Setting off on a bike tour? Don’t leave your house without these useful bike tools.
When daydreaming of a bike tour, you likely imagine sunny, carefree days riding through picturesque scenery. And while carefree riding is a reality of touring, you must prepare yourself for things to go wrong, too.
The simple action of riding a bike, even on smooth bike paths, will still wreak havoc on your bicycle’s functions after a while. Whether a punctured tube, broken chain, or out-of-true wheels, there are a lot of parts that may need adjusting while touring.
Therefore, packing a bag of bike tools is essential for a bike tour. While you don’t want to weigh your bike down with heavy tools and accessories, there are a few tools you should definitely bring on a tour.
From a hand pump to allen key wrenches, here are some of the most useful bike tools to pack on a bike tour.
Chain tool
A bicycle chain tool, which is also called a chain splitter or chain breaker, is used to remove and install chains on a bike. Over the course of a bike tour, it’s likely you may need to replace or repair your chain, and a chain tool is essential for doing so.
Chain links work by pushing the pin of a chain link partially out of the chain, which breaks the chain and allows you to replace or remove the damaged sections.
Some multitools have a chain breaker included in the set. If you purchase one of these, you won’t need to worry about carrying a separate chain tool.
Multitool
A multitool is a useful tool to pack on a bike tour and it’s likely to be the tool you use most frequently. This is, undoubtedly, one of the most useful bike tools in this list. Multitools are compact and combine a variety of essential tools into one small, convenient device.
Here are a few tools that me be found in one multitool:
- Screwdrivers
- Spoke wrench
- Tire levers
- Chain tool
- Allen keys
- Quick-link tool
- Valve core removal tool
- Brake pad separator
Multitools are exceptionally useful for on-the-road bike repairs. While they can’t fix everything, they can almost always fix the most common bike repair issues, such as fixing your seat height or tightening a headset.
Tire Irons
As much as we’d all like to ride without getting a flat, it’s almost a guarantee on a bike tour. Flat tires are common occurrences when touring, especially if cycling through areas with sharp objects on the road and/or bad road conditions.
In order to fix a flat tire, you’ll need tire irons. Tire irons, or tire levers, are tools used to remove and install bicycle tires. They are typically made with either plastic or metal.
Taking a tire off the rim can be difficult—it requires a lot more force than you would expect. Tire irons help to remove your tire from the rim, allowing you to take out and patch your bike tube.
You should tour with two or three tire irons of durable material. Unfortunately it’s common for tire irons to snap during the process of removing a tire from the rim. Purchasing a highly rated tire iron should help ensure they don’t break while fixing a flat.
Here are some of our top recommended tire irons:
- Park Tool TL-4.2 tire levers
- Cannondale tire levers
- SILCA Premio tire levers
Hand pump with air gage
Keeping your tires filled with air is, of course, an essential part of bike touring. One of the most useful bike tools to pack on a bike tour is a hand pump with an air gage.
Unfortunately it’s not easy to travel with a large bike pump, meaning most cyclists must use a small hand pump while touring. It’s far more difficult to fill your tire to a high pressure with a hand pump, and it requires a lot of strength and force.
Nonetheless, keeping your tires at an appropriate pressure is necessary in order to ride smoothly and effectively, as well as to avoid pinch flats while riding.
Therefore, you should pack a hand pump with an air gage for your tour. An air gage lets you know how much pressure is in your tire while pumping, which is essential to make sure there’s enough air in the tire.
Standalone set of tools
In addition to a multitool, you may also want to bring standalone sets of common tools like allen key wrenches and crescent wrenches.
While working on your bike, you might be limited by certain angles when tightening or loosening parts of the bike. When removing a water bottle cage, for example, it might be hard to maneuver a bulky multitool around the plastic of the cage.
Having standalone tools simply makes some repairs easier. While not entirely necessary, bringing a few small standalone tools can be helpful.
Tubeless sealant
One of the most useful bike tools if you’re touring with tubeless tires is tubeless sealant.
Tubeless tires are bike tires that create an airtight seal with the tire’s rim. This means air is not leaked from the tire and it clings tightly to the tire’s rim.
Tubeless sealant is poured into the tire, which helps plug any small leaks and heals small punctures on the tire.
S&S coupler tool
We love touring with an S&S coupler bike. If you have an S&S coupler bike, it’s necessary to bring an S&S coupler tool to put together and take apart your bike.
S&S coupler bikes are unique in that the frame breaks apart in two pieces. This allows for easy packing of the bike in a standard sized bike bag—no oversized airline fees required!
Related: S&S Coupler bike & Break-Away bikes: are these the best touring bikes?
To loosen and tighten the S&S couplers, you must use a specialized S&S coupler wrench tool. Forgetting or losing this tool makes breaking apart your S&S coupler bike difficult to impossible, so don’t forget it!
Patch kit
Along with spare tubes and a hand pump, you must also bring a patch kit on a bike tour.
Patch kits are small, portable kits with three components to fix a punctured tire: patches, glue, and a tube-scruffer tool (sandpaper).
When fixing a flat tire, you must first blow up the tire to find the puncture. After finding the hole, release the rest of the air and begin scruffing the tube over the puncture. This creates friction on the tube, allowing for better sticking upon gluing the patch to the tube.
If on a short tour, bringing one patch kit will do. If you’re touring for over a week or two, we recommend bringing two patch kits or one larger kit.
Duct tape
Simple yet useful, you should pack a roll of duct tape for a bike tour. You never know when you might need tape while on the road, whether when fixing a flat tire without a patch kit or securing a loose item to your bike.
While on a recent tour in French Polynesia, we found ourselves stuck on the side of the road with a flat tire and no patch kit. Luckily we found a roll of tape at a nearby store and were able to temporarily fix the tire until we reached a bike store.
Related: Bike touring French Polynesia: Guide to cycling the islands
You can also use duct tape for other situations, such as a temporary patch on clothing, holding together open food packages, and repairing a tent.
Chain lube
Bringing (and applying) chain lube on a bike tour helps ensure your drive train works efficiently and lasts a long time. The lubricant on chain lube penetrates the chain, which smooths the chain’s engagement to maintain proper performance.
Neglecting to apply lubricant on a bike chain will make the chain rust over time, prohibiting you from smooth riding and shifting.
While you don’t need to apply chain lube after every ride, it’s recommended to apply the product every 100-150 miles. Keeping a chain well-lubricated is more important when cycling through humid and wet conditions rather than on warm, dry days.
Spoke wrench
Over time, your bike wheels get out-of-true, which means they are not sufficiently round. This affects riding performance due to the fact that the wheel does not spin efficiently and is out of alignment.
A spoke wrench tool is one of the most useful bike tools to pack so that you can true your wheel while touring. A spoke wheel works by allowing you to adjust the amount of tension on the spokes of your wheel. The tension in your wheel’s spokes determine how straight the rim will align to the frame, and your wheel’s true depends on proper spoke tension.
Learning how to true a bike wheel can take some trial and error, so we recommend watching videos on how to true a wheel before your tour begins.
Spare tubes
There’s only so many times you can patch a tube before it’s deemed unfixable. At some point or another, you will have to put a brand new, patchless tube in your tire.
It’s a good idea to have at least one or two spare tubes on hand while touring. If you’re cycling through more urban areas—especially in cycle-friendly countries—you can get away with having one spare tube. If in rural or less developed areas, though, you should pack at least two spare tubes.
Don’t forget to check your tire size before buying spare tubes, as it’s not one size fits all.
How to find a bicycle’s tube size
Look at the sidewall of your bike’s tire to find the tire size. You should see two numbers signaling the dimensions of the tire: diameter x width.
The first number lists the diameter of your tire, such as 26, 24, 29, and 700c. The second number lists the tire’s width, which is usually a number between 1 and 3 inches. You must purchase a tube with the exact diameter of your tire, but the width measurement does not have to be exact as the width can stretch once in the tire.
After figuring out your tire’s size, you must also pick a tube with the correct valve stem: Schrader or Presta. Shrader valves are much more common and they are shorter than a long Presta valve.
If you’re having trouble finding the right size tube for your bike, stop by a local bike shop and ask for which type of tube to purchase.
