The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: Pinkbike Editors' Favorite Shop Tools

Pinkbike's tech editors spend countless hours out on the trail testing bikes each year, which means that almost as much time is spent in the shop / garage / basement preparing, adjusting, and fixing those bikes. Many of us have also spent time as professional mechanics, the glamorous profession where you can gain the skills necessary for brake bleeds and suspension rebuilds along with learning how to straighten out a bent steel rim with a hammer, how to install a kickstand, and how to remove the disgusting film of sweat and energy gel that coats the top tube of almost every triathlon bike.

Needless to say, we all have a tool or two that's become our favorite over the years. For some, it's a high-end, precision instrument, while for others it's a crude yet efficient item that gets the job done.

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Honorable mention goes to the gift of sight. In this case, that sight is enhanced/provided by this Coast inspection beam, which is basically a flashlight with no focal adjustment and a very small flat circular beam. It's a great help when fishing cables through frames, setting up brakes, and when hunting for that goddamn tiny bolt that fell on the ground. I picked this up fairly recently, and it's quickly become a key piece in my dark and wonderful garage shop.

Second honorable of course goes to Knipex pliers, but as you'll see in Henry's bit below, that's far from a brave opinion.

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I've fallen foul of this myself, undoubtedly. But I'm a silly boy with lots of growing up to do. Instead, I present to you something shonkier, worse looking and far less useful - the HQ-high-tech hose clamps. The result of bonded premium plastic and 20 minutes with a hacksaw, hammer, and chisel.

These clamps, always at the right size to clamp the hose, make aligning and straightening hoses an absolute breeze and can help you get cleaner and less cluttered cables, all while avoiding frames or headtubes with just the lightest of twists. In fact, until SRAM brought out their haywire line of brakes, they could make any front end look sharp and tidy. But alas, there are limits to this tool's power.

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Once the three blades are positioned between, and around, crown and race, the handle at the top of the main tube pushes on the fork’s steer tube to pull the whole apparatus up. The satisfying process relieves the race of its press fit on the lower portion of the steer tube without any bloodshed or unsightly marks on your fork.

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They can also be used to straighten out a bent rim or rotor, push in DU bushings on a shock, unscrew the bottom of a dropper post to service it - the list goes on. I'm a fan of the 180mm version, since they're large enough for most bike-related tasks, and small enough to toss into a basic roadtrip tool kit.


Honorable mention goes to these Schwalbe-branded tire tread cutters that are manufactured by Unior. They do work to cut down mud spikes or do other tire modifications – there's even a depth gauge to make sure every cut is the same height – but I've only done that a couple of times. Instead, I use them as a zip-tie trimmer. Living in the Pacific Northwest means that a fender gets installed on every test bike, and this tool is the fastest way that I've found to flush cut the ends of zip ties. Overkill? Most likely, since nail clippers can be used to achieve the same result, but I like the heft of the tread cutter and the shape feels better in my hand.

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You can buy wall-mounted wheel holders for around £15, but they don't hold the bike securely enough for this purpose. This design holds the bike perfectly upright because the vertical two-by-fours are just the right width apart (63 mm) to hold 2.4-2.5" tires tightly; plus, they extend a full 110 mm away from the wall so the wheel is held over a large vertical distance, not just at one point level with the hub. This means the bike doesn't flop to one side while I'm working on it.

It's literally two parallel big bits of wood screwed onto two small bits of wood, which are screwed into a stud behind the wall. Yet it's proven very handy not just for setting up and measuring bikes, but also as a place to put a bike while I make space for it elsewhere, or even for holding the bike steady while I mount or unmount my two-year-old from her Shotgun seat.

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Boy oh boy, there are few such sweet remedies to the aching pain of managing a bunch of children both at home and at work than printing out Star Wars figurines and bottle holders. The unbridled joy of getting absolutely razzed on Tim Horton's coffee at 6 PM before listening to my favorite Brian Adams CD and cracking on with an 8-hour shift long into the early hours is hard to beat.

I'm an artist, and these glorified choking hazards are my art. Leonardo had the Mona Lisa, I have this nifty inline One Up pump holder.

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