Building the Ultimate Adventure Bike Toolkit - Brake Magazine

my name is lil baby this is Break magazine and you're watching another awesome mini tip Monday last week on mini tip Monday we did add a car themed special on how to read Road books if you haven't seen that this way click the little link up there for this week on mini tip Monday we're doing the same thing we're going in and looking at something that we can learn from the DA car and this week we're talking about tool kits now one of the beautiful things about racing and the DA car in general is that that environment forces you to adapt and change and solve problems while still always keeping performance in mind when we write it when we travel and we ride with adventure we normally got quite a lot of luggage space when you have space you will fill it with dock our bikes they're always still trying to keep the performance really really high and that means they're trying to keep the weight low so they don't carry any excess there's no panniers there's not lots of bag space and so you need to fit a really good tool kit onto that bike without having a lot of space to deal with so you're trying to fit tools into nooks and crannies and under seats and in bass plates but alongside that you still have the problem of you need to be able to work on your bike you need to be able to solve a huge range of problems from tire blowouts to broken chains and pretty much everything up to working inside an engine I mean probably if you get to the point into a car where you've blown the inside of your engine you're probably out of the race but there's been plenty of instances where there's been engine changes and other serious serious mechanical issues that needed solving which means you need to be able to carry all those tools to do that so in front of me on the table here I've got a doc our tool kit from Doc our 2015 this is my personal tool kit with this you can dismantle the entire KTM rally bike pretty much give or take a few extra parts that I don't have anymore and that includes fixing chains that includes changing a tire if I needed to change a tire getting wheels out solving electrical problems you can do it all with this tool kit the bulk of the start of this toolkit is we started with a motion Pro t6 chain tool the beauty of this chain tool is it comes in a really nice bag but it also has really really good flexibility and then we expanded that with a bunch of other part so in there I've got an electrical tester this got plenty of real world use there awesome little it's basically a really simple electrical tester the has a little light bulb in it so when you've got a positive connection worth it there bang you touch it lights up you know that you've got you've got some electrical signal at that point it's really good for tracing problems so second up in here we've got we've managed to jam in a row of quarter Drive tool part so quart drive tools are kind of quite often overlooked but the beauty of caught the drive is that it is really small so you can carry a wide range of sizes and stuff to fit without taking up a lot of space now sometimes especially on adventure bikes you'll find that part the torque levels are really high or the bolts are a bit big for that sort of thing but you'd be amazed what you can do with a quart drive toolkit especially if you get a really sturdy one so in here as well what this tool kits all about we've got a chain breaker so with this chain breaker the standard motion for motion pro toolkit you can break anything up to a 520 chain and you can refit rivet links with it it's an awesome little piece of piece of equipment if it's on with this piece it gives you the leverage you need to break the chain awesome cheeky little set of pliers really really good for electrical things plenty strong enough for cutting zip ties and tape and that kind of thing and they're really really small there's our quarter drive ratchet get a little snap on one a great little tool really strong snap on and lasts a long time and in there we've got a full complement of screwdriver pieces as well allen keys so between that we've got pretty much all the sizes of tool that we need KTM also required us to have a 17mm socket so we've got a little 3/8 drive adapter here with a 17 millet on it that's also made by motion Pro that little adapter so it fits straight onto a quarter drive tool it's really really nice and in here we also have a couple of other little sockets just go in here a few little stalks pieces that are really specific to the KTM so if you ride something else this is kind of where you need to change your tool kit up for yourself but you can totally get all these bits in court Drive and for the most part unless you're talking something that's like a bolt that's under like 18 Newton metres of torque you can do a huge amount with court Drive it's just a bunch of other little tools in there that aren't really too important this is another really really cool tool one Thai lever now with a little bit practice you can change a tire with one tire lever and something like a 17 milliner that's more than enough to change a tire that's modern to get a tubing and get yourself out of trouble another nice little tip and dak our bikes duct tape duct tape is awesome so we wrapped a little bit of duct tape around emotion Pro tire lever which also has a 27 mil spanner 27:24 something like that it's the same size as the rear spindle was on our bike now if you can't get one like this where the tire lever has the right sized spanner on the end of it you can also just buy a steel tire lever angle grind the end off and weld on the appropriate socket it works perfectly well it's really really useful to combine a tool like that it still gives you the leverage you need to get something like your rear wheel off or your front wheel out but in one tool tool like this is awesome because it can be zip tied on to the frame of your bike it can be put completely out of the way doesn't need to take up valuable space elsewhere the beauty of this motion Pro tool as well is it's made of aluminium so it is incredibly light it weighs no more than 200 grams it's not adding anything to your bike also I'll I quite like to carry a screwdriver so this one's double ended it covers a nice Phillips head and a flat blade it covers a lot of different parts on your bike zip ties again a really really essential tool depends on the bike you ride but I quite often zip tie these to the top of a fork leg two zip ties around the fork leg and you can fit 20 zip ties below that and other good places on your handlebars you always use it ties when you're traveling and when you're racing and having them to hand like that is really really nice and the last part of the toolkit I always carry you you need one of these is some form of multi-tool slash knife this one is taken from a moto hands a toolkit but any kind of any kind of knife like that is really really good quite often I again zip tie the holder for this somewhere really really accessible so like a good place would be on a fork leg or in the fairing somewhere something you'll be amazed how often you use this or having it accessible is really nice I think one of the big takeaways from doc our tool kits for me is that there are tools out there that will get the job done that you need to do they'll let you do your regular maintenance your oil changes and they'll let you solve all those problems that you have on the side of the track without taking up a third of your penny or half your Ponyo you don't need for kilos of tools especially if you don't have the mechanical know how to solve them the main things you need to be able to do you need to be able to change punctures fix chains and change your oil and air filler and if you can do those four things the likelihood apart from an electrical problem the likelihood of you needing to solve those things on the track in the middle of nowhere is pretty low so if you can get your bike apart and you can get it back together and you can change those four things there isn't a huge amount else that you need to be carrying one of the biggest mistakes I think people make with tool kits as well is that they carry way too many of the same tool this is a good example you only need one tie lever and a decent spanner to change a tire so I don't need to carry for massive tire levers for massive tire levers will weigh five kilos and by the time you add five kilos of this and five kilos of that you've added 25 kilos worth of tools to your panniers and it makes a huge difference to how your bike handles putting panniers on a loan makes a big difference to how your bike handles in a negative way and so does adding weight and if we don't need to add weight why would we so along with that and some zip ties and the tools that we have right here the only other things you need to add to your tool kit are two part metal it's a kind of chemical metal that can be used to solve incredible problems from broken engine cases to broken clutch perches and pretty much everything in between you can do everything that you can come up with in your mind using two-part metal and the last bit to add to your tool kit is just bike specific parts so maybe if you've got a really kind of complex oil filter you might need an oil filter removal tool and a few other little bits like that but otherwise I think this is a really good example of how to keep a tool kit small compact light and really really effective at the same time you've got any questions about other things you are unsure of with your tool kits whether its parts to carry or things that you need to know how to learn to do throw a comment down below we're going to be around in the comments all evening so you'll ask your questions and we'll do our best to solve them and otherwise remember guys life's better when you're writing

Channel: Brake Magazine

Views: 92,060

Keywords: Adventure Motorcycle, tool kits, Dakar Rally, Simon Pavey, Moto Hansa, MiniTip Monday, Brake Magazine, Adventure Bike

Id: m7uF7XxM83A

Length: 8min 47sec (527 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 15 2018