Park Tool TL-6.2 tyre levers

Park Tool's TL-6.2 is a very strong yet reasonably compact lever set, capable of hauling the toughest bead onto a rim. Unfortunately it's let down by a thick exposed metal tip that is hard to work under a tight bead without risking rim or tape damage.

We aren't fully clear whether Archimedes was a bike mechanic, but his oft-quoted saying 'Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world' has rung out in every bike shop at some stage in either desperation or triumph, possibly bookended by more colourful language.

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The advent of tubeless tyres, unyielding Kevlar folding beads and the need for ever-tighter tolerances has spawned any number of tyre-fitting/removing tools, of which the humble lever is the oldest, assuming we discount whatever's in the kitchen drawer.

Park Tool's latest take on the tyre lever is the TL-6.2 Steel-Core Tyre Lever, coming in a pack of two. At 12.6cm long, they are middle of the road length-wise, same as the ubiquitous Tacx £3-for-three sets.

Nicely shaped, with a slick plastic coating to facilitate easy sliding along under a bead betwixt rim and tyre, the finish is nice. The business end is where things go awry for me.

The tip of the lever is an exposed steel area 3mm deep and a whopping 1.6mm thick. It's this thickness that is the TL-6.2's downfall. Most tyre levers taper to a fine point, allowing them to wriggle under a tight bead without marring the tape or rim underneath. There's no chance of that here, as the thickness makes for potentially damaging impact on all but the loosest of beads – which defeats the purpose of needing a strong lever in the first place.

I found myself having to resort to the longer black lever in the Topeak Shuttle Levers 1.2 set to lift a tight bead just enough to get the TL-6.2 underneath, then use the strong steel core to do the business. Yes, you could carry two different styles of lever if you had a very tight-fitting bead with a high rim wall to then get it over, but really Park Tool, you should trust users with a more-tapered tip. It's not like you can't do an awful lot of damage as is with the blunt one – and like any outdoors person or chef knows, the most dangerous knives are blunt ones.

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Ironically for the TL-6.2, Park Tool does a fine-tipped lever – the TL-5 Heavy Duty Tyre Lever Set. It's just not plastic-coated for rim-friendly slippage.

A while back I highly rated the £17 Silca Tyre Lever Premio Set – an alloy-core lever with a fine tip, capable of getting stupid-tight tyres over deep carbon rims without damage. Seems to me Park Tool has missed a trick with the tip of the TL-6.2, and it will only be of real use to those with looser beads or willing to carry an extra, finer-tipped lever to get started.

Verdict

A strong lever let down by a thick tip that makes tight beads nearly impossible to shift