Tried and tested by the Singletrack Crew, gear to help you survive a day in the hills – or the workshop.
Granite Design Quiver Tool Roll
- Price: £34.95
- From: Windwave
- Tested by: Benji for 4 months
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This is marketed as a next generation saddlebag, but I’ve not used as such because… well, as a mountain biker, having something on the underside of your saddle is just a bad idea. As well as just sitting in the firing line of all the filth that gets flung off your rear tyre, anything hanging off your saddle is just going to get in the way when you’re wrestling your undercarriage and leg-based clothing around that part of the bike. The Quiver is a tool-roll-style wrap (provide your own contents) that holds itself together via a section of Velcro and is further cinched – and attached to a bike – via a strings-and-clicky-dial arrangement. It’s made from a splashproof fabric which, combined with the fold-down top flap, does a decent job of keeping the contents away from wet and muck. The Quiver is fairly CO2 specific; you’re not going to get a (decent) pump and (butyl) inner tube in it. I have placed this Quiver pretty much anywhere and everywhere on a bike. I’ve had it strapped to the head tube sides of skinny tubed steel machines. I’ve had it on the top-rear of heavily tapered top tubes. And, perhaps most frequently, I’ve had it mounted on top the down tube immediately behind the head tube. I’ve not encountered a bike that it won’t fit on. It does everything it needs to do, with an impressive lack of bulk or faff.
Grayle Ultrapress
- Price: £90.00 (500ml)
- From: Unicorn Inc.
- Tested by: The Family Haworth for 3 months
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This filters water via a cafetiere style plunge design. Remove the inner, fill the outer bottle with stream water, re-insert inner, plunge it down, the purified water comes up through the filter and there you go. This is something of a niche product admittedly but one that I think can improve some people’s lives a little: essentially anyone who has a strong aversion to backpacks and/or hydration bladders, and not necessarily just when mountain biking. Indeed, I’ve mostly used this on family hikes instead of lugging a 3L bladder around. But it also works on longer-than-one-bottle duration bike rides, provided your bike frame can accept its 247 x 75mm dimensions. There’s an undeniable novelty value to it as well, which really helps encourage people to actually hydrate properly (namely, me). The replaceable purifier cartridge should last until at least 150 litres has passed through (once ‘press time’ reaches 25 seconds or so). So far, the purified water tastes fine and no one has got dysentery. Win/win.
Juice Lubes Hand Juice Hand Cleaner
- Price: £8.99 (500ml)
- From: Juice Lubes
- Tested by: STW Staff for over a year or so
If you’re a mountain biker, you have a certain type of grime on your hands occasionally/permanently. Chain oil, drivetrain gunk, grease, tyre sealant, general soil, blood… That sort of thing. Regular domestic hand soap often doesn’t cut it. That’s when an exfoliating scrub comes in handy, literally. This Hand Juice has a lot going for it. First of all, it works. Your skin becomes skin coloured again. Bike-staining be gone! It smells pleasant, not like insect spray as other ‘garage’ hand cleaners can do. It’s a jolly colour and the packaging/label doesn’t look out of place in a kitchen (somehow more domestically acceptable than having a pot of Swarfega behind the sink). It doesn’t leave your hands totally stripped of natural oils and feeling dry. And Hand Juice does as little harm as possible to the planet. The tiny particles that do the exfoliating are made from walnut shell. The goop is biodegradable. And the packaging, while plastic, is at least recyclable.
Madison DTE 3-Layer Waterproof Jacket
- Price: £199.99
- From: Madison
- Tested by: Aran Francis for 3 months
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This jacket is thick and tough. While this does make for impressive wind and rain protection, it’s also pretty chunky. Stiff fabric means that the fit of the garment needs to be spot-on. My only real issue with this coat was the sizing. I’m not a particularly big bloke, despite some valiant efforts at the gym, yet this medium I would say came up a bit tight. If you’re on the fence between sizes, definitely size up. The hood does not fit over a helmet without making the jacket overly and uncomfortably taut, so you can’t turn your head, and it’s too bulky to fit comfortably under a helmet (Hannah found the same with the women’s jacket, so this doesn’t seem to be a sizing issue).
Wet rides for me almost always involve a crash. The thick fabric used on the DTE is not only good weather protection, but it is tough and has a good deal of ‘ground resistance’. It’s not the most breathable of fabrics but that’s the trade-off for high levels of durability and protection. When it comes to pockets, I am a big fan of the size of them on this coat; if you are wanting to stow something like a pair of goggles in these pockets it means no awkward shimmying to get them in – though before you fill your pockets too much, remember they also act as vents, which you may want to open, especially on climbs. The thickness of the fabric makes for a warm and dry ride, even with just a jersey underneath.
Hiplok D1000 D-Lock
- Price: £249.99
- From: Hiplok
- Tested by: Aran Francis for 3 months
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Any form of bike lock is breakable by a determined thief. The role of a bike lock is to make that thief’s job as hard as possible. Expensive locks such as this one help baddies find another target or give up after a period of time trying to break it. At 1.9kg it is on the lighter end of similarly high ‘Diamond Security’ rated locks. It’s also relatively small and compact. Locking a frame up with a D-lock won’t protect your wheels. As a man who has had his wheels nicked previously, I am very aware that this can almost be as costly as replacing a whole bike, with the added bonus that you have to now carry your frame home anyway. To get round this I carry a steel security cable which can wrap around my wheels, meaning it’s not just a case of bringing a hex key to steal the wheels. This is where I find the Hiplok D1000 perfect for my setup; the shackles only just fit through the loops at the end of the security cable. This means that the D1000 is the thickest lock I can use alongside the steel cables. The Hiplok D1000 combined with a set of steel cables is definitely now my preferred locking system.
Park Tool INF-2 – Shop Inflator
- Price: £124.99
- From: Madison
- Tested by: Chipps for ten months
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I thought that my red-faced days of tyre swapping were over with the purchase of the cheapest tank compressor from the DIY shop. However, I soon discovered that nearly all compressor heads are designed for Schrader valves and getting a strong puff into a presta valve involved fiddly brass adaptors that never seemed to seal well and diluted the 10BAR of pressure available from the compressor. The answer was a Park Tool INF-2, a presta/Schrader head that costs as much as the compressor itself, but which has transformed my tyre inflating.
Reassuringly weighty, the INF-2 feels every gram of a proper, rebuildable, bike shop tool designed to last years of use. The push-on presta head is adjustable for fit around the valve and the whole head rotates to allow access to either valve, whether pushing down floor side or pulling the head towards you. This lets you read the clear 0-160PSI gauge without having to contort yourself to see it. There’s a bleed button under your thumb while the inflation trigger sits easily under your finger. A hook allows easy storage, even when connected to an air hose.
The INF-2 is intended for hard, daily use by shop mechanics, but to the home mechanic it is massively useful and consistent. I’ve not failed to get a tyre up and sealed with it, whereas both my charger pump and the Schrader car head that came with the compressor have each failed a few times. I now check tyre pressures before every ride rather than once a whenever. For seating and sealing tubeless tyres, it delivers a good, steady stream of air, generally enough to seat things first go.
If I had any complaints, it would be that I don’t need a gauge that goes up to 160PSI – even my tubeless road tyres only run 70PSI, so a wider-ranging dial would allow better accuracy for those of us who don’t religiously use a digital reader. As for the hefty cost, it’s a pro-tool and it has literally saved me hours of pumping and swearing.
Feedback Sports Pro Mechanic HD bike repair stand
- Price: ~£495
- From: Saddleback
- Tested by: Chipps for eight months
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Perhaps it’s an age thing, but I’ve started adopting the outlook that anything I use every day, whether that be jeans, a belt, a phone, an Allen key set or a bike part, is allowed to be top quality. It’s that thinking that finds me with this very fancy Feedback Sports Pro Mechanic HD work stand. It’s been used just about every day for the last eight months and I’ve yet to find fault in it.
The complicated-looking clamp-head is common to both Pro Mechanic and HD versions and has a few features meant to help us home mechanics. The jaws have a quick-set closure clutch where you can push the jaws closed by hand, using the winding handle to just add the final tension. This makes that awkward one-handed ‘holding the bike while flailing around to get it clamped before your strength runs out’ motion a lot quicker, as there’s no endless winding of a knob to get it to hold the tube. There’s a ‘hit to release fully’ big red button that, again, speeds things up so that you’re not having to hold the bike’s weight while undoing the clamp enough to free the tube you’ve gripped. At the rear of the clamping arm is a three-armed handle for tightening the rotation of the clamping head. You can rotate and lock a bike easily, even if unbalanced (like when you’re brake bleeding with the bike at an awkward angle) or you can bind it just tight enough that it’ll rotate with a little extra force from you.
Talking of weight, the HD stand will support 45kg of bike, making it handy for ebikes, downhill bikes, enduro bikes and your old Raleigh Chopper. In order to cope with this extra weight, Feedback has oversized all of the tubes, making it super stiff. The large 6061 T6 aluminium upright tubes telescope smoothly, even when you have a bike clamped up and the wide, flat legs allow a very stable working space, even at full height.
The stand will also fold up small enough to fit in a car boot and, at 8kg, is a great pro-level stand to take away to events, races or bike holidays. Really, though, it’s a solid contender for that ‘dream workshop’ spec that you know you’re going to treat yourself to one day. If you find yourself working on bikes, especially ebikes and bigger bikes often, then this is the stand for you. If you only need a stand for indexing your gears, then it’s massive overkill.
