There's a flat blade for mech tweaks and Shimano brake pad pins, and a #2 Phillips for all manner of tweakery. The Torx range includes T10, 15 and 25 – that pretty much covers your roadside needs, especially for SRAM mechs (the T10 includes a knurled surface for reaming out tubeless cuts before inserting a repair plug). The 10mm hex is an adapter slipped over the top of the 8mm hex, retained with a spring-loaded ball 10mm is a pretty rare use case on a bike for roadside adjustment – your crank bolt might possibly be 10mm, or you might be riding an older titanium Brompton, with a 10mm pedal spindle.

> Beginner’s guide to bike tools for basic bike maintenance Making it L-shaped means that adjustment of, for example, a modern Shimano GRX mech limit screw becomes a real faff, possibly requiring removing the rear wheel in the case of the inboard limit screw. Fewer people are using cable levers anyway, and if your brakes need a 2mm hex for, say, adjusting hydro lever throw, you're likely out of luck as these are typically buried in the lever hinge area. Now lever reach is indeed a good thing to be able to adjust – but not at the side of the road or trail it's best done with a long ball-ended hex in the comfort of your own home. The 2mm is – annoyingly – an L-shape, and no one could give me a valid reason for this beyond that back in the day it was needed to adjust brake lever reach. Starting with the basic hex keys, the PT30 features 2, 2.5, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 and 10mm options. Topeak has been in the mini-tool game for over 30 years and, as the PT30 shows, has never stopped innovating and evolving to meet new market demands. If you run tubeless tyres you should know about using repair plugs, to quickly get rolling again without a messy tube replacement.Īll of these tasks and many more can be tackled by the Topeak Mini PT30 – the '30' being the number of functions this tiny tool can carry out. What bike owners need to know is which tools are needed for our bikes – likely roadside tweaks including derailleur limit screws, brake pad adjustment on mechanical discs, chainring bolt tightening, stem and top cap bolts should your headset rattle loose, pedal spindle tightening, and, of course, chain link and quick link removal.

But with a widening number of technologies and fittings adorning modern bikes, pity the mini-tool engineer – their challenge to keep everyone happy with a tool weighing less than a kilo and being smaller than a shoebox is unenviable. Chances are anyone under 40 doesn't know what a lockring spanner is, let alone has ever needed to carry one, and this is A Good Thing. Once upon a time, a stamped metal tool with multiple large hex nut cutouts and a lockring spanner was the business. Including an excellent chain breaker and quick-link tool, disc pad spacer, tubeless tyre plug reamer and insertion fork, there are very few road/trailside tasks it won't master, all in a tiny package.Īs bikes evolve, the fittings and fixtures evolve too. The Topeak Mini PT30 is a cracking little tool, bang up to date with modern bike needs.

Bike multi tool