A Wrench for Just Almost Every Reason

By Vernon Felton

Pedro's T/L Hex Set....comfy, durable and reasonably priced.

WHAT: Pedros 6-Piece T-Hex Set WHERE: www.pedros.com HOW MUCH: 39.99

The beautiful thing about working on bikes, from the home mechanic’s point of view, is that you can tear apart and rebuild sixty percent of your rig with just one set of allen wrenches. Imagine what life (or at least your toolbox) would be like if you could say the same thing about cars.

But getting back to my main point here, massive portions of your bike are held together with allen bolts, this means that every self-respecting cyclist should own a full complement of allen wrenches (also known by the more old-fashioned, curmudgeonly set as “hex keys”).

I’ve torn down and rebuilt countless bikes with this particular set of six Pedro’s T-handle allen wrenches. All told, I’ve been twisting these things for a solid three years straight (the latest version, by the way, features bright yellow handles instead of these black jobbers…which should make finding lost wrenches much easier in the gloom of your garage).

So, here’s the basic stats. You’re looking at six wrenches: 2, 2.5, 3, 4, 5, and 6-millimeters. Those six wrenches handle everything from the tiny bolts on Hayes Hydraulic disc brake levers to those fairly large allen recesses on your pedals. What won’t you be able to touch with this range of allen sizes? Crankbolts tend to require 8 or 10 millimeter allen keys, so you’re out of luck in that one case, but that’s about the only instance (that I can recall) when you find yourself wishing this set included a few more wrenches.

The wrenches themselves are made of heat-treated tool steel. The wrench features a comfy, plastic handle that fits your paw perfectly. There are also two business ends—a conventional allen fitting that sprouts from one end of the handle and a ball-end allen key.

The ball end of the T-wrench is a low-torque affair, but very useful in tight places.

The ball-end allows you to quickly and easily snug up bolts that lurk in hard to reach places (like under-your-saddle seatpost bolts). One thing to bear in mind—ball end wrenches are meant for low-torque work: you don’t want to try and tighten bolts completely with it or you’ll start stripping bolts. I tighten bolts about 70 percent of the way with the ball end and then finish them off with the other end of the wrench.

I really have no complaints—the wrenches hold up to constant use and you can hang the whole set on a peg board. There are also holes in each handle, which enable you to hang each wrench separately, if your anal retentive tendencies extend that far.

The only real room for improvement that I see with this set is that, like I hinted at earlier, it could feature a couple larger wrenches. If you know that this is going to be an issue for you, Pedros also offers a more extensive set of T-handle wrenches which add a T25 torx wrench (rotor bolts), 8 and 10 millimeter wrenches to the basic six you see here (that larger, “Pro T/L Handle Hex Set” kit sells for $69.99).