Episode: 1804
Title: HPR1804: What's in my Bicycle Repair Tool Box
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1804/hpr1804.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 09:28:12

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This is HPR episode 1,804 entitled, What's in My My Sickle Repair Toolbox and is part of
the series, What's in My Toolkit, It is hosted by John Culp and is about 24 minutes long.
The summary is, I describe what's in my My Repair Toolbox and what the tools do.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by an honesthost.com, get 15% discount on all shared
hosting with the offer code, HPR15, that's HPR15.
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All right, yo, it's John Culp and Lafayette Louisiana and inspired by a recent show by 51.50.
I'm going to do one today about the contents of a toolbox.
Now, I don't know if I've got as many cool things in my toolbox as 50 had in his, but
we will see. The toolbox I'm going to check out is my bicycle repair toolbox.
And right now, for me, it's spring break. I teach at the university and we are on spring break
all this week. So I've been taking advantage of this free time to record some HPR episodes.
And this one, I'm going to record first thing in the morning. You can probably hear environmental
sounds here. I've got, oops, I think I hear the garbage truck coming, which is good.
And I'm opening up the toolbox. Before I open it up, I'll just say a little bit about the toolbox
because the toolbox itself has some meaning to me. This is a toolbox my dad gave to me.
I think I was a grown up when he gave it to me, but this is the toolbox. I remember him having
when I was a little kid. And if I was allowed to get in the toolbox and look around for a tool,
it was a really big deal. So it's kind of fun to have this thing. It's made of steel. It's heavy
and kind of large. And the top is divided into two halves that open up kind of like a clamshell
and open up. And then when you pull each side open, it's got these different layers of
trays in there that hold lots of stuff. Well, I can see a lot of stuff in there.
Okay, so I think I'm going to start with the trays. Now this is specifically for repairing bicycles.
And so the stuff in here may or may not be of general use.
That's a good thing that the trash truck decided to come right when I was recording.
I'm sure that's pretty loud. Okay, so I'm going to go maybe left to right.
On the left side, I've got a tray with an Allen wrench or a hex key. That looks like a five
millimeter. Five millimeter hex key is for various parts. There are quite a lot of parts on a
bicycle that use the five millimeter hex key. Here is a long 14 millimeter socket
by long. I mean, it's got quite a lot of depth in it. So if the bolt sticks out way past the nut,
you can use this one to slide way down over that bolt and reach the nut.
And then down there, there's a nail which seems kind of random to have a nail and a bicycle repair
kit. But it's not. I'll tell you the nail is an important tool to have because when I'm repairing
brake cables or like installing new brake cables in housings, the nail is something I use to
shape the inside of the housing because normally when you cut the brake cable housing,
it gets a little bit crushed and you don't want it to be anything except perfectly round.
So what I do is I'll stick the end of the nail in the crushed end of the housing and then
just kind of wiggle it around until the thing is perfectly round again.
All right, in the next tray up, I have an old axle with its cones and
cups on it. I'm not sure what the axle is doing there anyway. There's an axle with all of its
little bits. Then there is a little prescription bottle that has got a specialized
wrench on there. This is for a security thing. I wish I could remember what these things are called.
There was a time where I was really paranoid about my bike getting stolen and there's these
special kinds of security nuts that you can buy and install on your bike that will not
be accessible with normal wrenches. Each one has a very crazy shape and to be able to open up
or to loosen this nut, you have to have this really specialized thing. And so that's what
that thing is there. That would be easier to describe with a picture.
All right, so the next tray down, I'll start down here. There's a couple of,
what do they call those things? These, a lever, these plastic levers that you use to remove a tire
from, I think you kind of wedge it in there and then slide it around to remove the tire from the
rim. There's a pin spanner by Park Tool. Pin spanners are used to like turn things where you don't
have a flat surface is to grip, but only a couple of little holes. You have to stick these two
pins in the holes and then you can turn it. That's normally on things like bottom brackets.
The bottom bracket is the part where the pedal axle goes through.
This is another Park Tool adjustable pin spanner. So I've got two pin spanners in there.
Then a couple of extra brake cables and some hose clamps. And I don't remember what the hose
clamps are for, but it probably had something to do with my Recomand Bicycle project.
If you've been listening to Hacker Public Radio for a while, you may have heard my episode
from two or three years ago about the building of a Recomand Bicycle.
And I've got various odds and ends in here that are related to that, but one of the,
I used hose clamps in that project to attach, I think it was to attach the seat to the frame
or something. You had to do various hacky things for that whole project to work.
Okay, in the next tray over, I have a spoke wrench by Park Tool with it's a triangular tool made of
heavy steel Park Tool number SW7, spoke wrench seven, I guess, and it will deal with spoke sizes
0, 1 and 2. Spoke wrench is essential if you need to replace a spoke or adjust the truing of a wheel.
Then in that same thing, there is a spare, looks like a spare lockering from a bottom bracket.
I don't know what bottom bracket that came from, but you never know when you're going to need
these things. Okay, the next one over has a miscellaneous little screws and some spoke nipples.
It's a funny word to use for the spoke nipple is the screw part that holds the spoke on there.
I don't know why they called that, but they did. Okay, now here is I have a crank arm removal tool.
This is an awesome tool right here. What you have to do to remove the crank arms from a bottom bracket
is you have to pop a little plastic cover off and then you screw in there are internal threads in
the crank arm. And to get that off, you have to screw this little tool on here. I wish I could
get this great. It looks like a nut and bolt kind of thing with some external threads on the end.
But anyway, you screw this thing in there and once the threads are thoroughly seated, there's
another part that you start cranking down using a, looks like a six millimeter hex key.
And then it gradually starts pushing the crank arm away from the bottom bracket until it slides off.
That's a really fun tool to use. All right, so that's basically all the stuff on the left side.
Let's go to the right hand side. The tray over here has a three eight inch drive socket wrench,
a quarter inch drive socket wrench and two sockets. This is a 15 millimeter socket and a 14 millimeter
socket. Those are the two sizes that are most frequently used on bicycles for things such as
axle nuts and stuff like that. There are some spare spokes and various little bits and pieces of
things that I don't want to bother to describe. On the next tray down, I have a six inch craftsman
adjustable wrench and various box end wrenches. Here is a wrench with 14 millimeters on one end and
15 on the other. There's a 10 millimeter combination wrench. Another 10 millimeter combination
wrench. 10 millimeters is the size of nuts that's normally used on brakes and stuff like that.
And I have here two park tool cone wrenches, 13 millimeters and 15 millimeters.
Cone wrenches are very, very thin wrenches or spanners. I guess you'd call if you're in Britain
that are used on the cone parts of a wheel hub. There's a very thin place where you have to be
able to put a wrench to either hold it still while you're adjusting it or to take the thing off.
And if you don't have the right kind of wrench, you're going to have a really hard time doing it.
Those are the cone wrenches and I have a 17 millimeter combination wrench. I don't really know what
that goes for. I probably just threw it in there. And here is a one half inch and nine sixteenths
wrench. And I don't know what I do with that one either. There's a bunch of various cone wrenches
that have different sides on either. These are kind of a cheap one. I got this as a set. And so
among the various cone wrenches, I think I have every size from 13 millimeters up to 18.
And so I can always find the size I need there. A couple of very tiny
combination wrenches. This one is eight millimeters and this one is nine millimeters.
Okay, so that's all the wrenches. That's my wrench area. Next area down is,
it looks like a bunch of spare parts. I've got spare bottom bracket or axle covers or whatever.
This is the crank arm covers. There are little plastic things that you pop in there to protect the
threads of the crank arms. And then some spare axle nuts of a couple of different sizes. Lots of
little schrader valve covers caps, I guess. And then the next one, the last part of the trays holds one,
two, three, four, five different kinds of free wheel tool, free wheel remover tools. Now these
are also pretty cool. The free wheel is the part on the rear wheel of the bike that has all of the
teeth where the chain attaches to it. And normally it has, well, on a single speed, it will have one cog.
And on my bicycles, normally there are six or seven cogs on there. But anyway, to take that thing off,
you have to have a special tool because they're, I mean, you can't just grab the teeth and start turning.
The inside of the free wheel has little splines and you need to have a tool that slides in there
just so to get in between those splines. And then you have to use a wrench to turn it to get the
thing off. And I've got five different ones of those. These are park tool free wheel number two.
I don't see this one is, I can't read it. Free wheel one. And free wheel five. What the heck is that?
Oh man, that might be a bottom bracket removal tool. Yeah, that's a bottom bracket tool 22 from park
tools. I don't think I've ever even used that one. And then a free wheel number six. So different
free wheels have different splines. And so you have to have a, if you're going to work on a lot of
different bikes, you have to have a little collection of these tools. So those are my free wheel removal
tools and my bottom bracket tool. Now in the center, this is the largest compartment is where I keep
the bigger tools. A front and center is a 12 inch adjustable wrench by cobalt. It's very, very heavy.
And long at the jaws of it open up to what, 27 millimeters or no, 40, 41 millimeters on one side
in one and a half inches. If you're looking at the American standard version of measurement,
there is a length of down tubing from a rolly bike. This is actually a piece from one of the bikes
that I cut apart to make my recumbent bicycle. And I keep this length of tubing. It's part of the
one inch tubing. And it's maybe 10 inches long. And I keep this around to slide on the end of a
wrench handle for leverage if I need it. It's a lot easier to hold onto this thing than it is to
the wrench handle if you really have to put a lot of torque on it. I have a Park Tool
cable cutter. This tool does a couple of things. It cuts the cables. And it's not like any other
like wire cutters that I've ever seen. The teeth that cut the jaws, I guess, that come together
are a little bit angled. So it tries to cut the wire in such a way that it will be as round as
possible. So not to like crush it unduly. And then the handles have these little indentations
that you can use to crimp on the little cable ends that you need to put on if you've just replaced
the cable. There is a vise grip, well pair of vise grips. And that's just a it's not a bicycle
specific tool. That's just a handy tool to have. Right here is one of the coolest tools in the
box also. This is made by Avenir. And this is a they call it a third hand tool. And it's very
difficult to describe how it looks. But what it does is it hangs on to a cable and allows you to
add tension to the cable and hold it there while you make your tightening or adjustments.
So and this is important to be able to install brake cables and shifter cables.
And it's really, I mean you can do it without this thing but this makes it so much easier because
it really does act like a third hand. As otherwise you're trying to hold the cable tight with one hand
and then doing two things with your left hand or your right, you know, whichever hand you are.
This will take care of like two of those jobs at once so you can focus on tightening down the
fasteners. I've got a set of metric hex keys. This is just a generic set. It goes from 1.5 millimeter
although I've lost that one so I don't want to where that one is. So from two millimeters,
up to 10 millimeters. The most often used sizes for bicycle repair are six millimeters and five
millimeters. There are a couple of fasteners on a bike that might use the four millimeters
or even the three millimeters but not that many. Like if you have to install shifters on a bike,
some of the little fasteners that hold it to the handlebars might use the smaller sizes.
All right, there's a wicked looking tool here. This is the HCW5 by Park Tool and it is a
lock ring spanner. Lock ring pin spanner I guess. Anyway, it allows you to take the lock ring off
of a bottom bracket so that you can get in there and get the rest of the stuff off.
And next I have a Park Tool CT3. This is a chain tool three. It's a very heavy duty chain tool.
It allows you to remove links in the chain and put the chain back together. Very handy.
Let's see. This is a headset wrench or a headset spanner. It has a very wide 36 millimeters
on one side and 32 millimeters on the other and this is to remove the little lock rings on the
headset. The headset is where the handlebar mechanism is. Here's another adjustable wrench.
This one is 10 inches. The first one I mentioned was 12. This is 10. Just nice to have various
sizes of these things. Here's a spare plastic spoke protector thing. I have many little prescription
bottles with spare parts here. This one looks like it's got a bunch of generic five millimeter
bolts to hold on things like water bottle holders and I don't know racks and stuff like that.
Here's some I'm not sure what those are for. Those look like they are the adjustment screws for
shifter things. Here are I wish I knew the names for some of these things. These are little
metal things that go on the end of the brake cable housing.
Oh wait, just non-crimping ferruols. Ferruols. What a great word. I got a whole box of non-crimping
ferruols. These go on the end of the cable housing before you install it. It gives a nice little
silver end to it. It helps keep stuff out of there. Let's see what are in these other ones.
Some more bolts. Some plastic ferruols. Some random. Oh I know what those are. Those are
little bits from brakes. I don't know what those things are and I've got two. You can hear
rattling. I've got two different size ball bearings. The larger ball bearings are for bottom brackets
when you and then the smaller ones are for wheel hubs. A lot of the maintenance of a bicycle is
just cleaning out and repacking with grease and that's what I have these things around for.
If you ever hear someone speak of overhauling the bottom bracket or overhauling the hubs,
what they're talking about is a job where you take the whole thing apart, take out all of the
ball bearings and clean them with a solvent or just throw them away and put new ones. But you got
to clean up the the races. That's the races, the part where the bearings go round and round.
You clean that out until it's just shining the silver and then you pack it with brand new grease
and put the right number of bearings in there or replace the little bearing cage. Sometimes the
bearings are loose and sometimes they come in this little metal casing that holds them all in
the right place and then you put them back in there, make sure there's lots of grease and then
put the axle back in and adjust the cones until it spins perfectly. But I keep bearings around to
do that job. And let's see, this is a whole package of cable end caps. These are what you put on
after you cut off the brake cable or the shifter cable. There's this end sticking out that's kind
of dangerous and pokey and so you put one of these end caps on there and then crimp it with the
cable cutter tool to hold it in place. We've got a box of those. We're getting down to it here.
I have next a park tool USA torque wrench and I haven't used the torque wrench a lot but it is
very handy. There are certain parts on the bicycle that have to be tightened down to a specified torque
to either to avoid over tightening or to make sure that you've tightened it enough. You want to
do it to whatever the manufacturer specifies as the torque to make sure you did the installation,
right? Oh my gosh, I totally forgot about this tool. This one is a cog removal thing. I can
don't even remember. I think I've only used this tool maybe once but there's this big metal bar
with a blue rubber handle on it and then two bits of chain attached to it and I'm pretty sure
this is for taking off the individual cogs of a cog set. I don't have to look that up the SR1. I don't
remember. I don't think I've used that more than a couple of times if at all. Okay, now another
combination, I mean, adjustable wrench, this one, eight inch. So in this box I have six inch,
eight inch, ten inch and twelve inch adjustable wrenches and then a very small set of vice grips.
Another is a open end wrench with 19 millimeters on one end and 22 on the other and then I have
various links of cable housing and another spare shifter cable and I think that's about a piece
of carpet at the bottom of the whole thing to make it a little less noise when you put the cables
and when you put everything back in the toolbox. And well, I think that's about it.
That's everything that's in my bicycle repair toolbox. I close up the box and
call it an episode. Take care y'all.
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