cyber.snow

I am putting together my first touring bike and as I gather up the parts and start building up my stamina, I was wondering what to carry in terms of bike maintenance. Currently I carry a small pouch on my road bike that contains:
spare tube
patch kit
allen wrench
tire changing tools
two bottles of CO2
CO2 Tire inflator

It may be adequate for a couple hour ride locally, but that doesn't seem to make much sense from a touring perspective.

It seems to me that I should probably be carrying different stuff. For instance, instead of the CO2 inflator and cartridges, a bike pump.

What else should I be including and where do I carry it? Do I buy a bigger bag to hang under the seat? On the handlebars? What stuff (bike repair related) should I be investing in?

Walter S

Bicycle Checklist, Bicycle Touring Checklist, Bicycle Camping Checklist

cyber.snow

That is a very impressive list and thank you, but do you really carry two pairs of pliers, crescent wrench, etc? For a 3-5 day road trip what do you really need to carry?

mulveyr 

Co2 is handy--until you have a bunch of flats and you don't have any more cartridges. I *always* have a pump with me when going out on any tour, be it one day or one week.

shipwreck

Thinking about my kit, from memory

Small park chain tool
Spare link
Allen wrenches to fit everything on bike
Fibre spoke
One spare nipple(needed one once, so what the heck) and a couple spokes to fit
cheap folding pliers(small, good for holding a one nut while tightening the other side, pulling glass or wire out of a tire)
wrenches taken out of multi tool that broke, just the two sizes I need
patch kit, one or two tire levers(depending on how hard the tires I am running are to get off)
couple of tubes(sometimes a size down to save a little room)
Philips head(on multi tool, I try to make sure that there is nothing on the bike that needs it, but sometimes another piece of gear has one. pannier clips and the like)
Spoke wrench
small Ziploc with some spare bolts and washers, not to many
Zip ties in a couple of sizes
one spare cable that on my bike can work for shifter or brake
Another thing I carry that is based on needing it once is a short section of tire liner, about five inches. The reason is once I had a flat from glass, and just could not seem to get all the little pieces out of the heavy duty flat resistant tire. Burned through two tubes and most of a patch kit before having to do the call of shame(I was almost home luckily)

For misc gear repair I wrap a few feet of upholstery thread around a hot glue stick, with a beefy needle stuck in it. Hot glue can be heated with a lighter or stove and do things like stick a broken tail light together for a while.
About two feet of high quality duct tape wrapped around itself, sometimes I will cut the paper out of the inside of an almost used up roll and flatten it(never actually used it)

All this is kept in a small bag in an outside pannier pocket, or in a container in a bottle cage if I am touring to light to use panniers.

I ride older bikes that I build out of equally old bits, so I like to carry enough tools to fix stuff, but keep it minimal. I welded a rail on my first Brooks at an auto shop where they found my predicament amusing enough that they let me use an old stick welder, then grind a wrench down enough to fit the tension bolt. Got to improvise and roll with it sometimes!

jeneralist 

I just added a cotton ball to my repair kit, at the suggestion of someone else on the group -- when you get a flat, run the cotton ball along the inside of the tire; it will visibly snag on any little bit of wire, etc, that has penetrated the tire. That way you can see it and correct it.

DaleW

I have a friend who carries a bike lock and bus fare card for an urban repair kit. Lock the bike up, take the bus home and come back with the car to pick up the bike. That's light!

I carry:

Park MT-1 multi-tool. It has enough length for good leverage on stuff like a seat bolt and weighs 1.6oz
Leatherman Skeletool CX pliers-based multi-tool with knife blade, screwdriver bits
Patch kit
New inner tube
Topeak MiniMasterBlaster tire pump
Zip ties
An old chunk of inner tube for shims, tire boot, rubber bands etc
Spare batteries
Road Wipe hand cleaner towelette
Rubber gloves
Small roll (hiking style) duct tape
Small vial chain oil

I have a small Park Tool CT-5 chain tool that is 2.5oz, but I don't carry it as a habit. I could see hauling chain stuff for remote trips and singletrack where you might wipe out a rear derailleur on a rock and you could rig for single-speed to get home. Drivetrains should be carefully inspected before any trip and well maintained. Chains usually give good warning before failure.

We tend to pack for fear and you have to reach some balance point of preparedness over weight and bulk. A local trip is a whole other thing than bikepacking Peru or or the Continental Divide Trail-- the difference being spare parts and the tools to use them. If you are going remote, I would be more concerned with having the classic hiking "ten essentials" and shoes I can walk out in. 20 miles in cleats wouldn't be fun!

Carry options: larger seat bag, handlebar bag, fanny pack, small backpack, messenger bag, rear rack and trunkbag/panniers.

My favorite urban combo du jour is a grocery style pannier on my rear rack with a backpack dropped in the pannier. I can haul my U lock on one side of the rack and the cable in the bottom of the pannier with the backpack. The advantage is in loading and unloading. Trunk bags are great, but having to load/unload them is a pain. The pannier is zip-tied in place to prevent casual theft and I can just pick up the backpack and go. If I end up hauling stuff (like groceries), I can still wear the backpack. That gives plenty of room for tools, spare clothing, camera, snacks, etc.

cyber.snow

I just ordered the leatherman, spare tubes, a decent patch kit and a decent pump from Amazon. I was out in the garage, selling my titus MTB and took off the tool pack to find that it is a Topeaka Survival Kit. Has a set of allen wrenches, a couple of wrenches (small and I mean small), a couple of patches and a chain tool along with the plastic tools for taking off the tire. Has anyone ever used this stuff? I have had it on my MTB since 2009 and never used anything but the allen wrenches and tire tools. I also found an allen wrench set that included a set of hex head wrenches and a chain tool. Is it better to use a "kit" or put one made up of individual tools?

How do you get a small vial of chain oil?

And the cotton ball idea makes a lot of sense as does the tie wraps, etc. My kit is growing. LOL

Also on a related topic, water bottles...hate the taste of warm plastic tainted water. Do they make a water bottle that is sturdier and made out of better plastic? I don't need a racing bottle that I will take a drink as I roll along at 30 MPH. Will probably stop for a minute and use the few minutes to stretch and take a drink. Or is that wimping out? LOL

Tourist in MSN

Disposable gloves like medical personnel use for messy repairs.
Two tubes.
Patch kit.
Tire levers.
All of the above is pretty easy to get to within a minute, it is in a ziplock bag.

Tire pump, either a Road Morph G or a Lezyne Micro Floor Drive pump with gauge. Sometimes in a pannier, sometimes on the frame, depends on how concerned I am about theft.

Spare spokes in the seatpost, held in place with a wine cork. The cork dried out and got loose so I had to wrap some electrical tape around it to keep it tight.

A multi-tool with bare minimum components, this one is in my pocket for quick access.

Some spare bolts threaded into a few extra spots on the frame where I store them, one of the bolts is a shoe cleat bolt.

The following is buried in the bottom of a pannier.
A multi tool that has a chain tool on it, some allen head wrenches and some normal wrenches, cone wrench.
Spare cables.
Spare chain quick link for my size chain.
Some lube.

I used to carry a cassette removal tool, but not sure if I will continue to carry that. Also had a short piece of (worn out) chain on a piece of cord to use as a chain whip with the cassette removal tool, and that also meant that I needed a crescent wrench too. I filed down two of the flats on the cassette tool to allow me to carry a smaller crescent wrench.

Varies slightly for each bike. On one of my bikes I need a 10mm open end wrench for a cantilever yoke. On another bike I need a T20 wrench.

You do not need any tools that you do not know how to use. I built up my bikes from the bare rims, so I know how to use all the tools I carry.

I whipped this out from memory, if I forgot something, I probably never needed it.

cyber.snow

Thanks all, I got a good list now and will put it all together. I noticed that my V85 has carbon or plastic spokes...can I mix metal with carbon spokes in an emergency or should I order some of the same type spokes? If I bust one, should I replace it or is there a situation where I wait until I bust more than one?....never broke one yet. Thanks again.

imi

Hah! That beats running your fingers round until you go "ouch!"

antokelly

brilliant idea
i would usually turn the tire inside out but the cotton ball idea is way better.and good as a firestarter at camp.

BigAura

Most types of oil are are available in 2oz size like this. I usually bring a a half full one to start.

Tourist in MSN

Chain oil - on my last tour I brought a bottle of bike lube oil in the manufacturers plastic bottle with a fold out nozzle on the cap. It was in a zip lock and to protect it from baggage handlers that would try to crush it inside of my baggage, had that inside of another plastic bottle.

It never got crushed by baggage handlers, but the lid leaked so bad that the oil even leaked out of the zip lock baggie. Fortunately it never leaked out of the other bottle.

In the future I will always put my lube bottles in a zip lock, and maybe some paper toweling in the ziplock to soak up any leakage. I have used the paper towel trick with my olive oil bottle for camp cooking.

If you buy the plastic squeeze bottles from REI to use for any oils, thread the lid on as tight as you can, otherwise they leak.

I have a half gallon of synthetic 75W140 gear lube in the garage for a truck that I no longer own. I have started using that as chain lube. Works pretty good. At the rate I am using it, I will run out when I am over 100 years old.

teacherlady

It depends on where you are going, how long you are going for, and how much of a purist you are! What you bring with you is not a simple question. It all depends.

In areas with a good density of bike shops or of bike tourists WITH BIKES LIKE YOURS, you don't need to carry as many spares as you do in the third world. If you are on roads, and are comfortable accepting a ride from a stranger, you don't need to carry as many spares. If the cost of an unrideable tire is a day or two waiting for FEDEX, you don't need a spare tire, but if the nearest decent tire is in another country, you need several boots and a spare tire. If there will be a bike shop in 10 miles, you just need a touring patch kit and maybe one spare tube (two tubes in goathead country), but if the next bike shop is a hundred miles away, carry that patch kit, more spare tubes, plus a lot of extra patches. (16 flats in 4 days, anybody? That's two people, four tires, and there were no repeats from the same puncture. Yes, we'll roll on different tires next time, but better tires were unobtanium. We resorted to Slime, which was displayed prominently in every single bike shop.)

If you are on a heavily traveled ACA route, or perhaps one of the Eurovelo routes, where traveling bike tourists are a regular part of the income stream, you _might_ get charged a significant amount for a onetime use of a too-heavy-to-bring-with tool. Most of our touring has been off those routes, and in most bike shops, the folks went way, way, way out of their way to help tourists. I'm not much of a mechanic, and I've gotten free repairs (that I would have been happy to pay for), discounted parts, and hours of route advice. In any of these shops, if all I needed was 5 minutes with a pedal wrench or a cassette removal tool, they would have given it to me with a smile, and all I would have paid would have been a few more stories told while I worked.

There is no one-size-fits-all-trips tool kit.

shipwreck

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I usually fill an empty eye drop bottle(like clear eyes or visine)with lube. I sort of judge how much I think I will need for the distance I am planning. For fast weekend trips with just a credit card or a hammock, I use a really tiny eye drop bottle from a family members prescription, enough for just one lube, if needed.

As to water bottles, I use camelback bottles, and the polar bottles. Never noticed a taste. There is also Kleen Kanteen, a stainless bottle. Its a little heavier, harder to drink out of, and I hardly use mine anymore. In the winter I use a thermos style bottle, like the hydro flask, filled with tea. It good to take a swig more often than you might want to stop, so at least one good bike bottle might be nice.