Not the fire ax

As predicted, the road tubeless tire that I had such fun with last month came back last weekend because the tire had lost pressure. The rider told me that he had been having problems with the tires since he bought the bike. I'm pretty sure he's going back to tubes. I put a tube in the troublesome front tire, no charge.

A rim with a solid floor would eliminate the problem of rim tape, but requires a non-conventional approach to spoke nipples, such as putting them at the hub, which makes a wheel much harder to true, or threading them into the rim from the inner circumference, in the style of Mavic. In that case, you have to have their proprietary nipples to replace any that get damaged, and use a special spoke wrench adapted to them. Mavic has spawned two or three sizes already. Other companies have had to develop their own spline patterns. This is in addition to more traditional shapes with non-traditional sizes.

Because I started out as a self-sufficient home mechanic, I judge things from the perspective of a self-sufficient home mechanic. One of the greatest strengths of the bike as personal transportation that a rider could also use for fun was the relative cheapness and simplicity of the workshop one would need to support the machine or machines. I got drawn into it further than most, but even with the shop-quality workstand and truing stand my investment was far less than the price of a used car, let alone a new one.

There have always been some specialized tools. You can't fake cone wrenches or a headset wrench. You can put a big honkin' adjustable wrench on the top nut of a threaded headset, but you need the flatter wrench to secure the cone beneath it. And some form of fixed cup tool for cup-and-cone bottom brackets really assures that the cup stays fixed. There were few things more annoying than having the drive side bottom bracket cup working its way out of the frame on a long ride.

                                           Cone wrenches   Double-enders were handy for a home mechanic and to take on trips, but single-size shop wrenches with longer handles are more pleasant to work with when you have the luxury of better facilities. I've been spoiled a bit by the professional life. In either single- or double-ended form, the 16mm is the size to remove bottle caps.

                                            Headset wrenches     The upper one has a 15mm jaw on the small end, for pedals. The lower one has pins that would fit Sugino adjustable BB cups, as well as many other brands. You could also get adjustable pin spanners (not shown) just for BB cups, which I eventually did. 

Cranks used to come with a crank puller. They mostly looked similar to this Campagnolo puller that I got as part of a barter deal for some work on a guy's Schwinn Paramount. He had no use for tools he didn't know how to use, so I did the work in exchange for a nice collection.

I soon acquired a Park shop-type crank puller because it was convenient and I had little else to spend money on. Unpublished writers and bike nerds are unencumbered by social life.

You have to keep your crank bolts tight if you want the crank arms to remain obediently attached. First I got the Park multi-size, because common bolt sizes were 14, 15, and 16mm

Then, as part of the trade deal, I got a genuine Campagnolo peanut butter wrench. It was so named because the handle was perfect for spreading that affordable nutrient on your crust of stale bread.

While we're down around your bottom bracket, the official wrench for the most common flattened-oval fixed cups looks like this:

The hooked end fits the notches of the common BB lock ring. The wrench itself could be secured with washers and a crank bolt so that additional force or leverage could be applied to either seat the fixed cup or bust it loose as needed. There are cooler tools specifically for the task, but they've always been a little pricey for the slight advantage. I invested later, when I had a brief period of accidental prosperity. Rather than piss it away on frivolities, I invested in tools. Of course they were tools for tasks that nearly no one needs done anymore... but in the perfect post-apocalyptic, post-consumerist fantasy future, bike design would return to the accessible basics that were hallmarks of the late 1970s and the 1980s, minus the annoying nationalistic variations. Sort of a neo-classical period. Barring that I have a great supply of eccentric paper weights.

The well prepared home mechanic would have a chain tool. These became part of the take-along kit when mountain biking got big, because people were breaking chains right and left. This became especially common after Shimano introduced their "special pin." I developed a whole slew of phrases based on the "friends don't let friends drive drunk" PSAs on TV, starting with "friends don't let friends ride Shimano chains." 

Continuing the process of upgrading tools, I did get the fancy Park one that would handle up to a 10-speed chain.

Now, of course, you need one that will do 11, 12, and 13. I haven't bothered to equip for tinfoil chains, just as I never got sucked into buying new tools every year to keep up with changes in suspension design. I'm still holding out for that return to an ethic of simplicity and durability. Be the change you want to see, even if you know full well that it will never happen and that the world will cheerfully obliterate you and everything that you hold dear.

In the age of thread-on freewheels, you needed the proper tool for any brand that you had. The tools were small and inexpensive.

My brands were Regina and Suntour. Suntour later went to a four-notch freewheel that was not an improvement. The extra dogs on the tool created instability rather than greater engagement. Splined engagement was better, but only if you could get a tool in there without having to remove things from the axle. Phil Wood came up with the thin-walled tool that would remove Regina and Atom freewheels without having to disassemble the axle.

If you got into changing cogs on your freewheel, or messed around with fixed gears, this cog vise was great to have:

You will not find these anywhere now.

A chain whip or two is not only handy for self defense or really hard core S&M, you also need it to disassemble a freewheel or to immobilize a cassette on a freehub so you can remove the lock ring.

  Cable tension is important. Pulling them with pliers or just your fingers can fail to get things as snug as you'd like. Because of that, the Fourth Hand tool seemed like a worthy investment.

It's especially useful in today's world of high-tension shifting systems. It takes some delicacy not to crimp the cable, especially a skinny shift wire, but it's worth mastering. The Park version doesn't have as fine a nose as this specimen, so it's a bit harder to fit into tight spaces, but it has a locking mechanism that can come in handy when it isn't being a pain in the ass by locking when it feels like it.

Another score from the barter deal was this "Campy 5-mil with a growth on it."

The little knurled burl made it easy to twiddle quickly to thread down a 5mm cap screw.

The 8-9-10 Y wrench was another convenient item for the home tool kit or the carry-along set.

You'd still want regular box-open wrenches in those sizes, but the Y wrench was still worth its weight. 

I bought all of my tools from bike shops. Bike shops carried tools. I suppose there were mail order catalogs when I started paying attention to cycling in 1975, but I lived in places that had well-stocked shops. It never occurred to me to go anywhere else. Even my machinist friend moved into a series of shop jobs for quite a few years before she and her husband got away from retail and formed part of the shadowy support world of referral mechanics: people with the skills and tools to do jobs that the retail shops can't or won't. The referral network supports the shops by taking some of the load off, and fixing the problems that would cost too much money and time for a retail store's overhead.

 

Now I would probably buy on the internet, since shops don't tend to stock the more esoteric and serious tools. If I had to operate without a retail front, I would have to get parts somewhere as well. Depending on how far civilization degenerates once we've finished shooting ourselves and each other in every available foot, we may be scrounging in junk yards and landfills to piece together our mad creations.