On test:
| Lezyne Power Lever XL | £4.99 |
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| Pedro's Tyre Levers | £2.99 |
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| Tacx Tyre levers | £2.99 |
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Lezyne Power Lever XL £4.99
Great levers; extra oomph for tight tyres, but light enough to carry around
With plenty of leverage and tough nylon construction, Lezyne's Power Lever XL tyre levers are well worth adding to your toolbox, especially if you have a tight tyre and rim combination.
What you get here is extra leverage. Had he been a cyclist, Archimedes would probably have said, "Give me a lever long enough and I shall remove any tyre." The Power Lever XLs are about 3cm longer than regular tyre levers and that adds up to a lot of extra oomph for persuading reluctant tyres off rims.
Great design and gentle on the wallet too
There’s no doubting Pedro’s levers are amongst the best I’ve come across, making short work of most tyre/rim combinations and very keenly priced to boot. However, they’re not as effective as telescopic designs on really tight beads and one of our test levers snapped clean in two while battling my expedition wheelset. Luckily, a lifetime, no quibble warrantee gives peace of mind.
I’m tempted to dismiss the lurid colour schemes as little more than clever marketing but objectively, these professional grade levers are easy to spot hiding in toolbox but our green test pair weren’t the easiest to find on a grass verge. Beefy reinforced plastic construction is designed with a chisel tip to lift even the tightest beads while the pronounced bodies prevent them slipping out at the crucial moment.
Well designed, modestly priced tyre levers
Available in a choice of red, blue or black, the secret to these Tacx levers is good, ergonomic design. There's no gimmicks, and no clever marketing: just reliable and inexpensive performance. Supplied in sets of three, their banana profile might raise eyebrows but is surprisingly effective compared with traditional models and makes short work of stubborn rubber.
Measuring 13x2cms, their stout, curvaceous profile fits comfortably in the palm while a pronounced lip burrows easily beneath the tyre bead, allowing it to be eased from the tightest of rims. Using my benchmark and notoriously difficult XC tyre /downhill rim combination, I only required two levers and while it took plenty of force they lifted the bead without fuss - this combination has snapped a resin coated steel set clean in two.
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Our official grumpy Northerner, John has been riding bikes for over 30 years since discovering as an uncoordinated teen that a sport could be fun if it didn't require you to catch a ball or get in the way of a hulking prop forward.
Road touring was followed by mountain biking and a career racing in the mud that was as brief as it was unsuccessful.
Somewhere along the line came the discovery that he could string a few words together, followed by the even more remarkable discovery that people were mug enough to pay for this rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work. He's pretty certain he's worked for even more bike publications than Mat Brett.
The inevitable 30-something MAMIL transition saw him shift to skinny tyres and these days he lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.