A world tour mechanic has touched thousands and thousands of tools and products over the course of his career. But which ones does he recommend? Which ones does he swear by? And which ones does he absolutely despise. Today we're getting the truth. Unfiltered. Jacua mechanic Craig Gator steers us on this journey. Welcome to the podcast, Craig. Craig, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you. Good to have you back, mate. polls social media and there was like an overriding question like you've been around some of the best products, some of the best riders. You've seen every fad from product to components to tool come and go over the course of your career working on the bikes. I want to try and get to the heart of the tools, products, components, bits and pieces that you just couldn't live without. the stuff you've loved over the last, you know, 15 or so years. When I say that question, does anything jump to mind instantly where you're like, "Oh, I absolutely I love that." Well, I used to say that my hammer was a favorite tool cuz you could use it anywhere, but um we we don't really use it too often anymore. Um, but yeah, I would say that just the simple Allen keys, uh, probably the most common used tool that you you'd use now, Allen keys with a with a torque wrench and and you can almost basically more than 3/4 build a bike with a set of Allen keys. Yeah, I've gone through a fad of I was buying very cheap tools and I was buying tools on like Teimu and Alibaba and stuff and my dad was flat out just giving me abuse on it cuz he's like they're just going to break. They're just going to break. I'm like they're not it's a great it's a great spanner or whatever for 4 and fair enough nearly all broke. So, I've kind of gone the other direction in the last while and I started buying slowly because they're expensive, but I'm starting to accumulate like I bought a Abby Tools pedal wrench last week. Have you used these? Not the pedal wrench, but I've got a few of the other tools from from Abby. [clears throat and cough] Yeah. Like the construction on them just feels like I don't know. Like there's love and care gone into the construction of it. You can tell it was made by somebody who like loves cycling. Yeah. Well, I um and they're quite light as well, the tools in general compared to other other tools. Um I actually have a small uh we have our normal tool boxes, but when we travel away, like I said, I'm I'm off to China on the weekend and uh the the big toolbox is just too heavy to take. So, I take a smaller version and uh it's actually got quite a few epy tools in it that are that are light and strong and and really good to use. So, if we kind of maybe segment this and break it down, like one of the areas I find myself working on the bike most is just drivetrain. And I haven't really settled on a good way of maintaining the drivetrain. kind of my current workflow is, and everyone's going to give me for doing this, but I clean the chain with diesel to strip the chain and then I've taken it off maybe once a month and I'm dropping it into, you know, like the crock pot dynamic have this crockpot. You drop the chain in with a bit of wax, wax it up, and that kind of lasts me a month to six weeks. As long as I'm kind of diligent with wiping it down with a rag and then reapplying the drip wax, that seems to work pretty well for me. But I'm sure there's definitely a better way of doing this. What are you guys doing for drivetrain maintenance? Um, well, I mean, yeah, it is it is common that probably every mechanic in in the history of being mechanic has has reverted to using diesel at some point or another. Um, it's probably not the best cuz it it it actually gets in inside the pins and and cleans them all out so that there's there's nothing inside anymore. But um but but it does uh yeah it's more of an aggressive type. Uh we we use a typical your standard factory uh biodegradable degreaser or or normal degreasers that that you can buy off the shelf in any shop. Um and then yeah, depending on where we're racing, what we're doing, we'll either use uh wax chains or we'll use a um we've got some lubes that are basically like a wax that that uh are sort of low um low friction um and good for dry weather.
Like my girlfriend came in, I'd like strip down to just my boxer shorts cuz the sweat's everywhere from like pulling this and she's like, "What are you doing?" There's tubeless sealant everywhere all over the apartment. And I was like, "Don't worry, it's under control." Yeah, we doesn't happen to you now. We used to have that with continental [snorts] tubulars. They were like uh firing a bow and arrow across a a field. They were just about impossible to get on. Uh the stick with tires pressure. We're seeing a lot of these on the-go little mini electric pumps now. Is there any real application for those for a mechanic or you just still old school track pump? No, we um we in in JCO all the riders uh they get to choose their tire pressure. Uh some guys ride really really low and some guys ride a little bit harder. Um there is recommendations um with um body weights to what pressure you should run on on on our KEX tires which is what we use. Uh but most people generally tend to run in in our team sorry and JCO tend to run between 3.7 3.8 bar and 4.5 to 4.8 bar. Yeah, this cool tire pressure calculator. We actually have a tire pressure calculator as well. I'll link it below. That's really good for each brand, rider, conditions, you know, and tire pressure gauges are so cheap as well now that there's almost no excuse to not dial in. I'd actually that's one thing I've added in the last year that's made a big difference. It's tire pressure gauge because my track pump like it's the old school like a clock and it's just not super accurate and you're like, whoa, I'm actually 6 psi different than what I thought I was when you put the gauge on. Yeah, we we uh we always use the gauge uh quite often when we're away at races with the truck. We'll use the compressor to pump all the tires to we we sort of have this habit of our maximum tire pressure is five bar uh because we ride hookless rims. [clears throat] So, we'll pump them to five bar uh the race bikes and then uh within half an hour before the start of the actual race because you could be preparing hours before you actually get to the race. And when the race starts, we'll half an hour before or so we'll put in the exact pressure with the with the gauge to um so the rider has exactly what they want. Is there any mechanics used to be famous for, you know, these crazy workaround and hacks to make stuff work where it didn't always work. Does the equipment now just all play so well together or is there still a need to hack and budge stuff together? Um, we're a little bit limited these days because uh there's obviously as as the years go by, you used to um not take shortcuts, but you used to make do with what you had and you could get things to work and adapting things, chopping things up, uh rearranging stuff. But now you're uh you're not allowed to actually uh alter most parts on the bike because of the UCI rules. Um, I can't remember the word for it off the top of my head, but it's uh yeah, you're basically not allowed to change anything as it should come in the box, but we had a bike in uh yesterday actually in our service course here in Italy and um the computer mounted had uh it wasn't one of our team bikes. It was somebody asked us to fix it and the computer mount had broken off the handlebar. So, we ended up uh putting a small aluminum piece inside the handlebar and then and then uh epoxy gluing a a new mount on for the guy and uh within 2 hours it was uh it was just like brand new. But but yeah, you know, I'm genuinely proud of my little man cave, my escape, my safe place. It's not glamorous by any means. It's crammed into the spare room in our apartment with bikes stacked in the corner, boxes everywhere, and the smell of chain lube is just kind of hanging in the air. But in that corner, that's where the work gets done. That's where I switch off from everything else, and I lock in on my training. And the centerpiece of it all, it's the Wahoo Kicker Bike Pro. Honestly, it's the ultimate man cave. The thing just feels alive under you. It climbs, it descends, it shifts, all automatically. You can dial into your exact position to the millimeter, just like your outdoor bike. And with the new setup, everything's smoother, quieter, and way more immersive. It's that perfect mix of comfort and performance that makes indoor cycling feel like a privilege, not like a punishment.