welcome back to Berm Peak I'm Seth and today we're going to be doing something a little bit different
but kind of the same I have here a whole bunch of bike tools and
I have them separated into three categories right here here to our right are tools that
I'm not even really sure if they're bike tools you probably have these in your shop I mean a bike
phillips head screwdriver probably doesn't need to be a bike phillips head screwdriver now over here
to our left we have tools that are clearly bike tools here's a tire lever and a spoke wrench and a
cassette removal tool you would be hard-pressed to do your job without these tools now in the center
here we have tools that are sort of in between could we find a suitable replacement for a cable
housing cutter how about a pedal wrench and yeah a valve core wrench seems like a bike tool but I
think we can find a replacement for that so today we're gonna go to the store we're going to see
what type of replacements we can find and we're going to find out what type of bike tools you
really need and what tools you already have in your shop you can sort of repurpose for working
on bikes these are cable cutter pliers maybe we can do housing with these I suppose we could make
a cup press out of this okay so we went to some stores and found a few tools and I also have some
non-bike tools that we can test out but the first thing I want to look at are these two needle nose
pliers at first glance they kind of look exactly the same and actually they cost about the same
these are good needle nose pliers they're made by channel lock probably last a really long time
but immediately I can see some key differences between them now aside from them just being kind
of a different size and shape these ones from park tool actually have crimpers in them for crimping
the little cable ends onto bicycle cables now could you do that with these by just squeezing
them sure but it's not going to do as good of a job so a good set of needle nose pliers will have
sharp cutters and you should be able to cut braided cable yeah these actually do a really
good job of that if you have a set of needle nose pliers already you probably don't have to
get bike specific ones now I do like how these are spring loaded it does have the crimpers in
them and it does have a couple of little spaces in the plier for holding hoses and cables and
things like that they're just optimized for the bike and because they cost the same if you're
setting up a real bike shop in your garage you should get these but you really don't need them
now where things get a little trickier is when you're dealing with cable housing so I got these
cable cutters from the hardware store this is just the store brand it actually has two
little inserts for different size cable I'm gonna see how it works on some cable housing
now cable cutters are a little bit different because they work sort of like
a parrot's beak so it shears the cable and leaves a little bit of a cleaner cut
i would say that it was easier to cut with the bike specific ones there was a little bit more
leverage but the quality of the cut is about the same these ones are spring-loaded it seems like
all the bike ones are spring-loaded which is kind of nice when you're doing things quick in the shop
another thing I noticed is just from making that one cut there's actually damage to the cutter
like these don't even want to open anymore like I have to kind of like force them open because
they've been damaged so much from cutting housing on brake housing specifically you
have a solid core here and so if you don't get cutters that are sufficiently hardened
you're going to end up damaging them on cut number one and that's not very economical no matter how
cheap they were so the next thing I want to talk about are wrenches so these here are bike specific
wrenches why can't we just use a normal adjustable wrench or just open-ended wrench for these things
and the answer is you probably could let's try it so most pedals these days you can use a hex wrench
for but there are pedals that you need a pedal wrench for see it's just got an open end right
there place it on the axis of the pedal now can we use a normal wrench on that here's a 15 millimeter
wrench yeah no problem fits on great now the one thing I would say is that yes if you have a set
of wrenches like this you're gonna be okay but if you have a big fat adjustable wrench it's actually
not gonna fit in here it's not narrow enough and even this wrench when I place it on the pedal
it's all over the rubber seal here it's pushing into the crank arm it's just not narrow enough to
really get in there now what about spokes do you need a spoke wrench all a spoke wrench is is just
a little u-shaped thing and it fits around the spoke here and makes it kind of easy to turn but
why can't we just take an adjustable wrench close it down really really small we can turn a spoke
with that right and indeed yeah we absolutely can see the problem is you're only gonna be able
to turn it maybe a half turn at a time with this much smaller easier to get in there you can really
make it spin around and get the spoke on a lot quicker and so given what a set of spoke wrenches
cost I don't know if it's worth trying to use an adjustable wrench it's just a lot more difficult
and you do run the risk of damaging your spoke nipples nobody likes a damaged nipple now here
we have something that's very familiar to anybody with a mountain bike and that is a valve core now
sometimes valve cores get damaged because a rock hits into it you don't have a cap on it good thing
about valve cores is they're really inexpensive and easy to change and you can see on the valve
core right here there's a little flat spot and you can get a valve core wrench and take that
off very easy you just put it on there and you just turn it and it's it's extraordinarily easy
to get in and out now can we turn this without a valve core wrench absolutely and yeah I suppose
we could just use our little adjustable wrench get it on that flat spot there and crank it down
it's just one little turn you got to do you don't need to buy a dedicated valve core wrench
I think it's nice to have but I'm not going to tell you you need to run out and buy one
so I wanted to bring up something chain tools now almost every bike multi-tool has a chain tool
and even the ones that are like 15 20 bucks but having a dedicated chain tool is really nice it's
much easier to use has a lot of leverage but these days do you really need a chain tool really all we
would need to do with let's say a chain like this is shorten it to size to fit the bike okay so this
is me trying to use non-bike tools to get this to size and you use this set of little bolt cutters
should cut through this solid metal pretty easy cut one side there the other side there
so the chain's the right size now but we have all this extra stuff on it so we got to try and rip
that off so let's grab the needle nose pliers okay I'm unable to get that off let's see if we can
use these little nippers to get in there and and kind of pry it out no okay so i've got a general
purpose hammer and i've got a punch and let's see what happens if we hit this pin here with a punch
uh
yeah it was kind of counterproductive all right let's move up to the vice here get it on there and
mission success we got the chain apart now we'll put it the rest of the way on
the bike first we're gonna put the chain on and to put the chain on
you don't need any tool whatsoever master links can be installed by hand you put
the chain together and then you apply outward pressure to put it on and then we just go boop
okay so if we just go like this knocks our master link in place and so now our chain is installed
and we didn't use any sort of specialty tools and it was super easy right
yeah now let's say we want to get this chain apart i've heard people say that they can get
master links apart with their fingers but you can't you need master link pliers it's just a
set of pliers that has this nice little shape in here goes in here you squeeze it and it pops your
master link out now actually master link pliers can put the chain back together as well so here
you can see there's these little indentations in the outside of the plier and you can pull outwards
and it'll actually pop the master link together as well but do you need them can we just take
a normal set of needle nose pliers get them up in there and pop the chain apart you see
if we put them in here the actual tips of the pliers are too fat to get to the narrow link
maybe we can grab it here and push here now it's pretty tricky now there is a hack to get your
master link apart if you don't have master link pliers and it's with a shoe lace we'll
feed our shoelace through there get it around to the other side we can take this shoelace
and indeed it snapped the master link off I like having master link pliers because I work
on bikes a lot but you can do it without it so here's an interesting one a shock pump this is
for your front suspension your rear suspension now the thing with the shock pump on a bicycle
is that it pumps a tiny tiny tiny bit at a time because you want to get to a very precise
pressure and if you want to let some out it's got this little bleed valve and it lets little
tiny bits of air out every time you push it so let's see if we can use a normal like a electric
air pump to pump up our shock to 80 psi exactly so let's see what happens when we connect this
okay so we're going to set this pump to 80 psi okay so shock pumps don't take very much
air and so this should happen very quickly let's try it I'm going to press the button
it went a little bit over it just happens really quickly so it says 81 psi is in it
let's take off this tube and see how much air escapes let's hook up the real shock pump and
let's see what pressure it's at yeah looks like it's at exactly 80 psi so yeah I'm actually
pretty amazed at how well this works as a shock pump now if you get down to this next fine point
I should hope you've started to accumulate some bike tools now for headset bearings some bottom
bracket cups this is park tools press and it appears to be a threaded rod with some handles
on the end and a couple of washers and so from the hardware store I purchased a threaded rod
two washers one big nut and one small nut over here didn't really cost us much while
this actually probably cost a fair bit so let's say something quick and dirty like a headset cup
on an older bike you put the washer in here put the headset cup down in here this would go on
top of the bike then you would just tighten this nut to clamp everything together but you can see
the problem here the washers we have they're too small it would actually go into the headset cup
and scratch it now you could find a bigger washer but I have a fairly nice hardware store with a
pretty big selection and I couldn't find any washers with bigger flanges than this now the
purpose made one has purpose-made washers not only are they big enough to fit around the headset cup
but they're also nice and smooth these galvanized washers are gonna leave all sorts of imprints in
this cup and probably damage it so I think that cup presses are one of those situations where
coming up with a replacement is not really worth it unless you have a machine shop and
you can kind of put something nicer together so next let's talk about bottom bracket tools
so bottom brackets come in a lot of different sizes and on newer bottom brackets there are
these little indentations that these tools fit into perfectly so you can change out your bearings
so the question is why can't you just grab this with a channel lock as you know these fit any
part in the known universe you can use these to just take anything apart with high precision
let's see what happens if we carefully gingerly do it with this channel locking
oh what was that so that actually started eating away at some of the aluminum right here so put a
big scratch in the bottom bracket cup still spins smoothly I think I'm better off not using the rag
so I can at least see what's going on we'll just concede that there are going to be some little
marks in this when we're done and okay it works now the real problem with this is this is very
thin metal the shell that's around here and so when you're squeezing it in two spots right here
you do run the risk of denting it inwards and making it so that the bearings just don't work
at all I mean this wouldn't even spin that's why it has these little dimples in it so that it can
be grabbed from all the way around and equal pressure is put on the bearing cup but we were
able to squeak by in this situation will you well I don't know is it worth trying it yourself that's
that's a decision you have to make so screw drivers hex wrenches box wrenches for sure if you
already have tools you can use those in your bike you don't have to go out and buy anything new but
if you're getting deep into bike repair like we do on our flip bike series you're probably going
to need to pick up some specialty tools the good thing about tools is if you get a good one it'll
last the rest of your life for instance this is probably the best cassette tool you can get and
it's like nine dollars and you'll never have to like jam needle nose pliers into the little
cap at the end I vote for making your life easier and buying a few bike tools but hey you be the
judge we just demonstrated them today so as you can see I'm wearing the new flip bike shirt it's
got the new flip bike logo and a whole bunch of bike parts and so you're signaling to people
that you're into bikes good conversation starter if you want it we have it in several different
colors it's on cognitivemtb.com left a link below I hope you learned something today and if not I
hope you were at least entertained thanks for riding with me today and i'll see you next time