Hypercrackers

I tour remote areas and need to be able to remove Shimano and Campagnolo cassettes to replace broken spokes in the field. Can you tell me where to buy ‘hypercrackers’ or equivalent lockring-removal tools.

John Crinion

I’ve seen several such tools come and go. The original Pamir Tools ‘Hypercracker’ is worth looking for at cycle jumbles, but the only one that seems to be current is the NBT2 (NextBestThing-2) made in Netherlands by M-Gineering and sold in UK by Spa Cycles (and perhaps some other places Google didn’t find). It’s for Shimano lockrings only, but Campag haven’t deliberately made an item of touring equipment for years, so that should not be a problem.

Chris Juden

 

This was first published in the October / November 2014 edition of Cycle magazine.