Pro Bicycle Mechanic Tool Wall Setup – Secrets from Britain’s Best

A behind the scenes look at the meticulously organized tool wall of Nic, BikeBiz’s Mechanic of the Year 2025.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joshreids
Strava: https://www.strava.com/athletes/reid_josh
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/joshreid

🎥 FILM MAKING GEAR:
• Canon EOS R6 Mark II (https://www.canon.co.uk/cameras/eos-r6-mark-ii/)
• Insta360 X5 (https://www.insta360.com/sal/x5?utm_term=INRV1YZ)
• Insta360 Ace Pro 2 (https://www.insta360.com/sal/ace-pro-2?utm_term=INRV1YZ)

🚲 MY BIKE:
• Giant Revolt X (https://www.giant-bicycles.com/gb/revolt-x-advanced-pro-0)

Checkout my favourite anti-chafe products here http://chamoisbuttr.com/

If you enjoy the content and want to help me in the process I’ve set up a buy me a coffee page, a virtual tip jar.

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/JoshReid

The music I use is from Artlist – https://artlist.io/Josh-1285195

Big thanks to the following companies who support me in my endeavours:
Giant Bicycles,
Restrap,
Enduro Bearings,
Clif Bar,
Redshift,
Chamois Butt’r,
Hutchinson Tyres,
Café Du Cycliste,
Insta360,
Exposure Lights

That is actually really good if you are a mobile mechanic. Balt cutters. Imagine there’s a cable inside it. Bike washing brushes cuz I like washing bikes. I know loads of people wouldn’t really be interested in that, but this is god tier mechanic of the year voted by you lovely people. So, thank you so much. So, now that I’m switching to riding in winter, the salty roads and things, um I’ll be washing my bike every single day after every single ride. You know how you’re now? Yeah. The universe’s best mechanic. The universe. Do you still wash bikes? [Music] How do you like my new tool? It’s not 100% complete yet. It’s not perfect. I did rush it, but uh I’m slowly but surely working through all the stuff. Um, things to still do is I started heat shrinking the bolts. So, like if you look at these over here, there’s like a little heat shrink on there. Uh, I’ve been using my tools out of a box. So, I just thought, you know, it’s about time that I actually display them. Make it easy for me to use. So, yeah. Um, do you want to give us a a run through? A run through. There’s so many. I don’t Where do I start? Okay. My number one favorite tool. That’s my axe. It’s back again. Carbon bikes. Good little tool to get the bottom rackets in and out. Um I’ve actually bought scales cuz everybody keeps hassling me about how much do the damn bikes weigh. I don’t care how much bike how much the bikes weigh cuz it doesn’t matter. But now we’ve got scales. Um enduro bearing tools is arguably the main one. That’s what we do the most work with is like hubs, bottom brackets, headsets, and things like that. But the problem’s always been that how to use it easily because you need to use a combination of all the tools. So, my linear presses over here, but then I need my blind pullers and I’ve got extraction tools, countback tools, bottom bucket tools, greases, my different size punches. So, I’ve just decided to kind of nicely 3D print displays and thank you to them actually for that cuz they designed the 3D printed things. is I I’m trying to convince them to actually just list the files on the website so people can just download and print. Nipex nipex makes the best cutters in the world. They make really good circular pliers as well. So cir pliers are these. Um you use them I don’t even know how to explain this actually. A circlip take circlip out of free up bodies most of the time. Um cable cutters. I use those for cables. Uh, I use side cutters for hoses usually, but for side cutters I’m using to peique ones. Um, moving over, this is a very niche tool from wheels manufacturing. Uh, it’s to measure the thread on your through axles. So, you’ve got this side where you can unscrew and then see what thread pitch it is or go the other way. Look on this side. So, that is an M12x1 if I’m not mistaken. We can double check. Doesn’t thread in. Yes, that’s control one. Like I say, very niche, very geeky. I don’t know if anybody’s going to want to watch this video, but yeah, that’s quite cool. Uh they do a more basic version of it as well, which is just like a little ruler, and it works in the same principle, except what you would do is you’d find what you guess it to be, which is going to be 1 mil, and then just see if it fits in or not. And then base of that you can kind of work it out. Um, next to that I’ve got uh piston spreader from Jaguar. Just good to have obviously whenever you take your wheel out uh when you’ve been traveling when you change brake pads you need to always push your pistons back. Shr makes a specific one for their pads but obviously on normal pads and everything else that’s a really good bit of kit. Uh this is the shrine version and that just pops in and you can kind of you thread it. We’ve done it in quite a few of your videos. There’s footage of this um over to the side below that cable routting. So this is just for internal cable routting. There different variations. That one is for the new DI2. So you just clip the um electronic cable into there. Got ones for brake hoses. Uh there’s one that’s just like a guide that you can put a gear eight outers in. There’s one where you can actually this bit you can connect two gear hoses or brake hoses together and then pull it through. Um so yeah, this is for uh inserting barbs into Shimano Mura and most of the brake hose out there. Camp bag as well. Uh Shramm’s the only one where you thread it in. That’s quite a bit good bit of kit. Pops in there. Lock it into place. Push it in and it’s out. Even has like little adaps over there where you can open the hose up a little bit. to make it easier to get the bar in. Uh, disc brake hose cutters. Uh, always, always, always buy a good disc brake hose cutter purely for the fact that you, um, you need to cut it clean. If you cut it skew, your brakes are going to leak eventually. Next to that, uh, spling pliers. So, this one you can set to remove them or to fit them. Um, hose cutters, crimping tool, so you can crimp your gear cable in there. bleed kit. So that’s uh dot fluid and mineral oil. You cannot mix the two. If you put dot fluid into mineral oil system, your brakes are gone and vice versa. So you have to have two separate ones. But these are quite good because they essentially give you all little adapters for different styles of brakes. Uh this is for shrine as well. So you’ve got your salma jig uh adapters. Just a good bit of kit. Um they do weigh out in the workshop. We use them. So with these, you can buy all the spares individually. That’s what I like about them. So you don’t have to buy a whole new kit every time. You just essentially top up the individual parts. I don’t know why Shimano hasn’t done this or park tool anybody else. But they’ve made an actual stand for the bleed parts. Another cool thing about this is it’s got little edges, so when you pour it out, you can pull precisely. And on top of that, this little gadget just hooks onto the side. So you don’t have to lean it sideways and pops back in and stops your fluid from flowing. It just goes on there. Sounds silly, but that’s just really clever. Like a normal screwdriver is very straightforward. These are quite good. Um, that’s just a a 3M. And then I’ve got a 2.5 mil Allen key. So, it’s just for adjusting uh limit screws on derailers. Um, Allen keys, hex keys, self-explanatory. Uh, also very unnecessary, but I love it. A zip tie, flush cutters. You put it together, when you cut it, it’s perfectly perfectly flush. A lot of modern pedals use 6 mil and 8 mil Allen keys, and that’s attached on the bottom as well. So, you’ve got your 6 mill and your 8 mil. And you can also do stuff at an angle, and obviously when you need extra leverage. The big thing for me with tools nowadays are a lot of companies, Pedro make, Pedras for instance, make excellent tools, but they make them for mobile mechanics. So, if you are mobile, that’s excellent cuz they’re flat and they fit into your tool boxes and things like that really easy and take up all the space. But ergonomically, when you start putting loads of force through, it hurts your hands a lot more and you can’t do stuff. Where in this shop, I’m not traveling with my tools. All I want is things to have good handles so that it feels good when I use it. So, everything for me is ergonomics. Um, the actual how light it is or how competent it packs down doesn’t mean anything. I need it to to feel nice in the hand. Um, this is a new tool from Topi as well. I’ve had the Abby one before, but this one is a lot more affordable. So, it does the same thing, make hanger alignment tool. So, that pulls out. Um, and then all you do is pull that out, stick it through, and then you can check if your rear rail is aligned. Um, what it also does is you’ve got this adapter that comes included with it that screws into your uh, headset top cap and then you can see if your levers are aligned or not. Um, everyone’s good, but this one’s better in my opinion cuz the thread is shorter. So, it doesn’t take me like 4 hours of screwing it in. Um, so yeah, I like that cassette chromi. And for uh disc brake roing, that’s a 40 Newtonm torque wrench built into the actual tool, which is quite good cuz it just means that when you get up to torque, it just clicks. So you don’t have to guess if you’ve talked at all. You don’t have to tighten and get a torque wrench. I set it up to 14 Newton meters to check it every time. Cuz it’s something you do in a bike shop quite often. Uh chain whip. Nothing special about that. Uh top tip for this one that I’ve seen few people do is I haven’t done it yet. It’s new, but attach magnets to it. So then essentially when you wrap it around the cassette, it’ll stay there. It won’t just flop off. Spanners. This one is actually my favorite for brake hoses, but unfortunately doesn’t work in the shr. But that’s a ratchet spanninner that after I’ve tightened the brake hose up, I can slide it off, spin this around, keep spinning it until it’s open again, and then take it off the hose. Where if I use this one for instance, after I’ve tightened the hose on, I spend that stuck on the hose. So I can’t use that. So that’s just slightly better. But yeah, that’s just off eBay. I think my only annoyance is that it’s hanging skew. So I’m going to have to put another bolt in there somewhere to kind of get a tank straight. It’s killing my OCD. This is a headset press. So similar concept to the linear press, but obviously your different headset cup sizes. That is actually really good if you are a mobile mechanic because most headset presses are massive. If you look at the partial one, the Pedro’s one union where that one is really small. Actually works really well. Compact on really small. You can take all of these arms off and then put it into a little bag that it comes in. Um but saying that ergonomically it works just as well. So this is the dream where it’s ergonomically good but also really light. Um slide hammer. Shown you that earlier. Blind bearing pullers. This is a pedal dummy. Uh, Endura’s actually made a new one. This is the old one, but I just like it because it’s big. That’s the new one, which is probably makes more sense, but I just love it. It’s like a fidget spinner. It’s really dirty at the moment, though. I need to get used to where all the tools go on the wall now since I’ve moved everything around. Torx keys for tea bars, hex keys, tea bars. In my own videos, loads of people give me grief for using multi-tools. I love a multi-tool. ergonomic. These are excellent, but that’s just for loads of stuff. Makes a lot more sense. This is something I never used before. When you hold stuff in, you can just hold it there and it’s easy to spin. Like again, this is a theme is going to be throughout the entire video. For me, the number one important thing is ergonomics. How it feels in my hand cuz I’m doing this all day long. It’s not just you can’t don’t want to go and get your 5 mil out on every single job. Oh, I need a four. Put that back out. Get a four. So, these are good to have, but you always buy them after getting a good multi-tool. These are just drifts. I wouldn’t worry about them too much, but that’s just putting bearings in and out. So, you get ones that sits in the bearing, and then you get ones that sit over the bearing. I’ve got hundreds more of these, but these are the most common ones that I’ve displayed over here cuz I don’t have a lot of space. So, the rest of them is just going to go in drawers and in boxes. You get bottom brackets. There’s every possibilities how many notches it has and then the size. You’ve got inserts inside which is going to be 22 mil, 24 mil uh dub which is roughly 29 and then also BB30. But the problem is then you end up with loads. So I’ve got these ones and then if you move back I have another drawer full of BB tools for different sizes. Some of them are quite clever where they’ve got like shims that go over. So this one goes over there. So you can actually make it thinner or like 30 mil versus 24 mil. What Endura’s done with the new ones are they made all the different cups. So that’s 46 x 12, but if I want to run it with a 24 mil BB like Shimano, I pop that in and then it’s 24 mil. And the the the importance of this is just to stop it from not just you can use it without but it’ll just like essentially rock off especially not with T47 where the lip of the outside of the BB is really small but if I’m doing that with a DBB pop that one in or if I’m doing 3 mil pop that one in. And then lastly, if I’m using something that is 22 or a strange size like some of the FSA ones, Sham GXP, I can just go old school and then all it is is just the outer ring. So, it doesn’t matter what the inside is. Um, so yeah, whatever. There will be more sizes it doesn’t cover, but that’s to do all their bottom brackets and the main ones are covered by this. Uh, this is a very niche tool that we don’t get to use it often, but that’s to take compolo bottom bracket bearings off the crank set. So, it hooks over the bearing that goes into the axle and then push that in and it pulls the bearing off. Very good bit of kit. Um, this is another really niche tool that’s for Canondell uh holotech cranks. So when you buy the Canondell tool, you just get a little nut and you get a little thing like this and you thread that in. Then you thread this in and you thread them back against each other and it pulls the cranks off the thing where this they’ve just made it into one tool. So that just pops in. Screw it in as far as I can. Then that goes in. Screw that in until it’s tight. Screw this one back and it pulls the crank off the thing. This is going to be gibberish for a lot of people, but I suppose you guys asked for the video, so we’re making it. Um, nobody washes this. It’s not my fault. The BRT040 from Enduro. So, it’s like a bottom bracket and hub tool kit. So, that’s just a series of cups to put bottom bracket and hub bearings in and out of uh bikes and wheels um that goes with it as well. So, you’ve got different um it’s a bit more complex of a tool kit and I’m going to make a separate video actually just showing people how to use that. But, yeah, it’s really good. Uh these are just normal bottom bracket cup tools as well, but you can use them on lock rings. Uh punches. What makes these punches really nice is they’re actually made in specific sizes. So you’re not just punching around. That drops in. That’s for 15 mil bearing in internal diameter 17 mil, 18 mil, 20 mil. It goes all the way down to 8 mil. Um specific greases. Uh won’t go into depth with that. I know everybody’s asking for grease videos, but they’re not getting it. Um, Abby, uh, they make a really good, this is a stereo cutting tool or guide. So, what’s nice about this is that especially for the newly internal rooted cables on bikes, you can actually cut the steer on the bike without taking everything out cuz it just slides on, tightens up. Downside to this tool is that it’ll only only work in a 1 and 1/8 steer. So, if you’ve got your giant one and a quarter, you stand no chance it doesn’t work on that. But it’s a very good bit of kit. Um, that’s a chain checker. Uh, does a normal thing. Check your chain stretch. They call it stretch, but it’s not actually stretch, but the wear, but also measures lateral play because some of the new chains last really long. And if you’re not putting loads of power out eventually from shifting your chain wears out, not from stretching or raining down. So, it starts flexing too much and affects your shifting. So, it’s quite a good tool for that. Um these are via it’s Chris King specific tools that’s just servicing Chris King hubs. Um that’s quite good just essentially bottom brackets out tool to let your thumb strength. No, no, the electronic one is for thumb strength. We can get into that. We’ll do that next. Actually, this is like manual. There’s no tool in it. I should use it. Obviously a spread level, a a scale saw, my big spanner, um, which actually I have used in a few bikes, my axe, my wheel jig. Um, so yeah. Uh, then I’ve got loads of tools. I’ve got drawers and drawers and drawers for tools and power tools and heat guns and things in there. But torque wrenches. This tool is mainly used Let’s check your thumb strength. Not really, but it is a fun it is a fun trick. So, the idea of it is is that it works from 4 to 80 Newton meters. This one you get one’s different strength, but as a joke in the shop, we try and see who’s got strongest thumbs. So, for that’s for instance 4 Newton meters and the rules are you have to hold the tool in one hand. Nothing else is only a hand can touch the tool. How it works is measures torque essentially over there and then see how much torque you can put through and then go higher and higher and see who’s got the strongest hands. What’s your record? 12.2. So yeah, see if somebody can do more than 12.2. I can’t do it anymore though. I think my hands have gotten softer. I think it’s from I actually think it’s from years and years of fitting tires that they got stronger. But now that all the wheels are set standard, everything’s becoming a lot easier to do. Let’s try for 10. It’s 10. Oh, 11.5. So, yeah. Um, everybody go out, buy yourself talkr, digital torque wrench, and then comment below. We want photos, though. If you’re saying a higher number than 12.2, I want a photo. Actually, I want a video of it happening to make sure you haven’t cheated. I’ve got a smaller torque wrench that I use for um got all the bits and things on just for something that’s a bit more precise like seat post bolts, stem bolts. Um yeah, nice about this one. It’s also digital, but does quite a clever thing. So you set it. So for instance, eight for most uh shr brake hoses, but this one uh don’t know if I can show it like this actually. That one ramps up closer and closer to where it’s going. And then when you get close to your final torque, it starts beeping beep and the beeps get louder until it like does a really loud alarm telling you. But it just get let you know how close you’re getting. Cuz I think the worst thing over years as a mechanic is that you put a torque wrench in something and some days things just feel like you’re already at the torque, but you’re not sure. And then you start doubting the torque range and you start getting worried about, are you going to snap this bolt off? So yeah, that one’s quite nice cuz it just slowly ramps up. Um, and then all the bits is quite nice. So that just pops up like that. And then color coded again. Disc brake mount facing tools from VR. This one’s quite clever because it’s it actually faces both sides at the same time. I’ve considered like taking everything off the walls. So like all of this and then just building the tool all the way around. That’ll be ridiculous. New chain breaker tool from Topi. This is god tier in terms of tools. It’s just so much easier to use. So, works from single speed all the way up to 13 speed. Locks your chain in place so you’re not guessing when you’re doing stuff. Uh, I’ll show you as an example. So, all you do is clip it in and then it’s just there. So, it can’t move. You can’t miss the exact spot to drive it through. If you’re doing compact and you want to prein it, you just push that button, pushes it over, and you can do all your preing with it as well. It’s got spare pins at the bottom. But saying that, with my previous Topeka one that I used for 5 years, I’ve never had to replace a pin. What is your most used tool? Multi tool X combo. What’s What is your go-to? What is the multi tool that you use? Uh, I use a Topi one. Uh, this is all There’s loads of good ones. Park Tool makes a good one. Uh the Pedra’s one’s really good as well. I like the Topic one because of the colors, so I’m not guessing. I instantly know what I’m using. The other thing with this is that I’ve got big hands compared to yours. And because it’s bigger, it’s just ergonomically it just feels better. Um just works really well. I do a thing with all my uh multi-tools. I loosen off the bolts slightly just to make all the tools move around quite easily. Uh some people don’t like that, but yeah, for me it just works better. Um, this one also has a key 8 mm um, bit which is quite good for quite a lot of new stuff. The new shrm UDH’s for crank bolts um, some crank bolts for some um, pedals. So yeah, I just that’s one I like. I like washing bikes. It’s one job that I actually enjoy. Uh, unless a bike’s like after being not being looked after. Um, but yeah, it’s therapeutic. Did you get this color of bike preemptively for your award? Cuz the same color. Yeah. No, it just pure. Yeah. The universe. It’s all worked out like that. Hold on. I need my degreasers behind you. [Music]