there are hundreds of 80s/90s volvos & saab’s knocking about which are over the million mile mark.

In late 70s volvo got a 3rd party to assess their new (tarted up) 240 model to get a gauge on its likely lifespan. Answer was something like 21/22 years (one typical generation) before major components (bottom end, gearbox, diff etc) would be worn beyond economical repair. And so ‘Volvo for life’ was born (the safety element of that was born late).

In the mid 80s when the 740 came out, same test was done, it only came up as 18/19years and someone high up in the Volvo design/engineering office resigned in disgrace or so the storey says.

Anyway, point is nowadays car’s depreciate SO HARD, and value of scrap metal is so much higher, that car’s are now designed around a typical 5, yes FIVE year lifespan. After that they really don’t give a toss.

Generally if a lower gear is there, you’ll use it.

I now run 2×9 and 22/32 & 11/34 and can climb anything. But then my bro rides 22/36 and 11/25, and frankly he manages just as well, but he gets out of the saddle and minces it. He rides a hard tail, I ride FS, so guess thats down to it a bit*

*if you ever tried to get out of saddle and mince on a 6/7″ FS rig in a stupid low gear you’ll know what I mean, it just doesn’t work lol

pretty much any recent diesel skoda and your away.
The audi/vw equiv of each are obviously nicer in every respect except when it comes to part costs. £245 for a new A/C compressor from skoda, £415 from audi. For exactly the same part, made in same factory, for same engine. Don’t get me wrong, I like audi’s, but the stealerships are mostly an overpriced waste of space.

Also just about any TDCi powered ford will see you right. 2005> focus estates with the 1.6 tdci (£30 a year tax! and dirty cheap insurance) come up for way cheaper than they should be and they are a hoot to drive, but can still give you 55/60mpg even when your not trying.

32:18 sounds sensible to me.

I think with MM its not top end speed you want, but ability to just keep on trudging at a decent pace which that will give you. Probably be walking the steeper bits after a few hours but then a lot of others will too because of gears being all over the place!

Keep it as a wall ornament 😉

Most economical thing would be to keep it yourself, as you will likely not be able to get what it costs you to get it repaired, let alone any more.

But it is worth giving mftr a ring, as some often give a crash replacement deal for a new one at trade price or free cake etc, you never know until you ask 😉

I made the mistake of fitting new cassette/chain/jockeys and expensive chain rings especially for MM years ago (the only time I’ve ever been), so yeah, that was an expensive mistake.

If I ever do it again, it will be on a SS with discs, and forks I don’t care about.

argh, another year, another missed solstice ride!

only ever managed one about five years ago, it was very strange as I didn’t go to bed before and we’d drunk a bit, then rode for 6hours, and what would normally be saturday morning breakfast time was actually 30hours awake sleep sleep time.

+1

You’ll find riding MTB with just about any spd type shoes are fine, because you change position and move about so much. But for road you need some really good stiff, if not rigid soled shoes otherwise you’ll be fighting cramp, sometimes after just 30minutes.

I used to just have a ‘one shoe for all bikes’ approach thinking I’d get away with it, but nah, after a few months of tingly agony I threw in the towel and bought some cheap (EXUS) carbon soled road specific shoes. Stupid to walk in (house is surrounded by gravel so they look trashed almost instantly), and impossible to walk up mountain passes in (so you literally cannot give in and push, because you won’t be able to), but my feet have never loved me so much.

Last general operation I had they had to ask if I was OK, as I was going in for what was a fairly serious op (3-5hour, that got complicated and turned into 6.xhour) and my resting heart rate was about 50/53bpm. The anisnatist (spl?) was worried they had the wrong drugs and it was adversely affecting me, but as soon as I mentioned cycling from an early age they just nodded and all was well*

*however, since about 15, I CANNOT get up quickly from a rest as I will simply loose vision, black out and drop to the floor like a sack. I can get right back up again, and doc’s have just put it down to low heart rate and slightly low blood pressure at times, so blacking out is just bodies natural response to try and get some blood back into the brain**

**also heard this from climbers/cavers RE: suspension trauma of which I have had one very nasty bought of.

You can get strip fluro tubes in 12v can’t you? Or aren’t they all 12v and run on their own internal transformer?
A pair of 4′ strip lights will light most things up.

Failing that I have a small pile of nearly new 12v fluro tubes inside bulkhead cases for going inside electronics cabinets, their about 40w each equivilent, so not massive, but a few dotted around make a huge difference.

Yeah but I already live in the countryside!

Cleaned the bike shed out today, and found 2 packs of superstar pads I didn’t know I had.

So thought, why not, rear is nearly on the metal, I’ll stick that on. Opened the NEW packet, to be greeted with the familiar site of the material loose from the backing metal. FAIL. And these were fairly recent (bought last summer I guess) superstar pads. Their a bloody liability that lot! Safe to say, both sets went in the bin, really do not want to be barrelling down some mountainside and my brake pads fall off.

+1 for hopes own. Do exactly what they say on the tin, and £13 isn’t a lot to pay for something that just plain works in my book.

Your the random exception 😉

My grandparents lost around £4k a year on there’s, and I think on average they used it for maybe 5days a year. Thats one farking expensive plastic fantastic setup!

+1 could be strut top mount. they are normally pretty cheap (£8-20 each) and you can do one yourself in under an hour, just need spring compressors (don’t buy cheap ones!)

I quite liked the old one, it wasn’t trying to be anything fancy, just good cake + coffee and you didn’t feel like a dick messing up their (plastic) furniture in your manky post ride gear.

New one to me sounds like its a bit like weatherspoons? but without the £2 bacon + maple syrup breakfast?

thank god!

For a moment I thought someone was about to buy one, so I rushed here to stop you from making th most expensive mistake of your life.

But short term rent, thats fine! thew!

fair enough

Fat Albert has stamped min and max pressures on it.

The mftr recommended min pressure is 2.0 bar, which is about 32-34psi is it not?

Personally I’d find 34psi on a tyre of that size (2.2 or 2.4″) to be a bit excessive, but its possible the mftr knows the sidewall’s are a bit fragile and won’t cover you for running less than 32/34psi

I run my tubed tyres @ ~28psi rear and a bit less in the front. Haven’t been tubeless before so can’t comment on that, but was hoping I could go even lower.

Although non-UST tyres tubeless IMO seem to offer a reasonable halfway house, yeah maybe can’t run them super low like the proper jobs, BUT at a given pressure (lets say 30psi) they will offer me better pinch protection than an equivalent tubed setup*

*amaright? If so fax me a mars bar, I’m starving!

I stopped in a spot in windermere in a place called ‘The Nook’, run by a couple who have the guesthouse ajoined.

Was very reasonable (£80/night) which is probably the cheapest you’ll find any accommodation in Windermere, let alone a high spec’ed, recently totally refurbed, self catering unit, with off street parking, bike friendly, dog friendly (check before though), and only a few minute walk to the pubs.

Guy was called Mick, spot on fella who will talk you into the earth about car’s (I helped him along for about an hour before the misses clobbered us both for yapping too much). Even at full price you will not get anything as good as this in that area.
Alternatively their guest house sometimes has space, cannot speak for the rooms, but the breakfast is top, and again, bike friendly.

http://ivythwaitecottages.co.uk/accommodation.html

Could be fork’s compression damping is a bit firmer than previous thus transmitting more shock to your limbs.

My main limiting factor when road riding is my wrists/grip, I get really bad pain, then numb’ness then tingling, then I literally cannot grip the bar. That can happen after just 30minutes, or 5hours, really doesn’t seem to have a finite time until it happens. I’ve got overlapped cinelli gel bar tape and generously overlapped super daft looking foam bar tape on top, with spesh BG gel padded mitts, made a difference, but not enough to cure it.
I suspect my ligaments in wrists need beefing up a bit, as i’ve improved my core strength over the past 2years which has cleaned up any back/shoulders pain after long days in saddle.

aren’t fat alberts tubeless ready anyway? Just got a fresh pair and it says on their site that they are. The bead is certainly tight enough!

I’ve stripped valves off tubes when being a bit aggressive when throwing some air in them, and only ever had one slip (tyre was almost totally flat).

Bus’s should have those racks on the front like they do in just about every other country. Sure you only get 3 or 4 on there, but really useful I think!

Trains too, virgin pendelino’s officially only have 3spaces, though if you actually try you can get 6 on there safely without impeding the drivers exit.

National express/ megabus don’t let bikes at all unless they are packed up (so that they cannot tell) because if they suspect its a bike in a cardboard box/dedicated box, they make noises about it/ deny entry.
I can often get a national express to london with bike in the hold from local town pickup, but its almost impossible to get the bike back OUT of london as it means getting on at Victoria where the super fussy lot are.

^^ thats a good point, the quality of loose ball bearings varies wildly.

I bought a set of so called decent loose balls (came in a box rather than baggy) in an LBS for the bum tingling price of £7.50 for the pair. Within weeks the balls in the lower race had actually split in half (or smaller in some cases) which nearly wrote off the headset. Vs. £1.99 ebay posted jobs that have been on my hack/commute/work bike for about 18months, never cleaned, always left outside and are still fine.

All in thier respective bearded owners garages being fettled with after a small damp patch arrived over night, causing a random non starting issue.

Yeah, being honest, they are a bit like that lol! The foreign owners have done magic things to land rover/jaguar/et al

Best thing about the torch procession is the fact they’ve been anal about cleaning/ repairing/ tarting up the roads and surrounding features. No idea where the money appeared from to do it, but it has made my commute to work on road bike much much less dodgy (potholes that would put a decent MTB through its paces).

I got some of those LX hydraulic brifters in CRC sale earlier in the year, 3x9spd + shimano compatible brakes for £19.99 posted!

That said, not many people get on with brifters, but still, for £20 you’d struggle to even buy 1x single v brake lever, let alone a single disc lever

Yeah but thats like saying that Tata should be on every box of tea in the supermarket; as they effectively own the major UK tea brands.

I pick up a 100ml bottle of ‘lifesystems’ 100+ (red label) DEET spray.

It used to come in a plastic bottle, but if you leave it on its side it will eat the way through the spray valve and leak everywhere, wrecking everything it touchs.

Just been up at fort bill for DH, and could wear shorts + tee without being bothered by them. meanwhile the 4x riders were being eaten alive inside their helmets (then had the gate fail on them and all ended up in a painful heap of midge fueled hell).

But yeah, DEET 100+, its properly rancid stuff, hours and hours later if any gets in your mouth/nose/eyes you WILL know about it. I have quite sensitive skin, and yeah, on open skin it does not do you much good, but its 5000x better than having midges bugging you all day.

Don’t get it near ANY synthetic material, even shoes, glasses, nylon, anything!
Safe to put in your hair though, I find thats the most effective place as it properly stinks out the air around you and keeps them off.

dunno, but fed up of seeing GERMAN car’s in an ENGLISH procession. I mean honestly name and shame the git who let them in on our parade. Where were the Nobles, Mclarens, Westfields etc?

531 of any form is discontinued. 631 is its replacement AFAIK, and yes its more receptive to TIG welding.

853 is the epic stuff.

Thats a point actually. my bikes are no longer insured (gulp) as house insurance is now limited to £750 max single item and does not cover bikes above £250! To add a bike was something daft like £396 + admin fee. *lesigh*

I think the best form of insurance is to just occasionally stick £100 in a biscuit tin, honestly! As you can pay your £600, have a £100 lock on there, have numerous deadlocks on its stored location, and they still won’t payout just becuas the wind was slightly wrong on any given day.

£80 for an AD4.0 with those spec’s is defo worth a punt!

What you’ll find is the hardware should be upto it, but the software often needs a bit of tweaking to get it to run right, check out XDA developers to see what people are doing with them.

If you don’t find it in the 1st week, you likely won’t

Time is critical. If its been taken today, then get off the forum, and drive around every scummy estate, shop and dodgy pub, ask about in a way like you want to buy it “some guy had a fancy green bike round here earlier, haven’t seen him have you, wanna buy it”…

Also bit of safety, take a burly mate, don’t do anything stupid, if their brave enough to rob it out of your house, their brave enough to pull a knife on you. Also don’t go trying to start a war, you’ll loose.

Same again tomorrow*, go around everywhere within 5miles, it WILL be someone local, some kid thats seen you ride it home, some geezer in a pub thats seen you and others when locking up for a pint, or worse, word of mouth thats escaped from one of your mates/family to some lower form of life who thought they’d have a go.

*this is how I found a mates bike in london, went into a deli one day, asked and nothing. Went back to same place next day, and sure enough the kid had been in asking if possible to put a sign up, which they had, and we found him.

Cycletaskforce are also worth a bash, they have helped recover stuff before, but not sure if they have any jurisdiction outside of the capital.

Lastly, keep an eye on http://bikeshd.co.uk/ its a site made by a german student (don’t quote me on that) that trawls all the usual places for bikes and flashs them up, its helped find dozens of stolen bikes in london, might be worth a look on the hour.

The thing I’m driving at minute (apart from last week when ignition coil went, all of £23 to replace and its good as new again), I’m about to drill holes through roof to fit the factory roof rack as for some reason VW/Seat didn’t put the holes in it when it was built, weird. Self tappers + big washers FTW!

haha I used to be really into cars, but then I looked at how much I was spending a year for a piece of metal I didn’t care much about (and neither did anyone else, my 20vT coupe attracked door dents like a magnet), and I’d rather spend the cash on doing something more interesting, like traveling, riding and beer!!!

Wouldn’t bother with any form of older car with an auto box. They are a just such a PITA.

Apart from that, can’t remember anything bad about them, think we had a 2.0 GLX for a while, then got a legacy quad cam turbo, then a WRX…. and then I grew up lol.

The boggo 2.0 is a solid engine, even makes the right noises, but suspension and everything else is very soggy and barely sporty at all. they sell like crazy in AUS because of their ease of maintenance, agricultural background and mild AWD system (makes light work of a loaded vehicle at 60mph on gravel roads).
If its under £500 and auto box feel’s strong (doesn’t drop all the gears every time you go near the throttle) then go for it. Think they are very well corrosion protected too (unlike even relatively recent mercs & fords).

Ok if you’ve gone to the effort and cost of a 3′ pad of concrete (did an 18″ slab for our summer house last year, although the thing did weigh around 600kg lol!) then I would get hold of some 4″x2″ (or wider) giving at least 2″ air gap, and lay them on the center’s of your floor panel or about 18″ so you end with an effective criss cross pattern. This will take out all the imperfections in the surface (there will be some) and make a solid as funk base.
Then floor down on that (screw em through if you really want/ exposed location) and rawl plug/hilti bolt into the slab if its really windy in that location), then sides up.

I always find with flat pack shed things if you just build them as they come, they are rarely square, rarely strong enough to last more than one winter (if any) and a nightmare to assemble. I pretty much always have to beef them up, even if its just some 1″ batton around each join screwed into both panels (wall to wall, and wall to floor, and wall to roof), it costs pennies and will really improve the thing.

As for security, if its having bikes in it, go crazy, really crazy. Make use of that massive concrete base and put a ground anchor into it, then floor on top of that so you can chain bikes to the thing. they could literally burn the shed down/knock it over, and bikes would still be chained to the slab. Ace.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Aest-Anodised-External-Threadless-Headset-1-1-8-inch-/110852863643?pt=UK_sportsleisure_cycling_bikeparts_SR&var=&hash=item19cf58769b#ht_1274wt_905

The quality of these things is amazing for the price.

+1
Haven’t had one, and havent’ seen one till you posted that link. But go to the swan bearing catalogue and you would struggle to get the two bearings for that price, let alone the cups!

I’ve had the same headset for about 8years, was an OE internal fit FSA ??? something or other I got on a giant AC in about 2003, its hard about the hardest life of any headset ever, but I finally had to retire it last month after I changed to a frame that needed an external headset. Its still smooth as it was when new and has required precisely ZERO maintenance!

The thing on this new frame is WTB OE fit thing and has loose ball bearings which I’ve ignored and have eaten their own bearing races, my bad, but still, show’s the difference quite clearly I think!

So I’m also on the hunt for a new one, but it will be at the cheaper end of the scale, external, 1.1/8″ and sealed angular contact bearings or nothing.
Loose balls are for road & track bikes*

*on any wooden track, AFAIK all forms of grease are banned. Hubs, headsets, chains and BB’s are all run dry aside a few drops per ride of machine oil (as this can be cleaned off the track). And if you have a good one, the smooth’ness and friction is crazy awesome

For 1600 I’d expect you to be getting full XT drivechain and brakes (or X9), hope hoop/stans wheels (they are hella deal most of the time), very decent current spec forks in the £350-500 region, and plenty of cash for all the other bits you’ll need.

Its entirely possible even if you buy stuff at not so great prices. IF you spend days of your life on the internets and are willing to give it 3months to wait for all the deals to come your way, you could shave £500 off that, OR end up with even nicer stuff. But frankly, its a generous budget and you’ll get what you want.

Does it run fully electronic ignition, or is it dizzy, or a hybrid?

Mine (an 80s engined 90s vw) has been suffering from increased power, running rough, idling and intermittent cutting out at low rev’s but never actually misfiring.
Then one day after it was running particulary powerfully, wouldn’t restart. the coil had finally let go, but also the crazy electronic/mechanical hybrid dizzy + rotor was heavily worn which gave the effect of running about 20degree’s advanced + its own advance.

Another thing thats worth checking is vacuum hoses, never underestimate how these affect an engine. Used to run a late 90s fiat coupe 20v turbo and that thing was completely anal about its vacuum/breather system, had to replace every last hose + junction (some are inaccessible without engine out), and then it ran fine, for about 18months when yet another hose expired (everything else on it was solid though).

the glass house changes hands like a bad car