Tool Time

Tool Time

If you head out on a road trip without at least a few basic tools, you’re begging for trouble. It’s all too common for a rider to be stranded at \ the side of the road \ because f a simple problem that could have been corrected with a screwdriver, a pair of pliers or a common socket. CruzTOOLS (www. cruztools.com) tries to prevent such trip-ruining incidents by offering a wide selection of prepackaged toolkits designed to go along for the ride. One of the company’s latest is the $40 MiniSet Compact Metric Tool Set (part no. MSHD1), a 1/4-inch drive kit consisting of 4 sockets (8,10,12 and

13mm), 3 Allen socket bits (4, 5 6mm), a No. 2 Phillips bit, a 2-inch extension and a small ratchet, all packed in a molded plastic box. The ratchet is an especially cool little piece. It’s just 31/4 inches long, has a pushbutton lock on the back that securely holds sockets and extensions in place and uses a 48tooth ratchet mechanism that only requires you to swing the handle about 7 degrees to engage the next tooth. The tools

are so small that you can hold all 10 of them in the palm of your hand; so if the 61/4 x 43/4 x 11/2-inch box is too bulky for your packing requirements, ditch it and just stuff the separate pieces into the bag with your other road tools.

Ever try loosening the big center nut on a clutch hub after the plates have been removed? Or on a sprocket that has no chain attached or a flywheel that spins freely? Unless you have a stout air-impact wrench and a compressor to feed it, those jobs can be about as much fun as a root canal. And let’s not even talk about torquing those same nuts and bolts during installation. But with the Rotor and Sprocket Holder (part no. 08-0270; $38) from Motion Pro (www.motionpro.com), those tasks are a piece of cake.

Essentially, the Holder consists of two blades made of sturdy strap steel, one long and one short, that pivot in the middle like pliers and have two sets of pins on the ends-one set 9mm in diameter and the other 5mm. To use the tool, you fit the appropriate pins into flywheel/rotor holes or between sprocket teeth or into clutchhub slots, then either squeeze the blades together or spread them apart, depending upon how the object needs to be held. If it has to be gripped from the inside, the tool is equipped with a long stop-screw that firmly holds the blades spread apart at the required distance. The Holder can position the pins as close together as 13mm apart as 230mm (9 inches). It’s affordable and best of all. it wors