John Bolton - A Tale of Two Multi tools

00:00:00.000 On the weekend it was a mountain biking with a bunch of friends out in Banff

00:00:03.480 National Park and we had a bit of a mechanical out on the trail. We had one

00:00:08.000 of our riders rip his rear derailleur right off his brand new bike which had

00:00:12.560 us doing a bit of trailside maintenance work there and luckily we had what we

00:00:16.760 needed to get the job done so he could ride back to the car instead of having

00:00:20.400 to basically push his bicycle probably about four or five kilometers through

00:00:24.240 the mountains. So I thought this might be a good opportunity to tell you a little

00:00:27.160 bit about toolkits and really the tale of two different types of toolkits. We've

00:00:32.020 got a Lezyne on this side and the Topeak Alien 2 on this side. Two different

00:00:36.940 toolkits, two different situations, four different situations and we'll talk a

00:00:41.140 little bit about that on this video. Okay as you can see we've got these two

00:00:46.540 different toolkits on this side. Lezyne toolkit. You can go to their website and

00:00:51.100 check out all the different ones they've got there and the Topeak Alien 2,

00:00:54.700 something I've had a long time. I actually had the original Alien but now

00:00:57.700 somebody in Cornwall who picked mine up off the side of the road after it fell

00:01:01.600 out of my saddlebag has got that one. But basically the same as the Alien with a

00:01:06.460 few extra little like gadgets on it. Let's take a look at the Alien first and as

00:01:10.240 you can tell there's certainly a big difference in size here when you're

00:01:13.000 talking about these two different kits. The Alien much heavier than the Lezyne.

00:01:18.740 This weighs a little over 100 grams. This one weighs close to 300 probably a

00:01:22.700 little over with this special little case on it as well. So obviously you've got a

00:01:26.780 weight difference here for your weight weenies out there. You might want to go

00:01:29.300 for something like this but if you're looking for a do-all everything type tool

00:01:32.900 the Alien is certainly something that is pretty fancy. This is what I had on the

00:01:37.280 trail the other day. We had to break a chain and put it back together again and

00:01:41.360 this is really handy. I mean this is an amazing tool kit. Comes in two pieces like

00:01:45.380 this. As you can see the Alien has any number of different types of Allen keys on here. I think

00:01:51.700 from about two millimeters up to actually being able to work on your

00:01:55.360 pedals. So if you want to remove your pedals from your bike this one will do it

00:01:59.380 as well. A nice thing about this one too is that you have a Torx wrench on here

00:02:03.580 as well. Now a lot of mountain bikes road bikes these days are dealing with disc

00:02:07.720 brakes. If you happen to bend your disc out on the trail or something you

00:02:11.200 couldn't get it back in properly. You could remove your disc, still ride back and

00:02:14.180 not have any trouble. So this has Torx wrench on it as well. Plus it's got box

00:02:19.700 wrenches here as you can see. So if you have an older style bike or you need to

00:02:23.780 adjust it say maybe cantilever brakes or something like that. It does come with a

00:02:27.280 box wrench as well. And as you can tell what's really handy about this is that it

00:02:32.320 has tire levers on it. And you can see the two tire levers there so you don't have

00:02:35.360 to carry extra tire levers along with you. It'll do that automatically for you. Just

00:02:40.040 pop them off and off you go. You've got your tire levers. They come right along

00:02:43.540 with this handy little kit. So that's one side of it. On the other side over here as you

00:02:48.260 can tell you take a look here we've got a chain tool. Very very important when

00:02:52.860 you're particularly mountain biking. I've broken chains on the mountain bike trail

00:02:56.340 and on the road trail as well. And you need to know how to use this. It's

00:03:01.980 something that'll really come in handy. If you're on the road and you're 40k from

00:03:05.840 your car or you're 40k from your house and you've got a broken chain you're

00:03:09.740 probably making a telephone call if you don't know how to use it. Otherwise you pop

00:03:12.920 out a couple of links. Off you go. Your chain tool is there as well. Now if you look at

00:03:17.140 the back of this you can see this little metal plate here. This is actually a

00:03:19.960 locking mechanism which locks in a number of your tools so they won't pop back.

00:03:24.260 Particularly one which is quite sharp. So what we'll do is we'll open up the tool.

00:03:28.360 You just push on it like this and you pull out all your different parts. And I'll

00:03:32.720 show you what we've got in here. Here we go. Okay so you've got your chain tool

00:03:37.660 right here. You've got one of your very small little allen keys as you can see

00:03:41.500 right here. Allen wrenches here. You've got a regular slot screwdriver which comes with a

00:03:45.040 handy bottle opener. And there's a blade in there. It's actually a saw blade and a

00:03:49.040 knife blade. If you need to cut anything when you're out on the trail that will

00:03:53.120 come in handy. Also you've got some box wrenches here. Another box wrench here

00:03:57.640 for a different size but it's also got spoke wrenches. So if you have a break a

00:04:01.300 spoke all of a sudden your wheels out of true you can fix your spokes and

00:04:06.040 straighten out your wheel a little bit. Get back to the car much much nicer.

00:04:08.920 Another box wrench as well and additional wrenches and allen keys are on here as

00:04:15.100 well. Now something I find very amazing and amazing about this is the

00:04:18.580 completeness of this tool. If you look at the back of the the chain tool it's got

00:04:25.540 this little gizmo right here. It's a little hard to get off but once you get

00:04:29.560 it off. I'll pop it off here. Let me see. There we go. There we go. Here it is right

00:04:33.420 here. Now if you're a mechanic or you've worked on bikes before you'll know what

00:04:38.120 this is. This is something to attach. If you've broken your chain very often it's

00:04:43.040 very hard to mess with it trying to get your chain back together because you've

00:04:45.640 got a derailleur pulling on one side. So this hooks on either side of your chain

00:04:49.400 allows you to slack it off a little bit in the middle so you can put your chain

00:04:52.480 back together. So I talk about being complete. This certainly does everything

00:04:56.520 for you. It's got it's got everything you might need if you're out on the trail.

00:05:00.300 Now again this is a pretty heavy tool. This weighs about 300 grams or a little less

00:05:05.460 than 300 grams. I don't even think that includes this handy case. But if you're a

00:05:09.180 mountain biker I don't mind carrying this at all. It gives you everything you

00:05:12.660 need. It's very easy to use because they're big tools and they work

00:05:18.780 perfectly when you're out on the trail. But again it is rather large and rather

00:05:24.360 rather heavy. If you're mountain biking you've got a hydration pack and out here

00:05:27.480 in Alberta we carry bear spray with us. A couple extra grams is going to make a lot

00:05:31.140 of difference. And as I say to a lot of people if they're a weight weenie drop a

00:05:34.380 couple of pounds. That's probably the best way to go. Now moving over to this

00:05:38.640 one. This is the Lazine tool kit and this is what I carry when I'm on my bike or my

00:05:44.220 road bike. I'm a bit more of a weight weenie rather when I'm on my

00:05:48.580 road bike. I don't want to carry something as large as the Alien 2 along

00:05:51.580 with me. So I looked around for a long time to find the type of tool that would be

00:05:56.640 good on my road bike. And I found that this one right here did everything I

00:06:00.920 needed it to do. This is Lazine. I've used it a few times. It weighs a little over

00:06:06.360 100 grams. I know they make a carbon one now which I think is a little bit lighter.

00:06:10.300 Of course when you get into carbon it's going to get a little bit more expensive.

00:06:13.620 But as you can tell this one has a chain tool on it as well which comes in

00:06:18.420 really handy so in case you break your chain when you're out on the road. And it

00:06:22.020 comes in with a number of different Allen keys including the all-important

00:06:28.080 number five which you're going to find you're using mostly when you're doing

00:06:32.520 your bike. Certainly number five is probably the five millimeter one is the

00:06:37.020 one you can use the most. But it's much much lighter. It doesn't have as many

00:06:40.240 tools but it will pretty much get you home when you're on the road. If you have

00:06:45.320 any problems you need to adjust your saddle height or any of your brakes or

00:06:48.300 things like that. This is going to do exactly what you need and plus that all

00:06:51.440 important chain tool which will come in handy as well. Now if you look at this

00:06:55.880 it's rather ingenious as well. You can see this little slot right in here. Those

00:07:00.260 are spoke wrenches. So it has spoke wrenches as well. As you can see one is

00:07:03.660 narrower than the other and there's two different spoke wrenches on this one. So

00:07:08.300 if you need to adjust your wheel if again you break a spoke which I've done on

00:07:12.260 the road while I'm on the road and you need to true your wheel it will

00:07:15.260 certainly come in handy. So that's the Lezyne. Much much lighter for you weight

00:07:19.820 weenies. I looked around for a long time and I ended up getting this one because

00:07:23.480 it was just the right size for me and it was the right weight as well. Again it's

00:07:29.300 a personal preference for you. These are what I like but there's something probably

00:07:33.740 out there for you. You can get them lighter, you can spend a lot more money,

00:07:36.800 you can spend less money, you can have fewer tools, more tools. But the most

00:07:41.420 important thing when it comes to having a tool kit on your bike is knowing how to

00:07:46.220 use it. I'll tell you it's gotten me out of a lot of jams. Both of these tool kits

00:07:50.360 will get you get you home and make your ride a lot happier as opposed to having

00:07:54.800 to call for a ride which is something we don't want to do very often when we're

00:07:59.360 out riding our bikes.

John Bolton - May 03, 2017

A Tale of Two Multi tools

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