Hi all, I was hoping someone might be able to provide me with a list of normal and specialty tools used in fixing up bicycles? Thank you

With such an ambiguous question its hard to answer. Look at the Park Tool website and you will see all the common and speciality tools necessary to work on a bike.

It really depends on what bikes you plan to work on, particularly if you want to work on older bikes. I have a drawer full of just bottom bracket tools, and a drawer of various freewheel and cassette tools, and a third drawer of just crank pullers (OK, that drawer is smaller than the others). And I do not have every tool for sure. Now if I just worked on modern bikes, I would not need at least half the tools I own.

Best bet is to acquire just the tools you need for your current bike(s), and then add to them as you go. Common tools: a good chain tool, a good cable cutter, a set of cone wrenches, freewheel and cassette tools, crank tool, bottom bracket tool(s), allen wrenches, spoke wrenches, pin spanners, chain whip. How far you go and how much you spend depends on your budget and the amount you plan to work on bikes. And consider USED tools, about 90% of my tools were bought used.

Bicycle fixing tools: chain whip and lockring spanner.

Ha.

depends on what you work on. the work provided tool box(~30in wide and deep, waist height) is full and i am ordering more tools next week.

Go to Park Tools website, order one of each.

You do not need everything. But you didn't tell us what vintage of bike you have or what it's got on it for parts.

What you want to do is go to www.parktool.com/repair and look at all your specialty areas. Those being the wheel hubs, steering headset and stem and bottom bracket. Each of these areas has a wide variety in the design of parts used at various quality levels and ages. The "how to work on..." descriptions will tell you which tools you need to work on the type of each assembly you have.

LAter, as you get newer or higher level parts or get a different bike and find that you need another tool just look up that part on the same website and it'll show and tell you which tool you need for that one.

Other than this specialty stuff you'll need the following general tools;

• Metric allen key set from small to up around 10mm.
• Metric combination wrenches from 6mm to 19mm
• Pliers of various types. I suggest channel lock, large and small needle nose, slip joint and a set of the big electrician's combination pliers, a set of side cutters commonly called "****s" and which ever other pliers you find you like the shape and color of
• A GOOD quality Phillips screwdriver in #1, 2 and 3 sizes.
• Hammer, plastic and rubber mallets.

Thanks, i guess just tools to fix common problems that would come up on older road and mounatin bikes

There's enough different "common problems" that you'd still need a wide variety of tools.

Starting tools would definitely be-
Allen wrenches
Combination wrenches
Spoke wrench.
A couple cone wrenches that fit YOUR bike. You can add other sizes as needed.
Assorted screw drivers.
I sometimes find a small (good quality) magnifying glass handy for inspecting small parts, but I don't have great eyes.

As suggested, look at the Park website to see what repairs/maintenance you plan on doing first and get those tools.

Older bikes have specialty tools but it really depends on the bike, part manufacturer and vintage, like freewheel tools, crank removers, chain tools....

One of the things I like about Zinn's bike maintenance books (there are road and mountain bike versions) are that he shows and lists the tool sets needed for basic on up to very advanced repairs and maintenance. Check out or buy one of his books ("Zinn and the art of ...") and you'll get a good idea of how frequently the different tools are used as well as what exactly they're used for.

It still depends on what components are on your bikes. There is no one pat list. For example just the rear wheel gearing can be either a freewheel or freehub. The freewheel is a whole replaceable part with sprockets and one way drive that screws onto the wheel. The freehub system leaves the ratcheting freewheeling device on the hub but you change out the sprocket cluster when worn. Each requires a different type of tool to change them. But it gets better.... If you are working on a bike that uses a freeWHEEL setup there's at least 4 different freewheel specialty tools you need depending on what brand of freewheel is involved.

It goes on like this for the rest of all the parts mentioned. YOU MUST GO TO THE PARK WEBSITE AND FIND WHAT YOUR BIKES HAVE ON THEM AND BUY THE TOOLS THAT ARE MENTIONED ! ! ! ! We can't help you on this front other than to say "buy one of everything".

A big part of this will be determining from inspecting YOUR bike(s) and comparing them to the various identification pictures to find out what YOUR bikes are using for wheelhubs, headsets and bottom brackets.

The only thing I can say for sure is that it's worth buying their thin 15mm pedal wrench since that is a universal size for mountain and road bike pedals... mostly

It's best to buy tools as you need them rather than buy everything in one go. As long as you have a set of metric allen keys, metric spanners and some screwdrivers you can do most basic adjustment work. When a job presents itself, you can then see what tools are required and buy them then. For instance, different bottom brackets require different tools. A 1-piece BB can be worked on with only a large spanner, and an older 3-piece needs only a hammer and punch or appropriate C-spanner to undo the lock ring.

I've found that my regular 15mm spanner is thin enough to be used for pedals.

Just do it. You'll be fine.

You don't need to spend a ton of money to tool up to work on bikes. You'll be surprised at how far just a 5mm allen wrench will take you. Just jump in and only specialty tools as you have the need and can't think up a work-around. I've got a pretty complete set today, but that's all that I ever did.

Some of the common bike repair books have lists of tools in the first chapter. Two that come to mind that should be available used and cheap, are "Anybody's Bike Book" by the (deceased) Tom Cuthbertson. This is what many of us cut our teeth on in the '70s. More recently, there's "Zinn and the Art of Road Bike Maintainance" by Lennard Zinn, which is a modern book, but (especially in its first edition) covers vintage bike technologies well. One thing that's different from the '70s to to today is that a torque wrench is more important to own today. With vintage bikes it's possible to wreck parts that will be hard to replace if you overtighten bolts. Correct torquing will help to avoid that expense and hassle. It's worth the price of the torque wrench. Both Zinn and Cuthbertson give you a basic and advanced tool kit list.

"Anybody's Bike Book" I wonder what ever happened to my old grease stained copy. I wish that I still had it.

Thanks for the memory.

Define "older". Some people would consider a bike "old" if it was 5 years old, others wouldn't until it was 25 years old.

And what country are you in? If you're in the UK, I can recommend some suppliers.

Define "normal".

My favorite tool this colder time of the year...a really strong, telescoping magnet! I'm always dropping some bearing or screw! I was De-rusting a brifter on my Hard Rock the other day and dropped that really little screw that holds the back of the thumb lever on! 50 screwdrivers....no screw! I grabbed my magnet and found that screw 2 minutes later! All was fixed and shifting like new again in 10 minutes!

Screwdriver, 6, 10, 15" adjustable wrenches, cone wrenches, metric sockets, 8/9/10 y wrench, spoke wrench, metric allen wrenches. With those tools and the proper knowledge you could probably do 95% of repairs typically needed.
...and that's the key. If you had the knowledge to do all the routine repairs you would know which tools you need. As you don't, all the tools in the world will not help you. Even following instructions (written or video) won't help if you don't understand why you are doing something, how it should feel when it's right, what to look for when it's wrong, etc.

My advice is to start doing only those things you can do with a screwdriver, allen wrench or y wrench, and do them carefully, after you havce studied how the entire system (brake, drive train, wheel) works together. As for specialty tools - don't even think about it yet. You don't have the experience to need them.

Perhaps you think me harsh, but in fact you will find that almost everyone started the way I am suggesting - with the exception of studying how the systems on a bike work - that gives you a huge leg up.

..I would add a dead-blow, plastic faced hammer as an indispensible tool, but knowing when to use it is more important.

I'd second this. I found most of what I needed to do was stuff I already had the tools for, I had a set of allen keys, a couple of spanners and a drawful of screwdrivers. I'd been cycling for two years before I needed anything else.

Since then I've added a lockring removal tool, chain extension gauge, chain whip and chain tool to my collection, and also bought a multi tool to use on the road if I need it (and so far all I've used it for out on the road is to adjust my saddle and tighten a friend's stem bolts). There are still bucketloads of tools I could own but don't, on the basis I've never needed them.

As stated above, a good set of metric allen keys, wrenches and a good set of screwdrivers along with cleaners, lubes and plenty of rags will take you pretty far.

You definetly need cone wrenches! I always redo the bearings on all of the bikes that make it to my stands. Also a head wrench. Sometimes a loose head nut is all that was stopping my bikes from being ridden! Allen wrenches for adjusting your brakes and working on some shifters/brifters.
A long #1 philips head screw driver for adjusting your front and rear derailleurs and your brakes, too. Standard and metric wrenches. As you do more and more work on your bikes you will figure out that you will need duplicates of some of your cone wrenches and some of your regular wrenches. I just missed another work stand with some tools. It was on CL for maybe 20 minutes! Also, I use Park Tools "Big Blue Book".

+1 to both. I'm a bike newb so I don't (yet) know all the tools you need to work on a bike.

However, one of my hobbies is working on cars and I'll give you a little advice from what I've learned over the years that pretty much applies to anything mechanical:

Start with the tools you have. 70% of the work you'll want to do can be accomplished with general purpose tools.

When you get stuck, buy the specialty tool you need to get accomplish the task at hand. Eventually you'll have all the tools you need and you'll never buy something that someone else said you needed but didn't really. Also, your wallet (and/or your spouse) will be much happier because you didn't blow a bunch of money in one shot.

I don't know where you live, but most larger towns have bike shops that teach a maintenance class. I took one about five years ago and it was the best thing I could do. Taught me all about maintenance on my bikes and gave me an idea of what tools I needed. I now have a full tool kit and work on bikes as a hobby and enjoy doing it. You could sell one once in awhile to pay for your tools

When you say "fixing up bicycles" do you mean you want to make a hobby of repairing/refurbishing multiple bicycles a year, or just maintaining a bike or two for your own use? The reason I ask is that you can easily get hundreds or even thousands of dollars invested in tools but the many of them will only be used once or twice on a given bike. Most mechanically inclined individuals will come out ahead getting the tools needed for annual or more frequent maintenance such as metric allen wrenches, metric combination wrenches, cable cutter, screw drivers, chain tool, tire levers, spoke tool, and a set of cone wrenches. Sometimes, you can also break even or come out ahead buying a tool to do a job yourself even if you won't use it often. For example, my LBS charges $15 to replace a bottom bracket or I can buy a bottom bracket tool for about $15. If I own just one bike, I'm likely to only need to replace the bottom bracket once in several years, but even if I only use the tool twice, I still come out ahead. If I and/or my family own several bikes it's a no-brainer. I'm on a fairly tight budget so my rule of thumb has been if the cost of the tool(s) required to complete a job exceeds the cost of having the LBS do that job x the number of times I expect the job to be done in the next 5 years, I let the LBS do the work.

No trying to restart a long-standing debate (plenty of threads on it already) but in my opinion it is a good investment to purchase a decent quality home work stand like the Park PC-9 or PC-10. Not necessary for occassional maintenance but makes working on bikes a real joy.