What to Carry to Fix Most Things On Your Bike in the Smallest Toolkit Possible

There is no shortage of well-designed packable tools these days, but the overlap in utility can lead to you carrying far more than need be. We all know that person with 20 pounds of tools and spare parts jammed into their riding pack, and even though it's well-intentioned, it might not be the only way. My goal here is to assemble a svelte toolkit that can fix most of the things you're liable to break on a ride, at least enough to get you home. Ideally it can all fit in a small hip pack, or within the many pockets of your favorite cargo shorts.

Unior Cassette Lockring Tool
Unior has easy-to-follow videos on their website and YouTube channel, should you need a primer on how to use this little guy. The assumption here is you have a couple spare spokes to replace the broken ones, which might seem ridiculous until you realize that you can stick some in your handlebar and insulate them with foam to keep things quiet. You can typically just ride out with one or two broken spokes, but if you happen to zipper a few, then this might just save you from a long walk.

OneUp Pump
Sure, a CO2 and inflater head might take up less space, but I don't know many people who have anything above a poor success rate with that method when you really need it. Do what I do and wrap a bunch of 1" wide gorilla tape around this thing; it works as everything from a tire boot to a bandage.

OneUp Tool
They've updated the chain-breaker function to make it even more robust, but you still need masterlink pliers should you have to take the chain off - keep reading to see which ones take the cake. I should also note that I have the first version of this tool, and despite near-daily usage for the past 4 years, it's still truckin'. The tool itself is a bit worse for wear, as the pivots holding the thing together tend to get loose, but a bit of TLC keeps it working just fine. Again, you can find nicer toolsets, but in a pinch I have no real complaints with the tool assortment you get with the OneUp, and the self-containment means it's one less thing to forget.

Dynaplug Micro Pro
Be it serendipity or design intent on the part of the two companies, this thing actually fits perfectly inside the OneUp pump's storage area. Sadly, you can't hold both this and the OneUp tool at the same time in the 70cc, only in the 100cc.

With the spare room, you might notice the Dynaplug knocking inside the pump, so I simply take up that space with a few folded up zip-ties, since they're ultimately the most useful SOS tool there is.

Wolf Tooth Pack Pliers
Bring one pair of quick links that fits your drivetrain, and one that works on the other common systems, because a friend with a broken bike is almost as bad as your own being out of commission.

Tubolito

Space Blanket & Lighter

Notable Omissions

I'm sure you're thinking Dario, why didn't you include my 96-bit brick of a multitool that can open a can of beans and a beer at the same time??, but I want to assure you that carrying that is perfectly fine by me, you just won't see it in my cargo shorts. The idea with a sparse kit like this is to have something you're comfortable taking on rides of any length, as there's always potential for something to go awry. I'm certainly guilty of riding without tools on any given day, but when I know I'm going to be way out there, even just far enough that I don't want to walk, then I pack something quite similar to what you see above.

Here are some things I tend to leave at home, and why.

1. Derailleur Hanger Alignment Tools. If you really smack your hanger hard enough to require a solid truing, you're probably better off just throwing a spare on there. With the increasing ubiquity of the UDH design, it's becoming easier and easier to always have a spare around, and more likely that your buddy's bike uses the same one.

If you do want to try and torque your hanger pack into shape, a CO2 thread is the same pitch as a derailleur bolt, so you can use a spent canister as a lever to try and get things back into plane.

Even on very long and remote bikepacking trips, I don't bring anything to work on a hanger. This is partly out of hubris, but also because I run 11-speed on my go-far bike, and the gear spacing on those cassettes is a bit more forgiving to misalignment in your drivetrain.

2. Shock Pump. I know plenty of people who think it's foolish omit this from your every-ride kit, but the times I wish I had one are truly few and far between. With modern suspension's reliability, you shouldn't need to worry about your pressures over the course of a ride, just check every so often before leaving home and you'll be set. If you're going out to bracket settings, then a pump makes sense, but otherwise I think it allows for more fiddling than one really needs to do - sometimes it's a worthwhile exercise to just go for a ride and not think about such things.

3. Sometimes: Everything. Unthinkable, I know, but sometimes you just want to go for a silly little bike ride in the woods and not worry about your multi-item checklist. There's a bit of a slippery slope to this, as I've definitely gone on some way-out-there rides with little more than a multitool in my pocket, so tread cautiously. That said, don't stress too much, as bikes are fairly reliable these days, and your after-work ride probably doesn't warrant the same volume of tools as a World Cup pit.

Have fun out there!

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