I love buying my Swiss/Belgian/Italian spokes from a UK shop.

Definitely ‘made a success of it’.

Is there a decent light grease for freehub pawls etc?

Nearly any semifluid grease will do, NLGI viscosity 0, 00 or 000. In the absence of that a mix of regular grease (i.e. NLGI 2) ‘thinned’ with some oil will do.

Preferably unsalted.

Lard is probably better lubricant? It was used for cutting oils in the past.

I ride a fixed gear bike with a front brake.

If you prefer to brake the rear with your legs that’s your prerogative but you must have a second brake in case your primary brake system fails.

No 11yo girls, jus an 8yo and 4yo boys who won’t put their gloves until their halfway to school and their hands are already blue! The boy has insulated gloves and can work the gripshift ok in those.

Pogies are great. If there are any complaints about cold hands during January commutes I will get him a pair.

Seems like no kind of day to be dragging a small child out on a bike seat to me. Maybe if it’s cold and not too windy, or windy but not too cold… They’re not generating any warmth while sitting still. Do you have one of the hamax elasticated ponchos? They are pretty good for keeping the wind off, and you could pack the space under it with fleeces etc.

Whaddya mean you can’t find gloves for the 11yo? Would they tolerate bar mitt.pogies?

@kerley

I ride fixed gear brakeless

Why?

Anyone want to swap a pair of medium 3/4 lengths for the large pair I bought?

eBay, spa cycles, spokes from Ryan, cycle basket, various German shops :( are/were all good for wheelbuilding bargains.

Read Jobst Brandt’s book or Roger Musson’s.

Don’t calculate spoke lengths by longhand. Do measure the rim diameter yourself.

Top tip is to make sure you put the same amount of turns on each nipple as you build.

As @beefy says, this is very good advice. More generally, be methodical. Always start at the same point (the valve hole) and complete a full rotation of the wheel for each procedure.

I like these nipple loading and driving tools. https://forum.cyclinguk.org/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=117817 they help me get each nipple in the rim on to its spoke and screwed on a consistent number of times, without losing any in the rim.

They’re comparing to hard paraffin wax based types like molten speed wax. Afaict noone has compared putoline to those but it’ll probably be slightly less efficient but longer lasting.

You may be missing a few things. Unless the wheel is radially the spokes run on a tangent.

Dishing will also have an impact.

You should be able to find the measurements for most hubs online and it is always worth double checking that these are close with a ruler or calipers.

I would take extra care over all your calculations and measurements if you want to use an in-between spoke length. It is important they reach a sufficient depth into the nipple.

Well surface oxidation of mos2 does happen at lower temperatures and does affect the friction coefficient.

That’s interesting although it is I think a dry Mos2 coating they are looking at, rather than one suspended in wax or grease which would presumably slow or prevent oxidation?.

Hmm. How do we get from the refences I have looked at which say MoS2 will oxidise at high temps or in the presence of strong oxidisers to their claim? I have asked them or provide a reference for their claim that it will oxidise rapidly at room temp. Surely being suspended in wax will also reduce the potential for oxidation?

I’ve used a small slow cooker with homebrew wax in the past. It takes a long time to melt (like 45mins to 1hr). Putoline would probably melt a bit quicker as it’s softer to start with. If a slow cooker had a basket it might be OK to wait, but the basket just saves so much messing about trying to hook chains out of the wax and then suspend them above it. Inevitably one will fall in and splash hot wax around. I’d never go back to the crock pot/slow cooker. You can have mine for cost of postage.

I try to pre-emptively re-wax before squeaking occurs. Sometimes you can notice the chain getting a bit rattley before it starts to squeak. If it’s been wetter you can be fairly confident that you’ll need to rewax sooner than if it’s been dry.

You could polish the remaining wax off exterior to make it shiny if you wanted but I think it’s foolish.

IIRC corrently there’s already graphite (not graphene) in putoline. I added some ultrafine MoS2 to mine, just ’cause I had it from my homebrew wax use.

Never heard that oxidation spiel before and MoS2 is widely used as an industrial lubricant. Are they confused or are they just bloody lying to make their wax seem better???

They now report they’re staying open, I wonder if that’s linked to Brant?

We use a thin fleece balaclava for our 4yo.

have watched it. I don’t know what the cause is, but I certainly learned nothing about what it might be watching the video though, and that was my point.

That must’ve taken some effort on your part.

I can see that you might continue to disagree with the theory he puts forward as to the cause, but it seems to me that he explained that view quite clearly and at length. Much more likely you understand it very well and disagree with it, no?

Is there any way you can identify the witness or correct the phone number?

The planet X ones with the loose fit on the calf?

A BB shell’s faces need to be parallel to about .01mm (= bang on, if you like). That one is at least 1mm out.

I don’t see damage in use as a likely cause of this defect. It would take a fairly massive force to bend the BB shell and plate about a mm over a relatively short distance and there’s no evidence of any damage to the ISCG tabs or the shell, or indeed to the rest of the bike. You wouldn’t just see it on the face.

Of course, if you leave the face proud you could easily rectify that little aspect of the problems you’d when the frame is run over by a truck :)

There is the bigger problem, the machining on this particular frame could have been wonky but well within spec, with a normal bb that wouldn’t be an issue. The design (and therefore tolerances) of that threaded shell are donkey’s years old, it predates external bb and certainly 30mm external bb. Those newer designs don’t allow for wide variations in production. They cram more and more into the same space and remove the room for error so a BSA30 bb doesn’t actually fit a threaded shell at the upper limits of spec. That’s not a problem with the shell that’s a BB problem, that’s designing product a to work only with good examples of product bb.

Yes the frame might be badly built, it might be absolutely at the widest end of the design spec for the bb, seat tube, shatner’s bassoon but if it’s in spec and the kit bolted to it doesn’t work because it requires a more stringent spec that’s not a problem with the frame, it’s a problem of incompatible parts, in this case through poor design of the BB not accounting for the acceptable tolerance of the established design its supposed to fit.

No, you’ve fundamentally misunderstood the issue with this frame. If the bb faces are not parallel to the centreline of the bike and cannot be made parallel with standard bb facing tools you have failed to design and properly construct a bicycle frame at a very basic level.

If you want to design and produce frames that cannot be faced later you need to make sure they leave the factory pretty close to bang on and have sufficient quality control to ensure they all are within acceptable tolerance. It is far better to ensure that the BB face is proud of all obstructions so it can faced later with relatively simple and widely available handtools if required.

So many things to pick on?

Please explain how being second hand is relevant to the design flaw of leaving the BB face flush with the iscg mounts, which is very well explained by earlier posters on page 1.

He also explains why it is quite tough to machine a completed bike frame. Not sure why he didn’t just machine the whole face of the plate flat though. Maybe you’d like to explain how you’d have done it.

He also quite reasonably explains how the 30mm axle in a standard shell leads to a compromise on either the bearing size or the cup walls. Didn’t seem like he slams them for it.

Have a look at mini logo completes. (In proper recommend what you’ve got style)
I have been really impressed by the quality compared to the cheaper complete I had before. The faced hanger and 8mm axles are nice features.

Don’t be dense. It’s the same as case tracking versus population sampling for covid. Both tell you different things and it would be very difficult for an individual to attempt population sampling of bike frame quality, although it would be awesome if someorganisation did it.
It is perfectly valid to take the shit ones that are sold to the general public, show how shit they are and make inferences from that.

In several cases the buyers sought help at length from the retailer and manufacturer and not got a resolution or been told that they met the manufacturer’s tolerances.

I don’t expect a frame to be aerospace quality, just to be manufactured to a reasonable standard.
I expect the bad ones that don’t meet that standard to be identified by QC.
I expect the bad ones that someone poor punter like me buys to be repaired or replaced through good customer service.
I am glad that when that process doesn’t work properly someone points it out.

So you’d spend 1300 quid on a frame and console yourself with the hope that everyone else’s is working fine and suck it up when they tell you it is within tolerance? Don’t think so.

That what Quality Control is for.

What he sees as catastrophic failures are, in the vast majority of cases, good enough for the intended use within a budget.

Bullshit. They weren’t good enough for the intended use which is why their owners sent them to him to investigate and fix, presumably at some cost.

That man needs an editor.

Two words. Predator drone.

@TroutWrestler

If the former, you <might> be able to simply glue it back into place. I would recommend a very thin layer of a flexible waterproof adhesive. It will be held in place by the compression force when done up. You just need to make sure it doesn’t get misplaced when removing/refitting the wheel.

I think troutwrestler has a good point. It looks like that is a steel piece designed to bear against the dropout face. Maybe it was originally pressed onto the black aluminium piece and has got sheared off, possibly because it has caught on the dropout during insertion.

If you carefully remove the broken silver sliver then glue the washer back on with a dab of epoxy, as they say, it’s all held in compression by the QR forces once the wheel is in.

OTOH if you are able to get into a decathlon store they might well have some of those in their parts bins.

A steamroller had some features that are good but lacks mudguard and pannier mounts.

An important question is where did the spoke break because this might tell you something about the likelihood of more breaking.

At the elbow, at the nipple or in the middle?

Do you even commute bro? 😁

Nice rims.

Ryde Zac2000 rims are 12 quid each on eBay, plus the same again for postage, so 36 quid for a pair from Germany. Very solid for commuting. 19mm internal width.

Aren’t the whitelines rebranded kinlin rims? You could get a pair of various kinlins from spa for not much money.

Alpina butted spokes are 25p each from cycle basket, plus postage so I overestimated. Various plain gauge spokes can be bought for a similar price. Spend the 50p I quoted and you can buy Sapim or DT butted spokes from Ryan in Bristol. No box of 100 required. Similarly you can sometimes find the length you need on eBay.

I’m all for weighing up the cost of repair Vs replacement and not throwing good money after bad etc, but the truth is he might get away with a repair for a couple of quid in the best case scenario, if he gets the two he needs now plus a few spares.

Brilliant. They’ll be on my commuter from mid November to late February, just like last year. I keep meaning to add a vent to mine, which are made of neoprene.

Decent spokes cost 50p each.

Have they all broken in the same set (e.g., drive side trailing)? If so you’ve now replaced nearly half that set. I would either replace the two or possibly replace all the remaining original spokes from the set. Then thoroughly, possibly brutally, stress relieve the wheel, watching for any more that may break during that process.