Digging through a bunch of old MTB stuff the other day I stumbled across something ‘Cool’… literally, except even back when it was new in the early 1990’s it was well… pretty daggy!

You’ve got to cut the Cool Tool some slack though as it was one of the first bicycle specific multi-tools. Once the secret was out it didn’t take other companies – like Ritchey for example – very long at all to sex up the idea of a bicycle multi-tool, leaving early Cool Tool adopters feeling kinda ordinary about their go-go-gadget portable workshop.

Amidst a bunch of old bike paperwork crammed into an old Flite Evolution saddle box I found the receipt for my Cool Tool along with the A4 flyer that came with it. The things you treasure hey?! Check out the bleeding edge technology crammed into that $27 (and that was wholesale!) thingamajig: Cone Wrench, Headset spanner, Bottom bracket spanner…and the list goes on. So sleek, so sexy, sooooo hi-tech!

Cool Tool: 'The' Multipurpose Bicycle Repair Tool
Cool Tool: ‘The’ Multipurpose Bicycle Repair Tool
Cool Tool: 'The' Multipurpose Bicycle Repair Tool
Cool Tool: ‘The’ Multipurpose Bicycle Repair Tool
Cool Tool: 'The' Multipurpose Bicycle Repair Tool
Cool Tool: ‘The’ Multipurpose Bicycle Repair Tool

So OK, that is sort of cool in a nerdy way but if I still had the actual Cool Tool… that would be a BFD!

After hours of searching through old toolboxes… TADAA 🙂

Cool Tool 'The' Multipurpose Bicycle Repair Tool
Cool Tool ‘The’ Multipurpose Bicycle Repair Tool

ps. Admittedly later on I did buy a MUCH cooler (original) Ritchey CPR-9 when it was released

4 Responses

  1. Still got my Cool Tool although like you I’ve lost the Allen keys it came with somewhere along the way. Chain breaker still works great though.

  2. Where can I get one got hold of one when needed to adjust chain on trike , great tool any info would be great thanks in advance. !

  3. I have had one for years, but last weekend really could have used a crank puller on the trail, I tried to see if there was some bizarre way it would work, but no such luck. Other then that I can’t see any problem with this amazing gadget!

  4. Dear Phil D,
    biketools etc sells a small machined nut that screws into the crank, after removing the bolt of course. You then use the same bolt to “pull” the crank off. They cost about $6-$8 last time I looked.
    The extractor is really lightweight and very portable on tour. I just searched for it: maybe it’s no longer sold.

    There are also one-key release systems, but my experience with them has been very mixed. Sometimes they strip threads rather than pull the crank ;-(

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