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Rant: my Park Tool chain whip snapped on a vintage Schwinn last night
Everyone swears by Park Tool stuff but I'm starting to think they're overrated. I was pulling a cassette off an old Schwinn Le Tour from '82 and the chain whip pin just sheared clean off. I had to use a vise grip and a screwdriver to finish the job. Has anyone else had better luck with the cheaper brands like IceToolz?
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jakeb819d ago
Funny you mention IceToolz cause I actually had the exact opposite problem with one of their chain whips a few years back. The thing was built like a tank but the handle was so goddamn uncomfortable I ended up wrapping it in old inner tube tape just to get a grip on it. But here's what nobody talks about with these old Schwinns from the early 80s - they used a weird mix of metric and standard threads on their freewheels and cassettes depending on what factory they came out of that week. I've seen Le Tours with a standard thread locktited on so heavy from the factory that even a brand new Park Tool whip would probably twist before it broke loose. Maybe the pin shearing wasn't the tools fault but the bike fighting back cause it wasn't meant to come apart easy. That said Park Tool has gone downhill on their smaller tools lately, I bought one of their tire levers last month and it snapped prying a bead off a steel rim.
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grantt399d ago
Honestly are we really gonna act like one snapped tire lever means the whole brand is trash?
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Read that old article from Bicycle Rider magazine from like 2003 or something where they tested chain whips from every brand and the Park Tool actually failed more times than the IceToolz in their torque test... stuck with me ever since. Been using a Pedro's chain whip for about 4 years now and it's held up through some nasty old freewheels that were practically welded on. Heard a rumor once that Park Tool outsources their smaller stuff to the same factory that makes the cheap house brands, just with a nicer handle slapped on it. Not sure if it's true but that snapped pin story doesn't surprise me at all with what I've seen lately.
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