lardicake, marzipan, pork crackling, a nice cube of tofu, salted butter with a piece of warm from the oven rye bread underneath it.

Spot the odd one out.

The newer full sussers got too ugly even for die hard Marin fans.

I’ve had a few QUAD/TARA full sussers and love them, everyone else hates the high BB and slightly flexy rear end, but I freaking love it, I never catch cranks on rock gardens, I never come off front of the bike and I’ve only ever broken one of them despite riding as heavily and lazily as I can.

Also they depreciate like hell so make a good used buy.

Lastly, lifetime warranty on bearings, KERCHING. My 2007 bike has only needed one set in that time and I’ve honestly abused the hell out of it, and those bearings were free, unlike various mates who have spent about £150 a time on their Spesh FSR’s bearing replacement about every 2 years of careful use.

Their not obviously the absolute best, but I’d be very happy having another put it that way.

Spinning freely? >>> Service the pawls or replace freehub body

Wobbling all over the shop and/or/seized and less than 1 year >>>> warranty.

there is a more recent (non joytec) manufactured freehub as a replacment part for them which has been out a while, seems to be a million times better than the originals

they have to write something different to what they wrote last week!

what freaking snow? haven’t seen any since 2010!

Was out last night, frosty under tread, but not that cold as long as you kept spinning hard and attacking the climbs. Still got muddy though, bike was filthy.

This is pretty much what you get most of the time with used forks/shocks, people just don’t service them anywhere near as often as they need to be, hence I only buy them either new from a shop at silly low sale prices (like thos £700>299 fox from on one), or silly low low low used via full paypal payment so if they are a bag of pap then I have a leg to stand on, or if they are actually OK then I’ve got a set of good forks at the right price.
Same for whole bikes too, people describe them as good and charge good money, but if your buying them blind (ebay/stw/internets) you generally end up with £hundreds of mechanics bills, or at least a drivechain and a BB if doing it yourself.
Would contact the other person and ask why they are a bag of pap and suggest trading back at their cost for postage. Thats if YOUR old forks were actually as good as they should have been as well.

bugger, missed it! knew there was something I was supposed to be watching.

CH4 used to just be known as the ‘alternative channel’ long before it was given a numberon the remote, and thankfully, they still deliver the epic weird shit that we all love them for. Thankyou people of ch4.

Yes grease becomes stickier and can cause problems in very low temps.

Or more likely, your freehub is full of rusty watery gunk, which freezes beautifully and stops everything from working.

STrip & regrease it.

Avoid those Smart Lunar lights, they are VERY cheap lights dressed up to look fancy. They have all the water proofing of an open packet of biscuits, they are a fine beam of purple very old LED technology and they munch through batteries, none of which points make them a good commuter light.

Although TBH without spending about £60 of a F&R set of light & motions or Moon comets, MOST cheap lights are just that, cheaply made, give up the ghost whenever they feel light it and weak/ dissapointing output.

Go and play in abandoned power stations? Or steel/iron works (there are 3), or just about anything you fancy, Liege used to be a very industrial place, but very recently its become a dead zone. Its about the equivilent of visiting Middlesborough or Port Talbot

Reasons I don’t ever shop in town>>>>

1) price of parking. Cars cost enough as they are, I don’t ever pay for parking, if paying is the ONLY choice, then bugger it, I won’t go to that Town/City/Area, tough luck for them and their shops.

2) well if I won’t drive to town because of parking I will take bike, except, very few places to lock up, and high risk of theft. so no thanks their either.

3) Internet, yes its cheaper, but if high street offered amazing service & experience but I had to pay for the pleasure, then yeah, I’d pay the difference and reap the amazing customer service and shopping experience, except, erm no, we don’t have a nice shopping experience in 99% of high street shops, so yeah, bugger that.

4) other people. Have you met other people? they are arseholes.

End of BrickRant.

you realise none of ‘cheap, parking, central & london’ can be used in the same sentance? Unless you have a mate you can slip a 4 pack of beer to in exchange for his parking space then your very unlikely.

Could try ‘park droid’ or whatever the most commonly used parking app is, people add & update free and cheeky parking spaces all across the country. ITs sometimes very useful, and other times out of date & pointless, worth a try though.

Also nice to hear you’ve actually got options, normally when insurance co’s do payouts its just ALL compromises and losses 🙁

Canyon yes.

Climbing on a 150+ bike, if you can get a fork that drops in height then go for that no matter what it is, I find when teh going gets really tough, even with a stem dropped to the headtube AND flipped and bent over the front wheel (with most bikes) you spend most of your time trying very hard not to flip over!
Also a rear shock like an RP23/CTD that you can firm up/lockout will help keep the back end up for climbing to avoid that problem

They are for saving your cleat position, genuine Look cleats have them too IIRC

Looking at where the brake blocks are positioned (assuming 27″ were fitted), then I think you’ll be alright with 700c as you only need to drop brake block centre line by 4mm to make up the difference!

120 OLN spacing is odd, generally older road bikes are 126/128mm and 120 is generally track spacing.

Looks like a cottered BB, so unless you have the cranks and want to use them then suggest changing them.

I’m all for older steel road bikes, one day I might join the 21st century and get something made of Carbinium Tight Anium, but until then, I’m enjoying my 9.5kg 27″ wheeled 40 year old ‘jackson

surely you mean, ‘how many spare bikes do you have at home?’

😀

Rapha Vneck base layer, mega bucks at full price, and kind of, no actually hipster, but, its very high quality, and I’ve worn it almost non stop for 3 months for work, for road and for MTB, been washed only maybe 5 times in that period when any other piece of gear would have rotted with all the sweat and filth.

I think at the full price, even though its great, i wouldn’t buy another, but at the £35 offer they are sometimes on, I’d buy 2 more and wear them actually non stop.

I did, quick 30 mile flat ride on, cough, erm, a road bike. Was cold, but full winter thermals, buff, hat, full goggles, waterproof gloves, overshoes and a steak bake, custy.

No sign of this snow otherwise MTB would be out.

MIght have a go this weekend, or even join on the GMBC ride but think I have soemthing else on already this wednesday :s

Another vote for Wotan’s if you can find any! They are an amazing fork, parts can sometimes be slow to get as Magura don’t really have a presence in the UK anymore.

Have an estate car but still a right faff putting bikes in and out, most conventional bike racks have the bikes sitting very high up destroying my mph (turns it from 35 to 25 as my car is a brick) and the bikes rub against each other and cause damage.

Mate has a thule ball mount rack (the one that folds over so you can get in the boot), think it only takes two bikes, but you can put 20kg+ DH bikes on it and no worry as its solid as anything. Only issue I (or rather HE) has had with them, is if your car is parked up and has no bikes on, other people WILL eventually crash into it, wrecking either the rack or your bumper (as the rack collapses and then pokes a hole in your car). So don’t leave it on when not in use!

unless they are brand new 9spd chainrings, a 10spd chain will probably fit on them just fine. I’ve been running a sram 1051 10 spd chain on a set of 10-15 year old LX cranks with (possibly) 8 spd rings on them, obviously they have a bit of wear, but chain seems happy enough, no chain suck and shifts flawlessly.

I often ride with unpadded shorts, I guess saddle is just spot on as don’t find it a problem.

Some stanchions are bonded with an amount of glue/resin which might be damaged with the heat.

Ano doesn’t mind heat too much, though I would maybe try it with some dead old uppers and see what happens.

If you are very good at bleeding them you can often get them pretty good, but yes, can relate to the random biting point issue its VERY common with Elixir’s.

I would say let a shop try bleeding them, if they have no luck then get them sent away to Fishers/SRAM tech centre, if it doesn’t fall under a warranty issue (i.e. bladder ruptured etc) then AFAIK its about £25 inc return postage for them to bleed them.

However, if its slightly spongey lever issue, then thats pretty much what you get from those brakes, even when bled perfectly you can pull them to the bar much more easily than most, in which case only solution is to put them on ebay and buy some current gen Shimano Deores/SLX/XT

Mavic D321 is what I use.

I wouldn’t really put ‘lightness’ ahead of ‘all mountain’.

today I was out on some soggy trails, on the way home, got hooked out of a berm missing the bridge over the stream by a good 2ft and fell about 6ft (felt like much more) into the stream landing surprisingly cleanly on the other side.

If I’d really put some effort in I could have ridden away from my landing position in the stream. Instead of the bike breaking, or me breaking, I laughed so hard I hadn’t noticed I was now knee deep in freezing water. Only damage was seatpost was slightly twisted around.

This is what ‘AM’ is about to me, having a bike thats capable of going up, handles nicely, and isn’t so light you have to worry about things breaking when you have little off’s, instead you get to laugh hysterically while standing knee deep in freezing water in a gully. Awesome.

race face signiture Ti ISIS bb.

Cost about £120 10 years ago, has a guys name etched into the shell, axle is made from Ti and is hollow, has FOUR rows of bearings yet still weighs not a lot. The idea is if it ever breaks or wears out, you ring RF and ask for a new one, lifetime warranty against defects/WEAR/FAILURE!!

However, since 2005 it has been on my hack SS bike, and done many many many out of the saddle knarly climbs, been cleaned with a pressure washer and left outside for months on end.
Needless to say, its still perfect (and the 10 year old hope enduro needle bearing headset), however the rest of the bike is a wreck.

enlarger might be of interest to me! Or at least the timer.

They are worth anything from £0 to £100 for a fully operational enlarger. I recently had a mid/high end Durst, NOS in box (with two nikon lenses), including timer, and only managed to sell it on ebay for £40+postage. It got mullered by the courier, most of its OK but the timer is buggered and couldn’t find a replacement, so had to take it back and refund the guy.

Just bought a Canon powershot SX150 IS for £70 (down from £180) and pretty impressed with it, obviously no G12, but at 15% of the price of a G12 I’m happy with it. Fairly wide lens too (28mm), with 12x optical and usable ISO range, and a image stabliser of some kind (eats batteries, but then what compact doesnt’?).

The higher end panasonic lumix get a very good write up, just watch out they don’t become obsolete within 2 months as they have a habit of bringing a new one out at least twice a year, sometimes more!

I joined a free one for the hell of it, ended up talking to about a dozen people who were all of interest to me, met two after about a week, chose one and they are amazing, anyone who has met me knows I can talk, a lot, but this girl can actually talk more, AND be more factual AND interesting. Unreal.

Word of warning, you’ll end up with an inbox from dozens of people who are not even remotely viable, best course of action is to just put on ignore. Also remove your profile after you find someone and burn your email address otherwise you’ll never hear the end of it.

An old one or not an old one?

If old then there are loads, blythswood being the most expensive but reliably amazing.

If new then go and give that Japanese one a try, the food in there is amazing and its in a well placed part of town.

AS long as you sell on ‘some’ of the original parts to recoup funds (and not clutter the house with 7 or 8 dead bikes worth of parts) then you’ll be OK.

I love the models and fact they avoided CGI as much (if not totally?) as possible.

oh and its a great film, very original and thought provoking.

IF you want a bit of ridiculousness then head over to TurboBricks (RWD turbo volvo forum), this piece of LS1 twin turbo insanity was put together about 4/5years ago, hell knows what they are doing now.

Blue by Ben Cooper, on Flickr

Going to struggle after today, though, unless iPhone snaps of my workshop and bikes I’m building count

Brewery much? :p

Few years ago they accidently got a Victor v bomber in the air :p Bet that was pretty exciting for everyone watching and the crew!

Cannot wait for this Lanc to get under way, isn’t there another in the states, thats in good running and technically flight worthy but won’t be given a ticket to allow it to actually break free from the tarmac :s

I’ve sometimes found third party to be MORE (at least when considering initial payment/excess values) than fully comp on cars, might be similar to bikes?

I’m just looking at getting my full bike test done (DAS) and haven’t even considered insurance yet. Hoping that being over 25 and my dream bike being some 30-40 year old touring bike means insurance companies won’t try to ruin me.

They are a brilliant car, had two of them and would have another, one was NA, the other a 2.2 turbo with some mods.
Never had any big bills as did most of the work myself but in the 18 months I had them nothing scary happened.
The interiors are pretty boring (brown for the older one, it was actually brown) and seats in most models are pretty flat and useless (like most audi seats etc).

They hold their value very very well, so if you get a good one you can have it for 1-2 years with no real drop in value, compared to just about any other equivalent car they are ‘cheap’ to own. Insurance is needlessly high, they sound ace, but even the quad cam turbo isn’t exactly quick quick as its a weighty car (bit like the 2.7TTv6 you get in older A6 estates, 250bhp, but 250 tonnes as well).

Just wish the H6 diesel monster was out years earlier than it was, as that is probably the best one to have, goes well, drives well, holds value ridiculously well, amazing reliability, (mostlY) good dealers though some parts are a bit slow turning up and sound ace.