2011-10-21

review: Lezyne CRV-20 multi-tool


Between 2011 July and 2011 September, my partner and I did a 3 300km bicycle tour of southern France. The below is a review of a product that we used during that tour.

All multi-tools have tools that I do not use, particularly Torx and box wrenches. They are also often over-built and suffer from poorly designed chain tools and spoke wrenches. The Lezyne CRV-20 has only one completelyuseless tool (a Torx t25), a couple of mostly useless tools (the 10mm box wrench/bottle opener and 8mm box wrench/something or other (I would remove this tool in future)), is missing only one important tool (tire levers), has an excellent chain tool and it has spoke wrenches almost as good as the Park SW series.

The CRV-20 has two killer apps: a 6cm-long bread knife blade and light weight. The knife was great because it allowed me to cut bread, fruit and vegetables while we traveled. Watch out for it, though. While fixing a chain on a training ride before our tour, the knife made a nice, deep gash in my finger. My own fault (I hadn't put a sheath on the knife yet), but watch out. It's sharp. After I removed the Torx t25 (and sold it for a tidy sum on eBay), the tool weighed an incredibly light 155g. Including the two tire levers (21g), all of the tools I carried with me weighed a feathery 176g.