In this article I will review the Schwalbe Tire levers and compare them with the Tacx Mini Tyre Levers T4885, Fix It Sticks Replaceable Tire Levers and the Pedros Tire Levers.
The Schwalbe Tire Levers have an innovative design feature: the rim clip that can be used when tires are difficult to mount on your rim. I will look at the design, do some testing and share me thoughts on these tire levers.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
DESIGN SCHWALBE TIRE LEVERS – INNOVATIVE RIM CLIP
On the Schwalbe website you can read that the tire levers with Art.-No. 1847 are patent pending.
“Makes changing tires a snap. The new shape and surface of the tire lever makes the assembly and disassembly of a tire more enjoyable. For both tires and hands too! The new tire levers are especially helpful in difficult assembly operations. Clip it onto the rim, to fix the already mounted section of the tire, and it won‘t slide out when the last section is levered onto the rim.”
The tips from the Schwalbe Tire Levers remind me of the orange Continental Race Tire Levers. The tip is relative flat and wide, while the curve of the lifting part of the tips is also relative flat (compared to the curve of the Fix It Sticks Tire Lever- and Pedros Tire Lever head).
Each tire lever has a “hook” in the middle to fix the lever onto a spoke when disassembling a tire. This is pretty standard for a tire lever. What I personally miss is a mechanism to snap the Schwalbe Tire Levers onto each other, and you don’t want the set of three Schwalbe Tire Levers to move around your saddlebag, Waterfield + Eleven Velo Club Cycling Pouch, Craft Cadence Essentials Case or your home mechanic toolbox.
The Schwalbe Tire Levers have a recognizable and distinctive blue color that looks familiar (and not just from the Schwalbe logo). On the Schwalbe website one can read:
“The colour blue is a trademark of Park Tool for bicycle tools and is used under license.”
INNOVATIVE RIM CLIP OF SCHWALBE TIRE LEVERS
The unique feature of the Schwable Tire Levers that can be used when mounting tires with a very tight steel cable. It requires a lot of manual torque on the tire to squeeze it onto the rim. I must admit that putting road tires on my FFWD F2A wheels requires some muscle power.
On the backside of the tire lever packaging you can see visuals for mounting and de-mounting tires. In the de-mounting scenario you use the hooks, while in the mounting scenario you can use the rim clip. In fact is is a small hook, comparable with some paperclip shapes, that locks under the rim profile (on the inside). The rim clip keeps the section that has been mounted on the rim in place, so you can focus on the remaining area.
COMPARISON WITH PEDROS AND FIX IT STICKS TIRE LEVERS
The Tacx Mini Tyre Levers T4885 are the preferred tire levers that are in my saddle bag. These are lightweight and perfectly snap into each other to have a low volume as well.
As a home mechanic normally my preferred tire levers are the Pedros Tire Levers, or when the going gets tough I get the Fix It Sticks Replaceable Tire Levers. I wrote in the Fix It Sticks Tire Lever review that:
“With the all steel Fix It Sticks attached to the Tire Lever I don’t foresee any problems, even with the hardest tires. The Pedros Tire Levers are my benchmark here and there is no tire that I could not remove.”
The Schwalbe tire levers feel somewhere between the lightweight Tax Mini Tire levers and the Pedros Tire Levers. While the innovative rim clip can be very very helpful it is not a necessity for the well-trained (home) mechanic.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS AND WRAP-UP
The Schwalbe Tire Levers have a price-point of € 3,00 or € 4,00 which is between the Tacx Mini tire levers and the Pedros tire levers. This also how I would position it when it comes to technical design and practical use.
In the end it is a matter of personal preference and situation or context depend. The Pedros tire levers are still my benchmark when it comes to robustness and it doesn’t matter if your replace the tires on a road bike, mountain bike or e-bike. The higher and sharper tip/head is something I prefer, but I can also work perfectly with the Schwable tire levers.
In the situation where you need to work with tight steel tire cables, the Schwalbe rim clip will save you a lot of efforts and perhaps even muscle power. I just tested the Schwalbe Tire Levers with aluminum rims. So I didn’t test these in a carbon rim scenario: if these rim clips will damage the carbon rim profile surface or its coating.
The Schwable Tire Lever in the distinctive blue color perfectly combine with my Berner Bera Clic tool boxes and Park Tool cycling tools.
What do you think of the Schwalbe tire levers ?
I was fortunate enough to receive a review-sample of the Schwalbe Tire Levers and a Schwalbe product catalog for 2019. Schwable however didn’t pay to place this review.
