Go to any building and when in walk round where you like wearing just a hi viz bib and carry a clip board or tablet,using a tape measure or laser measure ensures youre never bothered

I did that quite a few times when urbexing :D

Ling Valentine
LINGsCARS.com
World Headquarters
Vance Business Park
Gateshead
NE11 9NE

I am so going to start adding this to my address too…

Underneath the dayglo wrapping, Ling’s place is a very functional ecommerce website.

The same, ahem, can not be said for STW and its adverts.

What on earth do you mean, this forum was cutting edge in 2004!

I’ve just had one – person won an auction for a very rare carbon fibre recumbent. But then couldn’t pay right away because of some payment problem with eBay. And he’s in Romania but his profile says USA. And he messaged asking about a different bike. And he only had 15 points. So I cancelled the sale. I just didn’t want to take the risk.

It was astounding – the scene with the rays leaping, then the underwater phosphorescence…

Entering in to the spirit of the discussion (i.e. not what the most expensive thing I can carry) then it’d probably be a book or two – first edition of Origin of Species or Principia. Though I do like the fossil idea. Maybe a pile of moon rocks.

I wonder what the response would be from the defenders on here if the OP had done the same to Ben.

I have had people cancel things – if it’s before it’s actually been manufactured then no problem, if it’s afterwards then it’s tricky. I did have someone years ago order a custom electric trike then refuse the delivery because the mudguard was bent in transit to her – I gave her a full refund, but it was a struggle to sell it on again and I lost quite a bit on that.

I got my revenge, though – she later needed to sell some bikes and I got them at a very good price. So made my money back eventually ;-)

I keep pop and beer in ours as it’s nice and cool.

How does Pop feel about this?

Too true but as a bespoke maker you’re on a better footing for cancellation charges than a car leasing broker ordering cars with standard options.

A lot of the things I do – recumbents, custom Bromptons etc – are very like a car in that they’re built to order from a fixed list of options. So by some definitions quoted on this thread, they’re not really “custom”. But I have to pay for them in advance and can’t return them if my customer changed their mind.

As someone who sells custom-made expensive things, this has been an interesting discussion to watch.

Horizontal dropouts but you can tension the chain with the EBB.

Be careful doing this, normal horizontal dropouts aren’t designed for the torque of the OEM axle plate. I’ve seen dropouts bent open by doing this. Beefy ones you’ll probably be okay, more slender ones I wouldn’t risk it.

My last prime order took 9 months. I no longer use Amazon.

You ordered a baby?

See if they pay up?

What is it, what is it??????

Catheter-to-waterbottle adapter.

Did he work for Halfords?

Funnily enough, I suggested he go look in Halfords. Never heard from him again.

I’ve signed lots of NDAs for bike inventions. About half the time, I can then advise the inventor that their invention has already been invented*.

It’s pretty unlikely you’ll find a company to just buy or license the idea from you, so you have two choices – go into mass production yourself, or go into small batch production yourself.

First option requires lots of investment, and definitely you would want to get it patented/registered. Second option, just accept you have a limited window before (if it’s a good idea) someone rips it off, so make hay while the sun shines then get out with some profit and minimal risk.

*the best was the guy who spent £20k on designs, injection mould tooling etc for his radical new invention – a license plate holder to attach to bike racks.

Ben did you get the small pliers that look like they have had a hole drilled into them ?

That’s the one – I think what it’s for is compressing the braids to get the olive on. At least that’s what I use it for!

Hope make a special tool for this – I got one, and it came with zero instructions ;-) But I think what you do is use it to compress the cut end a little to get the new olive on.

Overtook a guy this morning who had a series or TV playing on his dash-mounted phone

Sitting behind another car in Glasgow, I wondered why there was someone sitting backwards in-between the front seats. then I realised the driver was Facetiming someone on a full-sized iPad stuck to the middle of his windscreen.

I think most of this can be explained by the statistic that 90% of drivers think they’re better than average.

(that might be made up, and probably only applies to male drivers)

No, that’ll be Brexit as well I expect.

Is this what it’s like being a Brexiteer? You show someone a large economic impact which hasn’t happened in more than 10 years, and they still try to deny that Brexit had anything to do with it?

I think Ben linked the wrong page possibly, the 2017 figure is a prediction.

http://www.bikebiz.com/news/read/uk-cycle-industry-predicted-to-sell-1-million-fewer-bikes-this-year/022040#after-ad

I linked the page which has the stats for earlier years. But yes, that’s the page for this year, predicted figures of course.

Brexit probably had nothing to do with the closure of the shop in Ilkley or Steel’s in Gosforth

In the same way that climate change didn’t cause Hurricane Ophelia in particular, but it makes such hurricanes more likely. Is there anything else which happened in 2016/17 which would explain such a big drop in sales?

Has anyone got figures for bike sales up to and since 2012? I suspect that sales boomed then and have been steadily dropping since.

If someone gets bored they could look at the CONEBI stats, but from this article:

2005: 3.9m
2010: 3.6m
2013: 3.4m
2014: 3.6m
2016: 3.5m
2017: 2.5m

That big a change, in one year?

Enough to have that big an impact in one year, coincidentally the same year as Brexit? Hmm.

but the reality is that it’s us lot shopping online that has brought the traditional bike shop to their knees.

Suddenly loads more people shopping online in 2017 compared to 2016? I don’t buy it. When businesses collapse, there’s almost always several causes which add up, but to pretend that Brexit hasn’t had a big impact is daft.

30% drop in sales in one year, 1m fewer bikes sold. That’s not a coincidence.

Dyson. Used to be an interesting Brit inventor making expensive but good stuff in the UK. Now is a Brexit-loving sellout who shifted production to the Far East.

We’re going to see a lot more of this, sadly – BikeBiz was reporting that bike sales are down 30% this year compared with last year, that’s 1 million fewer bikes. It’s a perfect storm of Brexit, internet sales, Brexit, changing consumer behaviour, and Brexit.

ou missed the play on words then. The term was posted above images of different characters played by Jim Carey.

Was he in a film where he couldn’t spell extrovert as well?

(I know it can be spelled either way, but that’s the first thing in the video that bugged me)

The human brain is the most complex thing we know of in the universe. The idea that it can be simplified to 5 types that fit onto a neat diagram is nonsense. But it’s what I’d expect from a non-science.

I feel quite guilty about this one, but we had a geography teacher who had a habit of leaning on his filing cabinet – one day we moved it a foot to the left, he missed the cabinet, and knocked himself out on the wall.

An old ‘un but a good ‘un:

He lost me at “Extraversion” – if you can’t even spell your own woolly psychological concepts then you have got no chance of explaining the most complex thing in the universe in a 20-minute video.

Water-cooled cold saw, now modified with precision calibrated end stop. So, so quick to cut things to length and leaves very little in the way of burrs behind.

First repair was a broken mech hanger , second was a gear issue.

Ah, the classic symptoms of a child dropping the bike when they get off.

A 400bhp Volvo estate? My uncle was building them decades ago ;-)

https://jalopnik.com/5540957/the-ford-powered-volvo-wagon-paul-newman-built

<Ben Kenobi voice>

GoFar? That’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time. A long time.

</Ben Kenobi voice>

Newspeak for doing the admin prior to your starting work. I had that from a cult I once joined, aka a well-known three letter abbreviation-based Merkan IT company.

Must post-date my membership of that cult ;-)

Dave!

Yes, by the way.

Just got my copy, it is very good.

I know this puts me in a minority on this forum, but cutting though a part to make it fit easier isn’t a brilliant idea – you wouldn’t do it with the cups ;-)

TJ, this eBay auction might amuse you:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/J-L-1-1-8-30mm-Crown-Race-fit-Threaded-Ball-bearing-Headset-for-Brompton-3g-/292053457250

It’s aluminium too :D

If you get one with adjustable sensitivity, you can use that to fine-tune where something is. I use bits of masking tape on the wall to mark signals, it’s a bit like playing Minehunt ;-)

Definitely most accurate for live electrical, less accurate for metal pipework, not much better than guesswork for plastic pipes and studs.

I’ve given up trail polishing, I was getting addicted – I’ve taken the Pledge.