Eyerideit – thank you!
Ben

If you’ve got a fear of flying, have you considered wearing it on you head for the duration of the flight?

I used to carry it on as carry-on luggage. You may not get away with that now. I’ve since flown with XC lids and it’s not an issue – but they’re a lot smaller.

Bear in mind that using a QR with horizontal dropouts is sub-optimal – you need to do it up pretty tight to prevent movement on the drive side (lots of power pulling the wheel forward) and disc side (assuming you’re using discs) pulling it all over the shop. A chain tug solves this, but then s does a nice bolt-up hub like a DMR Revolver, which can run QR or bolt up.

I’ve used track ends (horizontal dropouts) and EBB, and EBB is pretty amazing. I’ve not had the creaking issues Nick mentions *so far* after two years, but YMMV. IMHO each method has its flaws – you pays yer money…

Dorking Advertiser a few years back. Front page lead.

Man lying in road hit by car

I’m working, and I rode my bike. Mind you, when I get home, and am not working, I may ride my bike too. For fun, like.

Spokeys are better than the Park jobs:

Better grip on the nipple – far less rounding. The red one is for the most common size.

One thing that may well be hindering spending on improving or maintaining these trail centres is the amount of dosh required to pick up all the litter lying by the side of these trails. I was up at Afan over the weekend for the first time in about a year, and I lost count of the number of different bits of rubbish lying by the side of the trail.

aside from donating dosh, one constructive thing to do is pick up a few bits near you when you stop. It all helps, and it also helps balance out the damage done by selfish farktards who drop it in the first place.

Hummingbird:

[/url]
Hummingbird[/url] by bent udder[/url], on Flickr

Just really nice angles. Does gears and singlespeed. Perfect handling at 120mm. Also has a rigid 29er fork option, which is very pleasant as well. It’s very adaptable, in short – which you either will or will not be looking for. If I had to sell all but one bike, I’d be keeping the Singular. Or maybe plumping for the Ti version…

Sam[/url] may have a few left in your size at £260, but if not, I hear rumours of a new version in the works.

That said, Cotic Soul is a smasher. And if you want to go custom, a custom Curtis looks (and I imagines rides) AMAZING. Especially in clearcoat – they are very, very nice looking bikes.

Did you grease the pawls or the engagement ring? If the grease is really sticky (ie, really good stuff) then it can impair the movement of the pawls because it’s too sticky.

MY EYES! AAARGH!

719s on something that slack? Jeepers. get some wider rims, and you’ll probably find you’re riding a bit quicker and feeling a lot more confident. unless they were built by a cockeyed squirrel on crack, or course. YMMV.

I rode it on the Sunday of my stag weekend. I couldn’t see straight. It was still fun (and I had to ride it with pink bar tassles and a nice big pink horn on the bars).

I’m lucky enough to have smashing natural (and not a few pixied) trails at my doorstep, so riding a trail centre is a rare treat – maybe once or twice a year. It makes a refreshing change.

Huge windage on a bike and a roofrack.

If you can get away with bikes in back and possibly a top box, you’ll be better off.

A friend got better mileage by putting his bikes on a rear-mounted carrier and taking the wheels off.

From past (dinghy and yacht racing) experience, you would be surprised at the windage created by a small diameter object – added up, the cross section can be huge, if you’re talking something like a 10m long piece of 6mm spectra.

It could be a bunch of other things too, of course:

Tyre choice

Spoke tension / build

Tyre pressure

Not used to tubeless

QR tension – wheel shifts in dropouts

Wheel bearings shot

Suspension linkage bearings shot

Shock bushings shot

Too many pies

Try borrowing a friend’s rear wheel to see if you get the same problem. If not, put the Nevegal on it and see if the problem comes back. Try your wheels in a different bike, and see if the problem replicates there. Add more air, or stick a tube in. Change one thing at a time, ride and repeat.

In short, don’t jump to conclusions about the rim – try removing or changing one aspect and seeing if that changes things. As a side note, I sold on a perfectly good Magura / Stan’s Olympic wheelset a few years ago because I found it simply too flexy when loaded into corners. The tension, round and true of the wheel were flawless, but I simply didn’t have the same squirmyness when I put the same QRs and tyres / tubes on a different wheel.

5’4″ and riding a 17 inch frame? Jeepers.

Maybe also see if you can find a Trek WSD hardtail frame second hand – 14″ or 15″ would be perfect. It will probably weigh a small fraction of the Inbred, too. At that size, weight is pretty critical – my wife (also 514″ tried a number of bikes, including a 17″ Kona a friend loaned her – but was really comfortable on another friend’s WSD, and eventually bought one of her own. She lends it out to a lot of other ladies, and they also rave about it.

A couple of things; there are two general classes of brake fluid – DOT and mineral oil. Don’t mix the two, either in bleed kits or brakes. If you have a bleed kit that uses mineral oil (Maguras, from memory, are mineral) then don’t use it to bleed brakes that take DOT fluid, or put DOT fluid in them – it’ll do horrible things.

I haven’t ever bled Maguras, so don’t have any knowledge of that system, but I have bled a *lot* of Hope, Formula / Avid (Formula designed the early Avid brakes, so there are similarities) and Shimano.

A couple of general tips:

* Take your time

* Be prepared to take it to a friendly local shop and pay them to do it properly should you make a mistake

* Find as many instructional videos or manuals as possible for our model of brake, and read up / watch them. Magura’s manuals can be found here: http://www.magura.com/en/service/downloads.html

* You don’t always need a fancy bleed kit – sometimes a spanner, a length of tubing and a yoghurt pot is all you need.

* Your local bike shop can be really helpful here – assuming you’ve gone to the trouble of making friends and buying from them regularly. You can probably get tips from the mechanic in exchange for beer / donuts / cake. You can’t get this sort of thing from an online bike shop, which is why it’s worth supporting good local bike shops, IMO.

Is Freeborn donating money to Hurtwood Control, like the other shops that run demo days in the area do?

Witness sounds like a hoot.

Yeah, the frame is great – if I don’t ride in, I just slide the frame out of the bag and it turns into a soft courier-alike bag. :)

Brompton S2L three speed here. I bought it in November and use it on a 6 miles each way commute into Hammersmith each morning. I train it in from Dorking to Wimbledon, and ride the rest. Two mildly biggish hills – Wimbledon and Putney – in the way, and a bit of riverside bridleway riding between Putney and Hammersmith bridges, too.

There are usually about half a dozen folders on my train every day, and every one is a Brompton. You occasionally see Dahons, but they don’t seem to be used much by the people that own them. The fold seems awkward, and when folded, they make for a big package. If you are regularly hopping on a train, the Bromptons fold smallest and stay folded – a lot of the others don’t seem to stay clipped together when folded.

The new grips (Mine was a 2011 model) seem to hold up very well – give them a try before going for lock on jobs.

One thing about the expense of Bromptons – they hold their value really, really well. Jon – you got a bargain at £350!

The front bag that clips to the headtube is awesome, by the way – if you commute daily, it’s a real bonus. I chuck a laptop, loads of random things, wet weather gear, tubes, tools, water and clothing in it. Well worth the slightly jaw-dropping price in my opinion.

SPDs are a great investment, too, as is the built in rear light that fits on the reflector bracket.

I think I’ve done somewhere north of 900 miles on it so far, with just a new chin and sprocket to pay for.

Just get a Brompton – you won’t regret it.

I bought a trekking one as a singlespeed chainset – sold the 48t (they’re pretty expensive on their own, so make sure you get a good price) and used the money to buy single ring chainring bolts, then turned my other bike from a 3×9 to a 2×9 with a 26 / 36 up front. Works a treat, and it came out lighter, even with the steel Deore rings.
The cranks are absolutely cracking value. I’d suggest that if you’re putting it on a child’s bike, make sure you get the crank length correct and choose the smaller ratios – I’d say 170mm, 22/32/44 unless your daughter is over about 5’7″.

[edit] – what Edric said above – make sure you get the BB shell faced before fitting. Improves the longevity no end. :)

All true, yes. Production quality also tends to be a bit better after ownership transferred to Sunrace in 2001.

I might be interested in the wheel for my commuter. Drop me a mail, if you see this.

It’s a bit more complicated than that usually – maybe speak to Specsavers beforehand to make sure the frames you’re thinking of getting will accept prescription lenses.

Optilabs in Croydon: http://www.optilabs.com/
Really good if you have a strong prescription (I’m -6.5) and a fraction of the cost of Oakley etc (and Oakley don’t go that strong). I got a pair a few years ago and they transformed my riding. Before then I’d been using Adidas Gazelles and Evil Eyes with the prescription insert thing, which sort of works, but can be a pain when it’s raining heavily or particularly humid.
Optilabs has a nice big showroom where you can try different styles, or they’ll mail you a bunch of frames to try, then make up the lenses. Can’t recommend them highly enough.

The Anthem will do everything you’ve described – and do it very well.

At this stage (hell, at any stage) don’t worry about the kit, worry about whether you’re having fun.

I used to race on world cup downhill courses years ago on a bike with less travel than your Anthem, and V brakes instead of discs. It was slower, but it was still a hoot.

Enjoy the bike you’re riding.

Sound like there’s a niche appearing for the smaller companies to exploit.
Microshift’s thumb shifters

Way ahead of ya, Mostly:

[/url]
Retrotastic[/url] by bent udder[/url], on Flickr

Velo Orange mounts, Dia Compe downtube shifters. When I get ’round to putting gears on my Singular Hummingbird, these are the shifters I’ll use.

32:16 – have also run 36:18 for more chain wrap and less wear. All on a 26″ bike.

Has anyone confirmed this with the managers at Hammsterley? Might want to get it confirmed, post up an email from them rather than blindly forward this on – no-one has actually confirmed this has happened.

Use the supplied rigid forks for the Hummingbird – very worthwhile.

[/url]
Genesis Io 69er conversion[/url] by bent udder[/url], on Flickr

[/url]
Hummingbird as a Penny Farthing[/url] by bent udder[/url], on Flickr

I own a Hummingbird, and run it mostly as a 26″ bike with 120mm Maguras on the front. I do use it fairly frequently with a 29″ front wheel and the supplied rigid fork, and it does fly like a fast thing. A couple of things; as above, you may want to get a custom-designed 69er – the Carver, Trek and Singular Hummingbird seem to do this pretty well.

The only downsides I’ve found are that the front wheel rolls far more easily over things than the rear, which can lead to the rear hooking up every now and then. However, it’s a ‘first ten minutes of the first ride’ sort of thing – once you understand it, you can militate against it.

Second thing? I had to try a few 29er tyres before I found one that suited me and the tyre on the back of my bike – a 2.1 Advantage. Bizarrely, it was Kenda Nevagal, which I never got on with as a 26″ tyre. I switch between that and a Racing Ralph. It does *feel* like you get a lot more grip out of a 29″ tyre.

Overall? First time I rode it, I overtook someone on a FS bike down Park Life on Hombury Hill. Rigid, with one gear. :D

*edit* Oh, and Singular Sam has some large sized Hummingbirds still going, discounted to silly money.

I rent out as well. We’ve actually given our tenant a rent reduction by cutting out the estate agent, who was charging a management fee for collecting the rent each month. We cut the saving in half. The tenant is excellent and has been in the flat for ~five years. I’d much rather have a tenant like that – worth it in terms of a complete lack of hassle.

A good Shimano crank does the job pretty well – I’ve run XT and Deore with no problems. Middleburn looks pretty nice in my book. I’ve also seen a few Hive cranks around on 1×10 / singlespeed set ups. If you’re looking for super pimpy, you might want to look at the Singular Cycles site – Sam runs Campy carbon cranks on a lot of his bikes, and they look really rather lovely.

This one.[/url] – get it running right, and it’s a dream. You might need a bunch of processor and sensor hardware mind – find it here: WTP3[/url].

Alternatively, try Strava and Nike+ GPS. I like both. Adidas do a running app, too – not tried it, but a friend swears by it.

Not sure about the science bit, but I quite like building wheels with not-massively-light-but-still-good hubs (XT is CHEAP these days) and nice light spokes and rims. Then – and this is the important bit – add some nice supple tyres set up as tubeless jobs. ie, XT / DT Comps / Stan’s 355s or Flows / Maxxis adVantages.

Rotating weight is one thing, but tyre size, minimal rolling resistance and sidewall flexibility is another factor. Nice tyres at the right pressure make a lot of difference too, imho.

Should have gone for the flat bar version (I’ve got one) – plenty of room for a shifter.

I suppose I shouldn’t ask, but, well, why?

Can’t imagine radial on that small a wheel will be low stress, and that’s one hell of a hub shell to crack, cost-wise.

Charge a pittance for parking, but steal all the Audis and fence them to Eastern Europe.

If you need to top up your funds, mug the owners for their 3K bikes, too. :twisted:

As above posts, feel free to mail me if I can be of help – although Ian’s still your man, I reckon – top fella.

Try Ethan on MTBR – he’s started a thread about what Mav owners can do now there’s no Maverick anymore. :( He might have some spares – worth a shot.

I ride bikes. I like riding bikes. I used to ride (many years ago) a very light KHS team made from steel tubing. I bended it. Replaced it with a DeKerf, which was a heavier frame, again made from steel. I rode that for about 10 years without bending it, and loved it. The current owner has had it for about three years, and loves it (and hasn’t bent it).
I still ride a steel frame – a small Hummingbird. It has lovely light Magura Durins, carbon bars and seatpost and no gears.

I don’t give a toss what it weighs.

It’s a cracking ride. The seatpost and bars make it more comfortable, and possibly even a little lighter.

If I wanted lightweight, I’d work on the extra lard I’m carrying around myself first.

Don’t sweat an extra pound or two of frame weight – worry about what it feels like to ride.

I seem to remember seeing some numbers here recently showing that FC made a loss on mountain biking activities. The FC has no insurance costs, as it’s a government organisation that self-insures.

I was approached by the Forestry some years back with a proposal that the group I was in lease a chunk of FC land that we’d built trails on (with FC co-operation) for a set number of years. I don’t think I’m breaking any confidences by saying that.

At the time, the group was composed entirely of volunteers, ran happily on a tiny budget (tools, insurance and a cake fund for lunch for people who turned up at build days). We regularly talked to a variety of different landowners and local groups (including the council rights of way peeps, the county access forum, and the AONB group and advised on mountain biking issues and lobbied for action on behalf of mountain bikers.

The cost of the lease itself (for an area far smaller than 250 acres -think maybe 60-odd) equalled our total budget for three years, before we started paying for insurance. We couldn’t fence the area off and charge for access (and really, really didn’t want to) didn’t have the means to pay staff to raise funds, couldn’t organise races on the site (lots of great local venues already, lots of RoWs across the site, previous experience of watching a very dedicated and passionate DH race organiser work himself into the ground to make a small loss, year after year) and simply had no idea of how to make it pay. We said no. We got three more years out of the organisation, talked to lots of landowners and continue to have a positive impact on mountain biking in the area. There are volunteers who worked on the org who are now doing cracking stuff with other landowners. None of this would have happened if we’d said yes.

My advice? Talk to Ian Warby at CTC. He did all of this with Firecrest over a decade ago, and he knows the ins and outs like nobody’s business. Really – talk to him.

Very interested in this, but can’t see it on the MTB-direct site. Any chance of a link?