After working in retail for a long time before my current job

No wonder you’re that way out, i feel sorry for you for having to work in retail.

smug little sh*te!

I think some people are just on here for the troll.

On the flip side i just emailed Triton Cycles and within one minute i had a response. Now THAT is good customer service!

And anyone else who wants to slag me for having to resort to expletives to get what i am entitled to as a consumer, i hope you get royally f^cked :)

Goodbye!

Oh Dear. Thanks DezB at least someone finds it useful.

I am honest that’s all, and human.

But do you always resolve disputes with expletive laden outbursts

No, do you?

It obvoiusly worked.

Junkyard was that from BikeInn.com?

Ah yes, but have you actually received your refund yet? I’m sure they will be falling over themselves to process it.

I am slightly worried about this. It’s wednesday so we will see how many days it takes to pay it back into my paypal account.

By the way they are Spanish so basically overseas. I had a similar experience with a Chinese Ebay seller recently who made up an excuse that a lens i bought had been lost by Royal Mail. Then they said that they had one left in stock, but that it was broken. The item was a very popular Yongnuo 35mm f/2 lens that was selling for normal price, which is unusual as it’s been going for double online.

An American Ebay company called Shoe Metro (or Apparelsave as they are called on ebay) sold me the shoes i wanted at a knockdown price without a box, next thing i know i get an email from a company called “Customs Clearance Ltd.” wanting £13.75 in handling and taxes to release my item, claiming they are working as a middle man for UK Customs. They say that if i refuse the payment then the item will be destroyed and i won’t get a refund, Ebay are looking into this for me.

Three items, three dodgy sellers!!

I would advise to pay a little bit more at the moment and stick to UK sellers as there seems to be a lot of bad blood about online.

Dissappointing news.

Does anyone know how this is coming along? Have they started/finished?

You are paying hundreds (thousands?) of pounds for your mountain bike parts and maybe £20 or so to enter the competition and you’re complaining about £6 for a photo?

This is exactly why there are no good photographers on the market these days – because all the experienced photogs have been undercut by casual amateurs who do a half arsed job! And why is this? It’s because tight fisted punters like you on their fancy expensive mountain bikes think that £6 is a lot of money to pay for a photograph which will remind them of their special day for years to come.

To succeed as a photographer is so difficult these days, there is a huge outlay for decent camera equipment, cameras cost thousands and so do quality lenses. And then there’s the cost of hosting the website that you’re downloading from. And the cost of running the car that takes the photographer to the venue…tax, MOT, insurance, petrol, repairs. And the time it takes to get there. Then there’s the time it takes to hang around all day taking the shots (you probably think that’s the easy bit but to get a GOOD shot takes planning, skill and experience). And then at the end of the day you have to upload your couple of hundred shots onto the computer (a fast high spec one helps). And then you have to post process the shots which takes hours and hours! How much do you get paid an hour again?!! And then you have to upload them all onto your website, which also takes ages.

And then if you’re lucky about 20 mountain bikers like you will find it within themselves to part with the massive amount £6 for a brilliant reminder of their day that took all that effort to bring to fruition, instead of putting it towards their next bike part. So after a full day’s work driving to the venue to get there early to scope out the track and find the best vantage points and figure out whether to use flash or not and stay for the race and drive home and process the images on the expensive computer and upload them to the website….

…they make £120.

And after you take off all the overheads above, they might break even by doing 40 or 50 similar jobs. And then they can start thinking about paying the mortgage.

Don’t confuse the camber with the camber evo, the evo versions are slacker and more fun. Can’t tell you much about the stumpy as I haven’t looked into it but I guess it’s more travel

Its a reba. Not a bad fork actually for starters. For the price it has a very sorted spec the drivetrain is crisp and smooth, deore brakes are excellent. Nice wide bars, slackish and low bb. Big grippy tyres. You wont be dissappointed

I think I know what you mean, you still want to be able to feel some of the trail features that you’re used to on your hardtail. It’s amazing how much faster you can go though, because the chatter doesn’t slow you down so you look to pick your way through the medium bumps and negotiate the big ones instead of picking your way through the small bumps and negotiating the medium ones, if that makes sense.

140 (ish) mm travel bikes have come a long way in the last few years, they’re fun and involving and to maintain speed you still need to pick your lines and work the trail. You can still feel the small bumps but they don’t slow you down like they do on a hardtail but at the same time if you have the skills and confidence you can tackle some quite big jumps and drops etc.

I’ve just gone from a heckler to a camber evo, my heckler has 125mm rear and 150mm front and the camber evo has 120mm travel front and rear. Heckler 26″ wheels, camber 29″ wheels. The difference in travel terms is subtle because the bigger wheels roll easier over bumps but with 150mm forks up front the heckler definitely has the edge over very rough terrain. The camber is a much better pedaller though and flies up hills that the heckler struggled with….long road climbs become shorter and easier, but this is not just because it has less travel but it has a more sophisticated pivot (heckler is single pivot) and bigger wheels.

They are both wicked fun bikes. Compared to mine, the new heckler has more rear wheel travel and bigger wheels so I can only guess that it’s a beast and both climbs and descends better that my 2003 version. But the camber evo is a different fish, it has enough travel to be both fun and involving, it loves rock gardens and is so lively and pops off of lips and drops and just pedals so much better, the big tyres just eat stuff for breakfast that my 26″ heckler would need me to unweight to get over smoothly. The only think I can’t do as easily on my evo that I can see is pick up the front end and put it down where I want it but that’s definitely more to do with the fact that it’s a 29er. So in that sense the heckler is more fun than the camber on super tight and technical trails. And I do sometimes miss the extra travel up front.

I honestly thought I’d sell my heckler straight away but I can’t, it’s too much fun and has too many good memories attached. Although I suspect you’d be more of a camber evo man?

Kd48 what did you think of the tyres that were on there?

Thing is, I used to run 38 and 40 psi in my 26″ wheeled heckler. I set it up to roll as fast as possible and still corner and just set the suspension to absorb most of the bumps. Brilliant bike. Camber is definitely a different animal

Yeah it felt pretty good but this whole 29er thing is new to me, sounds like as low as you can go is the way forward! I do use a few roads to connect the good bits so I like to keep rolling resistance to a minimum on the back, running a small block eight on my heckler but can’t find it in a 2.3 29er? Guess that’s the trouble with big wheels there just isn’t the choice of tyres. I’ll keep it at around 30 and see how it goes. Thanks for the input!

Fathomer apart from the HDR, those pics are lovely.

I’ve got a test ride booked for Sunday on the new Camber Evo so i’m a little bit excited to say the least! Hopefully the weather will be as nice as this 8)

Of course I wasn’t implying anything by that, merely making an observation. No need to go on the defensive. I mean it’s not like anyone is implying anything about the fact you’re always on here.

Aracer, junkyard and cynic-al, you’ve all been on here a long time haven’t you?

Cynic-al and aracer are wearing them right now. They have six pointing in all different directions at the different computer screens.

cynic-al – Member

Wow Bomberman and LHS are even bigger trolls/car-lovers/cyclist-haterz/idiots than I imagined.
*adds to list*

Why cynic-al? Just because we aren’t jumping on the “look what a dickhead the range rover driver is” bandwagon?

Everyone is entitled to an opinion and mine is that this whole thing has been blown out of proportion and both the driver and the cyclist overreacted. They are both dickheads, but based on the Hakka performance I would say that the driver is the bigger dickhead out of the two.

Now if you’ve a problem with me expressing my opinion on this forum then you better take it up with the mods hadn’t you?

Edric 64 – Member
“oh come on is” hardly making a big deal ffs .I would have gone nuts from the start

He couldn’t go too nuts as he was filming.

If you are going to start a fight with another road user you should at least be prepared to finish it, not whimper like a dog with it’s tail between it legs.

LOL to the both of them, and LOL to the trolls on here. You know who you are

He is a troll just ignore him LHS. A pathetic trouble maker.

With regards to the distress in the cyclists voice, I didn’t hear that distress when the guy was in his car and he shouts “oh come on”. Only when the he gets out and threatens to knock his teeth down his throat (lovely). THEN he is distressed. Mind you I’d be distressed at that point, and probably wishing I hadn’t made such a f*cking big deal out of it in the first place.

Well said LHS, someone who is intelligent enough to see the argument from both perspectives.

As opposed to:

I just wanted to be a Troll for 5 minutes.

When the driver made his initial overtake, he actually clipped the cyclist with his wing mirror. Its at this point the cyclist first shouts.

Notice the driver straighten the mirror near the end of the clip? That’s from the initial collision, before anyone says anything.

I didn’t see that. I thought that had occurred during the exchange that followed

Hey i’m not condoning the way the guy drove, i’m just saying the cyclist overreacted. If it were me i would have just driven on the other side of the road. I try and leave at least a metre between me and the cyclist, not just a foot like this guy did. He’s a cock there’s no doubt about it but what followed made both of them look bad.

I watched a programme last night where a German girl had been run over by a lorry. It crushed her pelvis and severed her artery. They cut her chest open on the side of the road, one guy clamped her aorta with his fingers while the other guy massaged her heart in his hand. In the end she died.

I don’t know what happened before the accident but having seen that and seen what road rage does to people i’d think twice before getting involved with a 2.8 tonne car. Where did shouting get him? He is lucky the crazy Aussie didn’t mow him down.

There is a massive asymmetry in the relationship between a cyclist and a driver.

So obviously this is why it’s OK for cyclists to run red lights and pull out suddenly in front of people, because they are so small and vulnerable that they couldn’t possibly do any damage.

Like someone said earlier, they are both a couple of pansies.

did you watch the same video as me?

I watched a video where a guy in a range rover drove a bit too close to a cyclist. What happened after was much messier.

I’m not a community, I’m an individual.

To some people you’re a “them” and they’re an “us”. Don’t be so naive as to think it’s a good idea to pick a fight with a lunatic driving two tonnes of steel. You won’t win.

It’s the same with any fight isn’t it? either you get involved or you let it slide.

I’m glad the guy in the range rover is being named and shamed but i still think it’s six of one and half a dozen of the other.

You’re probably going to flame me here but i think they were both in the wrong. The driver should have picked a better place to overtake but he had to move in afterwards to avoid the oncoming traffic and I don’t think the driver was close enough to the cyclist to warrant his shouting. The car was in front of him so why not just use the brakes? He took it far too personally if you ask me. The contact only came AFTER the slanging match had started and it looks to me like both the cyclist and the driver wanted that to happen. I mean why, if you’re the cyclist, pick a fight with a tonne of metal and glass?

I’ve been driving in London and i’m also a cyclist so i try and show respect but there are some flipping chancers there who try and squeeze through tiny gaps and run red lights etc, they don’t do the cycling community any favours at all.

Every section of the community has it’s idiots and these two clearly deserve eachother.

150 Rev 15mm works well on a Heckler.

That’s what i would go for. I also have a 1 1/8″ heckler from 2003, used to have a QR fox 32 Talas on it and then i got a 150mm Revelation RLT Ti which has a 20mm maxle and the difference is great, it’s the perfect amount of travel for me and loads plusher and stiffer than the fox 32 ever was. It just ploughs through stuff the talas would wince at.

The problem is you’re limited with the 1 1/8″ steerer so you can’t access the new generation of forks but a 150mm Rev would be perfect unless you want another 10mm travel but then you step up to something like an older fox 36 and you take a weight penalty.

Also, i would recommend not going for anything with adjustable travel like a Talas or a dual air rock shox as you take a compromise in the damping. So stay away from 2-step, dual air or talas.

Yeah that is really useful thanks Compass. I suspected the Bronson would be better at climbing. I guess the single pivot heckler is more heavily reliant on what shock it uses.

engineeringcowboy, how much do you want for it? I need a 200 x 50mm but it’ll take anything from a 50mm stroke to a 57mm stroke, as long it’s 200mm eye to eye.

Hecklers are short in the toptube so will never be brilliant climbers.

Longer top tube bikes make better climbers? Why is this then?

Chapking i like the look of the camber evo, not sure i’d get on with only a 120mm fork though coming from this

Kojaklollipop its not for sale just yet but i am going to take your advice and try a newer shock and see if that makes any difference. And maybe some lower bars. i like the forks so they can stay.

If i do decide to sell i’ll probably try to sell it as a complete bike, i was thinking about keeping it for the girlfriend but its just a tad too big for her. I really dont know if i could do it!

If you compare its geometry and capability to todays “enduro” bikes there really isn’t that much difference, you wouldnt think it was made in 2003. i could put lighter stuff and a 1×11 on it and nobody would know the difference ;-)

Yeah and they do the TRA (alloy) in this red too which is lovely. have considered that option too.

scruff the heckler would be the perfect bike for me if only it was a bit nimbler, i can’t help thinking that shock needs an upgrade but the carbon 5010 R spec for 3K is really tempting. Trouble is they don’t make them in this colour any more ;)

Chris i’ve had my santa cruz frame for seven years and it’s still smashing trails like it was new but that’s very interesting that you have the camber and love it. Do you ever wish it was a better climber/ descender?