Your Home Bike Repair Station Buyer's Guide

This post features no sponsored content. All recommendations come from personal experience.

Here's the TLDR for what you should spend all your money on for a home bike zone:

• Work Stand
• Allen Keys
• Torque Wrench
• Pliers and cable cutters

And here's what to go cheap on:

• Air pump
• Towels and cleaning supplies
• Work bench or table
• Tool storage

And that's basically it. 

I probably should have stopped with just those tools, but instead I kept buying, and now I have a full service center in my basement: 

There's about $4000 worth of tools and junk in those pictures, and a lot of it goes unused. The goal of this post is to keep the average Joe/Jane home mechanic from wasting money on tools they probably don't need. But I also want to keep people from buying junk they'll grow out of.

So I'll divide this guide into two categories: Splurge and Conserve

We'll start with Splurge items, which are things that you really should save up for and buy the best that you can.

Starting with: THE STAND

The single most important quality of a home repair stand is sturdiness. A repair stand needs to be able to hold a 50 pound cruiser without tipping over or falling apart, and it needs to be able to clamp and unclamp quickly, easily, and reliably for years – or ideally, the rest of your life. I've worked on stands that were passed down generations. That's what you want in a tool.

I prefer the Park PCS-10 to all the other home-mechanic stands out there. It's sturdy, corrosion resistant, easy to clean, and comes with a quality clamp. It's not as sturdy as a shop's work stand, and the swing adjustment sometimes gets loose and lets the bike rotate in place, but for less than $250 it's a great option.

I've used the Pedros Folding Repair Stand and I've used Feedback Sports' various stands, and I don't especially like either. Both feature crappy clamps that bind when you press a heavy bike in them. The Feedback Sports stand is flimsy too – though it's the lightest option.

As far as the various Amazon work stands: stay away. I'm sure a few of them are decent, but the ones I've seen were flimsy and cheap.

In the end, if you have the space and can afford it, you won't regret buying a shop-quality work stand, which will run you about $500. Otherwise, look at the product's clamp and weight; you want it to be simple and heavy.

If you can't afford a good stand, build your own.

OR! If you have a bike rack for your car, just mount that to the wall!




Now here's a place to Conserve. 

THE WORKBENCH:

You can spend a thousand dollars on a workbench, or you can spend days building and varnishing a custom one.

My workbench is a kitchen hutch I found in the garbage.

I've had it for years; it works as well now as it did when I got it. Though, I'll admit it isn't great for pounding on. In the event I have to smash something, I just move it to the ground and sit cross-legged.

Most bike work is done in the work stand. The bench is little more than a place to set your beer down.

Splurge.

THE TORQUE WRENCH:

It's an underrated tool, but it should be one of the most used wrenches in any tool box.

Beam type torque wrenches, like the one above, cost as little as $30. But! They're annoying to use because it's easy to over-torque with them because there's no warning. You have to constantly check the scale, which means you aren't paying attention to the bolt. If you aren't careful, you'll slip off.

Dial type torque wrenches are the way to go for most home mechanics. They click when you hit the toque range, and they feel like a regular socket wrench. They're also easy to adjust and fairly inexpensive. The one in the picture retails for $120. Most decent dial wrenches cost around $100, but make sure they read out in newton meters, not inch-pounds. Also, save an extra $75 for good sockets. If your budget only allows for so many tools, put the torque wrench and its sockets at the top of the list. A cheaper option is to have pre-set torque keys on hand, like on the right side in the picture. They're not adjustable, but they're durable and easy to use, relying on the same click mechanism as the dial wrench.

Electronic torque wrenches are fun, but unless you're assembling fighter jets, don't waste your money. There's nothing on a bike that needs to be torqued to an accuracy of .000001. However, a lot of electronic wrenches have nice options. Some of them have a chime that goes off when you're near your torque goal, then a different chime when you reach it.

Conserve.

TOOL STORAGE:

I bought those nice Craftsman tool chests in the first picture because I think they look good, but honestly the best place to put your tools is a hook on the wall.

Or, if you want to get a little fancy, a few well-placed $20 magnet strips above your bench can do as much as a $7,000 tool box.

Splurge.

CABLE CUTTERS:

Shift and brake cables are made of stainless steel cords. They're designed to be tough. The tool that cuts them, therefore, should be tougher.

I use Park's cable cutters, but I prefer the Shimano one because it's lighter and equally sharp.

Alternately, a premium pair of diagonal cutters will snip steel cables just as well as bike-specific cable cutters. They tend to pinch cable housing, however.

Conserve.

RAGS AND CLEANERS:

I like to cut up my old shirts, socks, and underwear to make rags out of (after I wash them). For cleaning solution, nothing beats dish soap and water.

Dish soap and water de-grease and clean, but if you're like me and you don't have a good drain nearby, a no-wash spray, like Finish Line Super Bike Wash, will work fine, but costs $$$$.

Simple Green works pretty nicely too. I've even used floor cleaner to good effect.

On wheels and other braking surfaces, if 91% isopropyl alcohol can't clean it, it won't get clean.

Splurge. 

WHEEL REPAIR TOOLS

There are a lot of cheap truing stands out there, I've tried some of them, and I hate them all.

Wheels are the founding component of the bicycle. They are the measure of a bike's overall quality. They're also a precision piece of equipment, and should be treated with the utmost care and attention.

Flimsy $90 home truing stands simply don't offer the flex-resistance and accuracy of a professional truing stand.

Don't waste your money on cheap junk. But, don't go nuts either. The $1,3000 DT Swiss stand isn't that much more useful than the $200 Park stand.

However, there's no reason you can't build your own stand with sturdy materials, like this person from the internet did:

Also, don't forget the dishing tool. A lot of people think the expensive truing stand is enough, but trust me, they're almost never totally accurate. The dish stick double checks their work.

I use the park dish stick, and I hate it. It's flimsy. Sadly, there aren't a lot of other options for less than $100. If I were to do it again, I'd buy the more expensive tool from Hozan or try to pick up a used Campagnolo.

Splurge

BASIC TOOLS

Your basic tools, like Allen keys and pliers, get a lot of use. Cheap ones round-off more quickly than the good ones. Also, when they start to go bad, replace them. Don't wait until you strip a bolt.

There are a thousand different basic tool kits out there. I've been mix-n-matching from all the brands for years.

At $300, the Park Advanced Tool Kit can handle 90% of home mechanic jobs, and works fine for basic tune-ups.

At $800, the Pedro's Master Tool Kit can do even more.

No basic tool kit comes with a derailleur alignment gauge, which is a huge oversight. 

Many, if not most, rear shifting issues can be traced back to a bent derailleur hanger. It's the third thing I check when I adjust shifting –the first thing I check is whether the wheel is all the way in the dropouts, the second is chain wear. Luckily, most basic kits come with a chain wear gauge.

I use the $75 Park DAG-4 derailleur alignment tool, and I hate it. It's inaccurate and cumbersome. The crappy rubber stoppers on the feeler part wear out quickly too. Very, very poor design.

The Abbey hanger alignment tool and the Shimano TL-RD11 are my favorites. Both cost over $170, and both are worth it.

Conserve.

TIRE PUMP:

I got my pump for free, eleven years ago. Since then I've replaced the head once, which cost $11 and took about fifteen minutes to do.

You can easily find a bike pump at a garage sale for $5. Even the Walmart pumps work well enough, so long as they have a pressure gauge.

The only reason to buy an expensive pump is if you use tubular tires that need to be inflated to 200PSI during installation.

If you are going to splurge, get an electric air compressor. I'd even go as far as to say it's a necessary tool for a serious mechanic. They're great for cleaning, pushing bearings out of tight spots, cooling your head off in the summer, as well as filling tires.

CONCLUSION

If you've read this far, good job. I want to stress that a lot of professional bike tools are designed as much for looks as usefulness. A shop has to maintain aesthetics as part of retail theater, but a home mechanic isn't bound by the dictates of fashion.

Therefore, I'd like to endorse DIY solutions whenever possible. Most stands, storage units, and tables can be built at home or salvaged. Don't be a slave to style! Before you buy anything, type "DIY _(blank)_" –as in, "DIY hammer" or "DIY tool chest."

Also, don't be afraid to buy used. The only tools that really should be purchased new are the torque wrenches, because you want a guarantee of calibration.

Good luck, have fun, and post your home-design-solutions in the comments.