4.99  www.madison.co.uk

Ever tried to undo a chainring bolt, but to find the nut spins? You can hold it in place just about with a flat head screw driver, but here and there you’ll manage to slip and probably to carve a hole in your hand whilst you’re at it. Do yourself a favour and get this simple tool, that holds the nut in place by locating in to the hollow chain ring bolt.

 6: Lezyne Shop Shock Digital Drive  £79.99  www.upgradebikes.co.uk

If you like tinkering with suspension, you’re probably aware of how fiddly shock pumps can be to use. This floor standing pump is designed for heavy duty workshop use, and has a digital gauge and a zero-loss chuck for accurate pressure setting. It’s beautifully made from steel, CNC machined aluminium and has varnished wood handles. It’s perfect for fast, accurate fork fettling. It’s also good for high pressure road tyres, if that’s your thing…

7: Park Tools IR-1 Internal Cable Routing kit  £49.99  www.madison.co.uk

Internal cable routing looks great on bikes, and also saves your paint – but more often than not it can drive you insane when you need to change or re-route a cable. This ingeniously simple kit from Park Tools has three cables, each with different ends to locate in a variety of cables, and a very strong magnet. You simply pull the cable through with the magnet on the outside of the frame tube, screw the inner cable in to the brake line or outer cable you’re installing, and pull it back through the frame.

 8: M-Part Torque wrench  £49.99  www.madison.co.uk

It’s important to tighten a bolt to the recommended torque that the manufacturer specs – especially on delicate or load bearing components. Most people we know don’t bother with torque wrenches, and either hang off their Allen keys until they creak and crack – or don’t tighten things enough. If you want to be sure – get yourself a torque wrench. This M-Part wrench is easy to use, accurate and comes with the most common attachments you’ll need on your bike – it’s also great value.

9: Shimano TL-CN34 chain tool  £99.99  www.madison.co.uk

Shortening and repairing chains can be tricky with a small tool, and damned infuriating with the sort of tool you get on most multi-tools – treat yourself to a work shop sized tool and you’ll never moan again. This whopper from Shimano is 120mm high, and has a huge 155mm wide handle for maximum leverage and ease of use. The handle also holds two spare driver pins – so it should keep going for a long time.

10: Park Tools HBH-2 handlebar holder  £19.99  www.madison.co.uk

How many times have you had your bike in the work stand, dropped something then walloped your head on the bars on your way back up? This third hand keeps your bars straight in the stand which makes working on the front brake, or cockpit much easier. Definitely one of the lesser known MTB tools.

11:  Ice Toolz Xpert crown race puller  £29.95  www.windwave.co.uk

Tapping your crown race off the steerer tube with a punch or flat screw driver can lead to slipping and scratching your crown. And sometimes you’ll encounter one that just doesn’t want to come off – this crown race puller uses big 6mm bolts to close the tapered jaws under neath the crown race, pulling it off the crown with a few turns of an Allen key. It will take a 1.5in steerer tube too – so will work on any fork steerer out there.

12: Lezyne Classic Pedal Rod  £17.99  www.upgradebikes.co.uk

This is a workshop ready pedal spanner with two 15mm offset openings for maximum leverage. The tool is made from stamped and machined steel, with a lovely wooden grip. Completing it is the bottle opener cut in to the head – so make checking your pedals the last job on your list before cracking open a beer.

Alternatively, be a complete bloke and keep in the kitchen as the biggest bottle opener possible…

There are lots of great tool brands out there including Ice Toolz; Pedros; X-Tools and Topeak. We’ll be looking at their MTB tools in other features, but this time we chose to include Park Tools.

Park Tools recently lost their iconic founder Howard Hawkins.  

Thanks Howard, for helping put such great tools in the hands of mechanics all around the world. RIP. 

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