A Tale of Two Multi tools
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Summary
On the weekend we had a bit of a mechanical out on the trail and I thought this might be a good opportunity to tell you a little bit about toolkits and the difference between the Lezyne toolkit and the Topeak Alien 2.
Transcript
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On the weekend it was a mountain biking with a bunch of friends out in Banff
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National Park and we had a bit of a mechanical out on the trail. We had one
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of our riders rip his rear derailleur right off his brand new bike which had
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us doing a bit of trailside maintenance work there and luckily we had what we
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needed to get the job done so he could ride back to the car instead of having
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to basically push his bicycle probably about four or five kilometers through
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the mountains. So I thought this might be a good opportunity to tell you a little
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bit about toolkits and really the tale of two different types of toolkits. We've
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got a Lezyne on this side and the Topeak Alien 2 on this side. Two different
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toolkits, two different situations, four different situations and we'll talk a
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little bit about that on this video. Okay as you can see we've got these two
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different toolkits on this side. Lezyne toolkit. You can go to their website and
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check out all the different ones they've got there and the Topeak Alien 2,
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something I've had a long time. I actually had the original Alien but now
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somebody in Cornwall who picked mine up off the side of the road after it fell
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out of my saddlebag has got that one. But basically the same as the Alien with a
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few extra little like gadgets on it. Let's take a look at the Alien first and as
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you can tell there's certainly a big difference in size here when you're
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talking about these two different kits. The Alien much heavier than the Lezyne.
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This weighs a little over 100 grams. This one weighs close to 300 probably a
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little over with this special little case on it as well. So obviously you've got a
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weight difference here for your weight weenies out there. You might want to go
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for something like this but if you're looking for a do-all everything type tool
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the Alien is certainly something that is pretty fancy. This is what I had on the
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trail the other day. We had to break a chain and put it back together again and
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this is really handy. I mean this is an amazing tool kit. Comes in two pieces like
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this. As you can see the Alien has any number of different types of Allen keys on here. I think
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from about two millimeters up to actually being able to work on your
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pedals. So if you want to remove your pedals from your bike this one will do it
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as well. A nice thing about this one too is that you have a Torx wrench on here
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as well. Now a lot of mountain bikes road bikes these days are dealing with disc
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brakes. If you happen to bend your disc out on the trail or something you
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couldn't get it back in properly. You could remove your disc, still ride back and
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not have any trouble. So this has Torx wrench on it as well. Plus it's got box
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wrenches here as you can see. So if you have an older style bike or you need to
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adjust it say maybe cantilever brakes or something like that. It does come with a
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box wrench as well. And as you can tell what's really handy about this is that it
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has tire levers on it. And you can see the two tire levers there so you don't have
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to carry extra tire levers along with you. It'll do that automatically for you. Just
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pop them off and off you go. You've got your tire levers. They come right along
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with this handy little kit. So that's one side of it. On the other side over here as you
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can tell you take a look here we've got a chain tool. Very very important when
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you're particularly mountain biking. I've broken chains on the mountain bike trail
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and on the road trail as well. And you need to know how to use this. It's
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something that'll really come in handy. If you're on the road and you're 40k from
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your car or you're 40k from your house and you've got a broken chain you're
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probably making a telephone call if you don't know how to use it. Otherwise you pop
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out a couple of links. Off you go. Your chain tool is there as well. Now if you look at
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the back of this you can see this little metal plate here. This is actually a
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locking mechanism which locks in a number of your tools so they won't pop back.
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Particularly one which is quite sharp. So what we'll do is we'll open up the tool.
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You just push on it like this and you pull out all your different parts. And I'll
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show you what we've got in here. Here we go. Okay so you've got your chain tool
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right here. You've got one of your very small little allen keys as you can see
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right here. Allen wrenches here. You've got a regular slot screwdriver which comes with a
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handy bottle opener. And there's a blade in there. It's actually a saw blade and a
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knife blade. If you need to cut anything when you're out on the trail that will
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come in handy. Also you've got some box wrenches here. Another box wrench here
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for a different size but it's also got spoke wrenches. So if you have a break a
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spoke all of a sudden your wheels out of true you can fix your spokes and
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straighten out your wheel a little bit. Get back to the car much much nicer.
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Another box wrench as well and additional wrenches and allen keys are on here as
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well. Now something I find very amazing and amazing about this is the
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completeness of this tool. If you look at the back of the the chain tool it's got
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this little gizmo right here. It's a little hard to get off but once you get
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it off. I'll pop it off here. Let me see. There we go. There we go. Here it is right
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here. Now if you're a mechanic or you've worked on bikes before you'll know what
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this is. This is something to attach. If you've broken your chain very often it's
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very hard to mess with it trying to get your chain back together because you've
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got a derailleur pulling on one side. So this hooks on either side of your chain
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allows you to slack it off a little bit in the middle so you can put your chain
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back together. So I talk about being complete. This certainly does everything
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for you. It's got it's got everything you might need if you're out on the trail.
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Now again this is a pretty heavy tool. This weighs about 300 grams or a little less
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than 300 grams. I don't even think that includes this handy case. But if you're a
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mountain biker I don't mind carrying this at all. It gives you everything you
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need. It's very easy to use because they're big tools and they work
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perfectly when you're out on the trail. But again it is rather large and rather
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rather heavy. If you're mountain biking you've got a hydration pack and out here
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in Alberta we carry bear spray with us. A couple extra grams is going to make a lot
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of difference. And as I say to a lot of people if they're a weight weenie drop a
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couple of pounds. That's probably the best way to go. Now moving over to this
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one. This is the Lazine tool kit and this is what I carry when I'm on my bike or my
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road bike. I'm a bit more of a weight weenie rather when I'm on my
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road bike. I don't want to carry something as large as the Alien 2 along
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with me. So I looked around for a long time to find the type of tool that would be
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good on my road bike. And I found that this one right here did everything I
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needed it to do. This is Lazine. I've used it a few times. It weighs a little over
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100 grams. I know they make a carbon one now which I think is a little bit lighter.
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Of course when you get into carbon it's going to get a little bit more expensive.
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But as you can tell this one has a chain tool on it as well which comes in
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really handy so in case you break your chain when you're out on the road. And it
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comes in with a number of different Allen keys including the all-important
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number five which you're going to find you're using mostly when you're doing
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your bike. Certainly number five is probably the five millimeter one is the
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one you can use the most. But it's much much lighter. It doesn't have as many
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tools but it will pretty much get you home when you're on the road. If you have
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any problems you need to adjust your saddle height or any of your brakes or
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things like that. This is going to do exactly what you need and plus that all
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important chain tool which will come in handy as well. Now if you look at this
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it's rather ingenious as well. You can see this little slot right in here. Those
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are spoke wrenches. So it has spoke wrenches as well. As you can see one is
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narrower than the other and there's two different spoke wrenches on this one. So
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if you need to adjust your wheel if again you break a spoke which I've done on
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the road while I'm on the road and you need to true your wheel it will
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certainly come in handy. So that's the Lezyne. Much much lighter for you weight
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weenies. I looked around for a long time and I ended up getting this one because
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it was just the right size for me and it was the right weight as well. Again it's
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a personal preference for you. These are what I like but there's something probably
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out there for you. You can get them lighter, you can spend a lot more money,
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you can spend less money, you can have fewer tools, more tools. But the most
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important thing when it comes to having a tool kit on your bike is knowing how to
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use it. I'll tell you it's gotten me out of a lot of jams. Both of these tool kits
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will get you get you home and make your ride a lot happier as opposed to having
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to call for a ride which is something we don't want to do very often when we're