Toolkit

Tools strewn across the kitchen floor

The emphasis of the spares kit is to have a spare one of everything that can fail suddenly and without which we won't get far. Brake and gear cables, brake blocks, inner tubes, a tyre and a freehub form the basis of it. Plus plenty of spare nuts and bolts, a couple of each length of spoke and a set of cones and ball bearings. No point having the spares without the tools to fit them so there is an Alien multi-tool which does most things, a Leatherman Juice which does the rest, and the specialist tools like cone spanners and a spanner for my Brooks saddle. The Deore XT cranks are splined and don't need a crank puller to remove them. To remove the freehub cassette I have a home-made Hypercracker (or you can improvise a chain whip)and to change the freehub itself there is a 50mm length of 10mm allen key. There's also things like string and cable ties which are simply essential and maintenance kits for the stove and the water filter.

Embarrassing but true, I also have a gas powered soldering iron and a multimeter with me. All those battery chargers are bound to pack up sooner or later so I will be needing some way of trying to mend them.

All the rarely (I hope!) used stuff goes in a plastic box in the bottom of a pannier:

And the puncture repair kit lives in a pocket on one of the panniers for instant access.

Complete list

Spares

Tools

See the maintenance page to see what spares we actually used.

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