Just like is says in that famous motto of the Boy Scouts, you should always be prepared. There is nothing worse than being on your bike, miles from home, and have something go wrong on your bike…and you don’t have any tools to fix it. You need to be prepared for all kinds of situations that could possibly happen out on your ride. And even if you have a great bike, keep it well maintained and spend your hard earned on all the best components and practice good puncture prevention, things can still go wrong. So, be prepared and make sure you always carry your maintenance kit and tyre puncture repair kit.

Go to your local bike store, and you will find a wide variety of maintenance tool kits, repair kits and puncture repair kits for your bike. So, which one should you choose. Well, first of all, you need to make sure any repair kit or maintenance kit that you buy will have all the tools and equipment that you’ll need to fix your bike. So, you need to think about the kind of bike that you ride, the kind of riding that you do, and how long and far away from civilisation do you ride.

If you just ride around the block, or close to home on a weekend, then naturally you will only need a basic kit with a couple of tools that will allow you to make some rudimentary adjustments and change a punctured tire tube. If you go road racing, or for long rides on mountain trails, then you will obviously need a more complete maintenance and repair tool kit that will have all the tools you need to keep your bike performing at its best.

Renowned bike component maker Sram make a range of toolkits for the serious bike rider, including their Ultimate Maintenance Kit. The Ultimate Maintenance Kit has all the tools you’ll need to keep your bike well maintained no matter where you find yourself.

The kit comes in a convenient storage compartment that you can easily attach to your bike and includes one litre of PitStop bike cleaner, 500ml of PitStop bike protectant, and four cleaning brushes, a sponge and a tub. There’s also a race kit version you can buy as well.

Of course the Ultimate Maintenance Toolkit from Sram will certainly come in handy, especially if you are going on long rides off road, or touring o the road over long distances, but it’s not the only kit you will need. Make sure you always carry a puncture repair kit, no matter where you ride, otherwise if you get a puncture, you could end up pushing your bike home instead of riding it. Puncture prevention alone will not save you, the unexpected can always happen! Of course, you’ll also need a bike pump to pump up your tire once you’ve repaired it.

If you carry the right tools, including a maintenance kit, puncture repair kit and bike pump, then you’ll always be prepared.

Tags: maintenance kits, puncture prevention, tyre puncture repair

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 5th, 2009 at 10:29 am and is filed under Bike Maintenance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.