Eurobike 2017: Park Tool Reveal Trail Station And New Tools

As ever, Park Tool had a host of new tools on show at Eurobike, and they’re always helpfully marked with large “NEU” labels. It included chainwhips, presses, spanners, sockets, a tray, screwdrivers and, for when all else fails, hammers.

Most notable though was the THS-1 Trailhead Workstation, which they designed to house basic tools and a workstand at trailheads. In Europe though, they’ve observed that a lot of bike shops have areas set aside for customers to clean and fix their own bikes, probably to avert those conversations that go:

Customer: “Can I borrow [tool] for a minute?”

Mechanic: “F*** off!”

(I mean, we understand the mechanic in these cases, but it’s not great for a bike shop to have to say no to people).

The THS-1 consists of a workstand that your seatpost goes in, that can slide up and down on a rail. Below that are screwdrivers, a set of hex keys, a set of torx keys, various spanners, and a pair of burly metal tyre levers all cabled in.

Park tried to camouflage everything on their stand by painting it the same blue as their tools, but we’re too smart to fall for such ruses.

What you might have spotted in the picture above is this THS-1.

It moves up and down on this rail.

It also has basic repair tools cabled to it.

Including substantial metal tyre levers that should work on even the most stubborn wire bead tyres.

No RRP for this right now, but unless you run a bike shop or a trail centre, you’re probably better off with some of the items below.

Below is the BBT-30.4 bottom bracket tool, which is used to push BB30 bottom bracket bearings out of the shell. This latest version has been updated to work with PF30, EVO 386, BBright, and PF121.

BBT-30.4

There are also some new chainwhips, one designed to save space and double up as a pedal spanner, and others for singlespeed and 1 speed drivetrains.

The silver one is a new 15mm pedal spanner, and a 5 – 12 speed chainwhip.

The SR-18.2 is a chainwhip specifically for 1/8″ fixed gear sprokects, whereas the SR-12 below it is for 5 – 12 speed cassettes.

The shiniest tool on the Park stand was the BO-4 bottle opener, which as well as that has a foil cutter and corkscrew.

The BO-1 bottle opener.

It was difficult to get a good photo with the number of people around them at the time, but on show here are a few new things. The SKT-6 Flat Faced Socket Set has 24, 26, 27, 28, 30 and 32mm flat faced sockets for undoing top caps on most forks without damaging them. The SBS-1.2 and SBS-3 are sets of various sockets and hex driven bits.

SKT-6, SBS-1.2 and SBS-3

There are a few updates to Park’s torque wrenches too, with branded workshop torque wrenches in blue, should you want ones that match the rest of your park gear instead of whatever else you’ve been using – that said, the smaller one covers a much more useful torque range for mountain bikes compared to most automotive-derived torque wrenches. There’s also a new addition to their line of t-handle torque wrenches too. Before now Park have offered present ones, bit the ATD-1.2 can be set to five different presets from 4 to 6 newton-metres.

The TW-5.2 has a torque range of 2-14 Nm, whereas the larger TW-6.2 covers10-60Nm.

The ADT-1.2 (left) has five presets between 4 and 6Nm.

The DSD-4 and DSD-2 are apparently precision made screwdrivers especially for derailleurs. In the latter case, “built to exceed JIS standards”.

Park have done a spanner set before, but the new MWR-SET has ratcheting ends too.

The TRY-1 is a tray for “parts or beverages”. Be careful not to get tyre sealant in your mojito.

For subtle fixes, the HMR-1 and HMR-2 each have a fibreglass shaft, a ground steel striking face, and a replaceable nylon face too (if you use either of these with the TRY-1, you could really annoy someone too).

David Hayward

David started mountain biking in the 90’s, by which he means “Ineptly jumping a Saracen Kili Racer off anything available in a nearby industrial estate”. After growing up and living in some extremely flat places, David moved to Yorkshire specifically for the mountain biking. This felt like a horrible mistake at first, because the hills are so steep, but you get used to them pretty quickly. Previously, David trifled with road and BMX, but mountain bikes always won. He’s most at peace battering down a rough trail, quietly fixing everything that does to a bike, or trying to figure out if that one click of compression damping has made things marginally better or worse. The inept jumping continues to this day.