Lezyne Port-a-Shop Toolkit

It might be intended as a portable tool kit to drop in your flight case with your bike, but the Lezyne Port-a-Shop is plenty good enough to be your main home toolkit.

Lezyne have become known for their combination of functionality, quality materials and good design; making tools and accessories you want, rather than just need, to own. The Port-a-Shop toolkit is no exception.

The kit, as the name suggests, is intended to provide a portable workshop, aimed at the cyclist who travels with their bike. Contained within the zip-up padded Cordura case is a comprehensive array of cycle-specific tools, all neatly contained in tailored pockets, each bearing a graphic of the tool it contains for easy and quick identification.

The tool list is impressive for such a compact kit (the case when zipped measures L22cm x W15cm x D5cm).

The main tools are contained within three multi tools.

The first has Allen keys from 1.5mm to 6mm, with the neat addition of a duplicate key for sizes 1.5mm, 2mm and 2.5mm, that are right-angled in addition to the straight keys, for those fiddly and hard to reach bolts.

The second contains Torx drivers from sizes T6 to T30.

The third has an 8mm Allen key, Philips and a flat blade screwdrivers, a clever disc brake wedge for prying the pistons apart when replacing pads, 8mm and 10mm open ended spanners, a tyre lever that is ideal for freeing the bead on tight fitting tyres, and of course, the obligatory bottle opener.

These are not just road or trailside tools though. Lezyne calls them ‘block tools’, meaning the tool’s body is made from a single moulded block of alloy, machined to leave a bracing bar connecting the two sides. This makes the body much stiffer, providing ample leverage for the tool bits when in use.

The remaining tools all pack multiple functions. There is a high quality chain tool with replaceable pin driver (a spare pin is thoughtfully included). With the pin chuck removed, the tool’s body becomes a spoke key with 3.22mm and 3.45mm wrenches along with small and large Mavic spoke wrenches.

The two 15mm spanners have tyre irons at the opposite end, for particularly stubborn tyres, plus yet more bottle openers. Either someone at Lezyne is perhaps a bit too keen on their beer or they have thoughtfully made sure that even when you’re using a tool that doubles as a bottle opener there’s a spare one so your workshop assistant can open another for you without interrupting the job. Now that’s what I call thinking.

Finally, there is a traditional puncture repair kit, with glue, patches, chalk etc; a pack of glue-less patches; and a pair of high strength composite tyre levers.

In action, the tools are workshop quality and big enough to be easily useable, enough so in fact, that I have been using them exclusively since receiving the kit to test despite having a full workshop toolkit. The block tools offer all the strength you could need. The 15mm spanners have happily removed pedals on several occasions; don’t expect them to remove seized pedals, as the leverage is restricted by their size, but a well maintained bike will present no problems.

The padded case, with its easily-identified storage compartments, encourages you to put the tools back in their pockets when you’re finished, so they atre likely to be there when you need them. There is an additional zippered pocket that fits a CO2 inflator and spare cartridges or a bottle of chain oil or anything else of similar size that you might want to include. Bear in mind that airlines tend to frown on carrying CO2 cartridges or lubricants, so don’t ‘accidentally’ leave them in there.

Verdict

This kit is designed to be put in the flight case with your bike when you travel abroad, or chucked in the back of the car when travelling to races and events. All the tools you could need to rebuild your bike at your destination are here, in an easy to pack and carry format. However, these tools perform so well that these are likely to become the first tools you reach for even when in your home workshop.