SJS are also the purveyors of highly expensive bits of obscure stuff – add postage on and you’d be looking at £7.50 for that!!!

Doesn’t that saying go “Campag stuff is just wearing in as Shimano wears out”

Much more of the Campag stuff is designed to be serviced, Shimano is very much fit, forget, replace when knackered. You can rebuild and get parts for Campy ergo shifters, the Shimano STIs are chucky out if broken jobbies.

As junkyard says, why build the ultimate b/bracket when people are only going to buy one of them (cynical I know)?

Don’t forget road bikes have a slightly different geometry to mtbs, so you might find you’re in a slightly different position when pedalling (well you should be anyway!) – it’s probably a combination of a fair few miles and a slightly different setup – position of saddle fore and aft maybe in relation to the b/bracket, cleats etc.

just keep at it, and good on you for doing 50 miles first outing!

I’ve found a decent way of getting the old SFN out – if you drill out the inner threaded part of the SFN (don’t even try with the spring steel that grips the steerer) you can actually knock the middle part out between the two flanges of the SFN – then you can flip each one around a bit seperately and get them out with a screwdriver. Takes about 5 mins.

Either that or knock it further in and then find another bike shop to frequent.

Take some time to think about it. Though don’t confuse this ‘time’ with leaving the house and moving in with a mate to think about it. You will find yourself with no home, locks changed and no leg to stand on, yet still paying the mortagage….

Whilst it’s horrible to say and you will feel guilty about it make sure if it can’t be amicable then at least do it fairly. Yes, maybe don’t bicker over how keeps the cutlery, but don’t give up your share of the house etc. just becuase you are feeling bad about yourself. You will have a life afterwards once you get your mind back, don’t sacrifice that by giving away all your hard earned pennies.

oldgit -they’ll either take some measurements, like height, leg length, arm length etc., feed them into a magic computer program and it’ll spit out a “design”, or they’ll set you up on a adjustable ‘bike. Both ways are static though.

Maybe it’s worth just trying out a standard built bike at the shop, if it feels right then maybe you don’t need the made-to-measure route (you’d not get custom made carbon fibre anyway…).

Think Van Nicholas can build you up a pretty decent ti bike for less than two grand. If you’re looking for something cheaper then I think you’ve gotta consider if you want custom.

Nothing to stop you getting a decent custom frame, and kitting it out with cheap Campag/Shimano/Sram stuff and upgrading as things progress.

To fair fair to the money-grabbing woman, I think she claimed for a TV Sky type package as expense and some naughty journos dug a little further and found a couple of prom movies on the costs. She shouldn’t be sacked for that.

She should be sacked for the other things she’s done…

If it’s too far up it’s a fair chance the top cap on the stem is actually tightening up onto the SFN and not pulling the stem tight onto the headset – might be causing the juddering.

If there is already a SFN in then maybe tap it down again, should slide straight down if you’re careful. Then see if it starts creeping up again.

I wish there a law that dictated people on forums slagging companies/cars/bikes etc. off were required to actually say what line of business they worked/what car drove/what bike they ride when making all these grandiose claims of murder, rape and pillage.

As konabunny says there are many companies you think are okay that maybe don’t exactly gleam. Think about it whilst pulling on that Nike sweat(shop)shirt possibly.

(IT/VW Golf/Niner Air-9 – by the way…..).

In my experience a trip to the osteopath normally goes like this.

“Come in sir, certainly we can fix you bad back”

“There you go, all cracked, clicked and generally beaten up”

“Okay, I think this will probably take a weekly session for the the next year to sort it”

“That’ll be £35 for today. See you next week for another £35…”

Once bought a Marin East Peak for £800 new off eBay from some shop. Think things went ballistic on the bidding for the bits (forks and disks went for more than you could buy in the shops…). In the end all told everything sold for £815 so basically a free frame!

My bank (Lloyds) told me it was good to save the planet by going paperless.

Then proceed to send me advertising in an envelop every week. It’s amazing the number of loans and credit cards and upgrades I’ve ‘qualified’ for. Same their marketing department didn’t listen to their environmental dept….

Not sure if many charity shops will take electricals – wouldn’t want the punters burning their homes down with faulty smoothie makers.

Freecycle is an option.

The Police in Leeds about 1985ish.

With the Belle Stars as support. Now that was a truly awful band. Their drummer couldn’t even throw her own drumsticks into the audience, she had to get a roadie behind to launch a few pairs….

Cheers Clubber.

Spookily the road equiv of the M086 was one on my list to try – t’interweb seems to be saying Shimano have started going a bit bigger in their shoes, so that kinda confirms the rumour. And maybe some Times.

Looks like a quick trawl through the local bike shops before hitting eBay/Wiggle/CRC for any bargains to try out.

Cheers all.

Just out of curiosity Clubber – what ones have you ended up with?

The alternative is maybe crazy, but how about sacrificing 5 grammes ann just getting alloy ones and not having the worry?

druidh – the Ergo bar ends clamp onto the bar, not just the grip. They just do away with the lockring on the outer edge of the grip. So you’ve got the same issues.

Clubber – I’m using Specialized Comp XC shoes already so I’m assuming they’re pretty stiff.

Gets expensive trying out different shoes at £100 a pop! £40 for a set of pedals seems cheap in comparison!

Though I think I’m secretly resigned to ‘proper’ road pedals and just having the one pair of road shoes (and maybe some overshoes for winter).

Anyone recommend some roadie shoes with a big toe box?

Keep pushing it a little once you’ve reached the crest of a hill. People always seem to have the mentality “great, I’m at the top, now for a rest”. Little things like that will see that average creep up.

Apparently stickle bricks are really dangerous too.

I bought a box of them at Argos for the little ‘un and I had to go to the counter to prove I was over 18 before they would get them. I’m just assuming some Saturday worker mixed up the code for sticklebricks with the product code for the flamethrowing rocket propelled grenade launcher in their database. Hopefully.

I don’t think its up to you to tell Cotic that they are using the wrong courier service and if they drove thirty miles down the road and used company “X” then they could send you their frame cheaper. Fair enough, they might, just don’t expect it.

They may have a deal with a courier, if they break that agreement it might incur a financial cost to other customers for example.

B&Q sell plenty of water based gloss paint – dries fairly quickly and don’t think the finish is as good as oil-based but I use it for all the glosswork in the house.

Nah, just some companies called them 28″ and some 29″.

Both will fit 700c rims.

nickc – they are design to be portable so have an element of “robustness”, though it’s still a fairly fragile thing really. And like all harddrives, it might just stop working one day. If it’s gonna sit on a desk beside the PC and maybe get moved to the laptop then it’ll be as good as you need.

And always something easy to grab if the house is on fire and you want to save all those years of photos you’ve built up on the way out….

trailmonkey – Member

That’s an interesting point. Two years prior, Thatcher was busy drowning Argentinians and certainly would have found it difficult killing people in two theatres.

A little controversial. I do remember miners killing people by chucking concrete blocks through the car though….

Supposedly you’ll need some specific calipers designed to work with drop bar levers if you’re running the STI type brake levers – Avid do them, never seen anyone else..

If your brake levers are just for braking (ie no shifters built in) then I think Dia Compe do a brake lever designed to work with Vee brakes – that’ll work with your disks.

Though with careful setup and a minimal clearance of the pads you might find some people get the two to work okay….

Depends how paranoid you are/how much stuff you’ve got.

If you just want to make a backup but you’ve got enough space on your pc to keep storing it then just get a little USB external hardrive – I’ve got a little Western Digital My Passport with a backup of iTunes and photos (powers off the USB drive so no need for any power supply…).

If you want to get fancy and allow the data to be access on your network (assuming you’re running wireless or similar) then maybe a NAS is the way to go. If you get one with RAID1 capability it’ll have two disks that’ll make two copies of everything just in case one disk fails. Obviously that’ll not stop you deleting files, or a virus destroying them etc..

They are probably the two extremes (certainly costs-wise!). Probably need to think what you want it for and make a call.

Or, of course, start burning DVDs……

You won’t be able to change the listing once someone starts bidding/buying – that could mean you could advertise a top-of-the-range Santa Cruz bike, someone buys it, then you change the listing to a Halfords Special and send them a £20 clunker.

You’ll have to stop the listing and start again with the other 4 remaining items.

Something similar, had a little ‘discussion’ with a bus driver who just about scraped past me down the street. He got in front of me again, slammed his brakes on, then actually mounted the kerb (with a full busload of passengers) to show me how “hard” he was driving a bus. Luckily a school patrol lady witnessed it all. I got a grovely letter back from the bus operator and he got a disciplinary.

If you’ve got the reg they can track who was driving the bus at the time, and if it matches up with the route then they’ve gotta say its a fair cop.

Do it, it’s worth a stamp to vent your anger (in a polite manner of course).

Could be worse – he/she could just ignore your requests for payment.

Be careful if he’s gonna give you your fees back – that might be quite a lot – selling fee, final sale price fee, paypal fee.

If you can pull the auction I’d do that instead. And just chalk it down to a numpty who can;t even tie his own shoelaces without mummy.

I take it there wasn’t another bidder who you can offer a second-chance on it?

As IanS says – if you’re gonna have to go through the whole collection and you’d got enough space rip ’em to a lossless format. Then you can make a lossy version to whatever bitrate/format you want and still keep the originals.

Then when you buy another player just do a conversion again.

For what it’s worth I think 400 CDs ripped to Apple lossless is about 160Gb, not sure if FLAC etc. makes bigger files.

I’m sure there would be some magical number of chains whereby the cassette and chainrings would wear out at the same rate as the chains. Any more than this number would mean the chains were actually being worn out by the knackered cassette/rings and not be as effective a proposition.

I’d got for three chains and rotate/clean/lube as appropriate.

Second the Mavic Open Sports. Got ’em on my CX bike and never had a problem. Slightly wider then Open Pros if you want a chunkier tyre, and a lot cheaper.

If you’re looking for a solution on the cheap check these out

http://www.wiggle.co.uk/p/Cycle/7/Transfil_Gear_Cable_Waterproof_Kit/5360011242/

Got ’em on the commuter, doing a decent job of keeping the rubbish out.

On the night if you do go to some ‘special’ clubs for the love of god keep very tight hold of that little bit of paper they give you when you go in the door. You won’t get out intact without it. My mates a bouncer and he was genuinely scared when one of his party bought the barmaid a drink (think she bought a bottle of the most expensive champagne….) and refused to pay for it. I think he said several thugs arrived in riot type gear to extract payment.

No hassles, just remember to play by their rules, not yours.

Don’t think Brown will dig too deeply into that guys pension fund. It might start up some uncomfortable questions regarding his own very nice cushy pension fund, and if he argues that the people responsible for the downfall have their pensions taken off them then people might start knocking at his door.

If I remember rightly the “people” were quite annoyed about politicians expenses and that was conveniently deflected – “Ooh look, a squirrel over there.”

So anyway, hands up on here truthfully would give up their pensions/bonuses/high wages if asked by someone? I don’t like the guy, I think the pension he’s getting is madness but making a law up just to spite him is ridiculous.

Last one I bought was so rubbish I ended up buying a proper one a week or so later at PC World because I was desperate – so doubly expensive!

We forced the stag to play a Glasgow 5-a-side tournament in a Borat style man-kini thong. Funnily he didn’t get tackled too much…..

Just bear in mind you need to fill in a lot of APIS information about yourself before you fly to the States these days – ideally do this online to save you a bit of hassle, but bear in mind there’ll be a few numpties who don’t and it’ll need to be done on check-in so you may get a fairly hefty queue at the desks.