On Saturday, August 17, 2019 at 12:12:57 AM UTC+1, bob prohaska wrote:
The seat bag toolkit went missing on my bike after 30-odd years.
Unfortunately, I noticed only after getting a flat tire 8 miles
from home. As penance for my inattention I elected to walk, despite
half a dozen offers of help from other riders and one motorist. The
exercise is one I'm not eager to repeat 8-)

Beyond the obvious (tire levers, patch kit and spare tube) what have
folks found worth carrying to fend off routine trouble? My kit
acquired quite a bit more, including a chain tool, spoke wrench and
freewheel tool, along with hex keys. I don't think any of the first
three have ever been useful on the road, but they don't weigh much
and they're far easier to find if they're on the bike. Has anybody
ever had use for them, or other "shop" tools, on the road?

Suggestions for a seat bag would also be welcome. For the moment
I'll put the tools and spares in the pannier baskets, but that's
dangerous as they can be removed and forgotten. Much better to have
necessities permanently living on the bike.

Thanks for reading!

bob prohaska

The most useful tool a cyclist can carry is a cellphone loaded with the numbers of taxi firms who have hatchbacks or vans to get his bike home.

The second most useful tool is tyres that don't puncture. I use Schwalbe Big Apples but Schwalbe makes many widths of tyres with protective bands, and so do quite a few other manufacturers.

I carry neither a tube nor a patch kit, though I do carry a mini pump for use on the bikes of pedal pals.

Almost every fitting on my bike has hex socket screws, so I carry a 68gr socket screw kit (it has slide-off ali tube levers, never used). Since everything on my bike has a very restrictive torque rating, I did consider carrying a torque wrench but even the lightest I could find weighed more than all the other tools together, and the truth is the socket wrenches haven't been used in the last ten years or so. I have torque wrenches in my toolbox at home for checking that everything is correctly torqued every few years.

It would be an irritation on my very undulating countryside to be stuck in top gear by a broken gear cable, so I carry a special cyclists' brake spanner by Draper (it's like a brake spanner for motorists but flatter and lighter) to manually change Rohloff gears.

I also carry a proprietary wrench head for undoing the first series Rohloff sprocket retaining nut, because that one is special, unlikely to be found in the toolbox of an LBS anywhere I want to go. It works with a 22mm spanner, which you're damned right I'm not going to carry.

And that's it. The chain comes undone with a quick link (maybe -- I have a tool that I use in my toolbox at home) but the occasion has never arisen on the road to test the theory.

Andre Jute
If you're going to develop something radical, like a zero-service bike which never breaks down, you'd best start from total ignorance so that you aren't misled by the obsolete received wisdom of the thoughtless "wise men", of which there is no shortage in cycling