I come to STW and all I see is ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD ROAD

carbon on road shoes isn’t really for weight saving, its for ‘power transfer’ and comfort.

And its massively noticable. Used to have some expensive Lake MTB shoes (about 160 retail) and they were very stiff for walking in, and felt stiff on the bike, but using them for road, after about 40/50miles my feet would be curling up and aching.

Swapped to some much cheaper ‘Exustar’ (formally Exus) carbon shoes (SR220/221?) from ebay for about £30, someone had bought them, not fitted so sold for a lot less than new. but generally about £70-80 for anew pair. And their great! Daft as hell for walking in, but very well ventilated, dry quickly, most perfect fitting bike shoe I have ever worn (most shoes are normally always too narrow for me, making top of foot ache after a while) and they take very kind of road/mtb cleat going (which Lake/Spesh/Sidi shoe’s often do not have, you have to choose at time of purchase).

Anyway, for MTB, no, the carbon sole gets wrecked from walking on gravel/rocks within a few minutes, not damaged, but look scruffy on the underside now, for even amateur road and touring, yes!

Probably tomorrow, possibly next week.

BTW average car battery is 40-60aH, but electronic things only draw what they need, its the correct voltage you have to supply them with.

Ours get fed morning and evening. Before/After humans, doesn’t really matter so long as they are well behaved.

One is on prescription/medicated dry food (old and sensitive stomach!), the other is half canned meat half mixer, and they love it.

Dogs will want to eat as much as they can, so the more you give them, the more they want it. Their weights go up and down very closely with regulating food and exercise (wish humans were as easy to loose weight).

12v 1amp will likely be enough unless its some aweful cheap thing (in which case it will have a 2amp electric heater inside it lol).

Freely available on ebay. Depends what connector you need, but I generally just buy the cheapest thing going and stick my own connectors on it etc.

Honestly it happens a lot more than you’d think. Only way to deal with it respectably is to own up there is a problem before client reports it, mention your unfamiliar with the process, then just get on with rectifying it if possible.

^^^ LOL @ Duggan. We’ve had events that were like that even when delegates were made aware and booked onto them!*

*Tip for all free/subsidised events, yeah the delegates should be getting places for free, but tie them in by putting in the deal that if they don’t show, you will be sending them an invoice for £50 or whatever. As we’ve had TWO events now where not enough delegates (although booked/confirmed 48hours beforehand) turned up for the funds to be released and we lost thousands upon thousands over it. Reason being, people think anything free (to them) = not worth going to.

I’d be interested in that. Good idea. There’s a danger that most RP machines will just end up producing more unrecyclable tat.

Having said that I just got a sample for the Connex500- 9 different buttons in 27-90 shore rubber done in one build Just the thing for a phone case

How do you find the PLA compares to ABS? I like the idea that it’s biodegradable.

PLA is a lot more brittle than ABS, and is even more temperature critical. Also don’t bother with the clear plastics, they always come out aweful. BUT AFAIK PLA is more dimensionally stable, so anything which has very intricate surfaces that need to have tight tolerances on them will likely shrink out of size in ABS, but you might have a chance in PLA.

We’ve also found different printers have max optimum sizes, sure yeah you can fill the bed with a part, BUT its very likely that it will print out of tolerance, and then warp to hell as it cools.

Yeah seen a really nice machine that does that, I think it mixes the plastics before it extrudes them so you can have different rubbers/plastics/colours coming from it almost instantly, amazing!

But yeah, your gonna love it, just be sure to make the area WELL ventilated to the outside world, as we’ve detected pretty decent amounts of Ammonia being released from the ABS which obviously isn’t great for your health!

Apparently if you harvested slug slime, you could lubricate engines indefinitely, no more costly oil changes!

I can bet you won’t be allowed to take anything more than a compact camera too!

Every music gig I’ve been to in the last 3-4 years that I’ve bothered taking a camera to I’ve been told to leave it outside/in cloths lockers as they aren’t allowed due to exisitng obligations (to contracted photographers).

The fact its the only digital camera I have, and the fact I’m not affiliated with any tog/media contracts totally misses them.

these are very popular in schools now.

We’ve been running 2 for about 2years now, not as fancy as that, much more homebuilt ours, but with 2years development they rival proper commercial grade printers like the £40k HP job.

A word on strength, yes they print in ABS or PLA (smells like sugar cane!), the temperature of the head, bed and ambient temperature are absolutely critical. It depends on what material you are using, but we find if the temp on any of the 3 parameters +/- 10c your plastic either burns or doesn’t lay correctly so you get weak layers, or just plain weak structures!

Its a huge learning curve, especially with the fill materials/layers and support structures, often less is more if you catch my drift.

We also manufacture our products almost entirely from 3D printer (natural ABS) components, as our designs change regularly and the quality/tolerances from the printers are (to us) equal to proper extruded/moulded plastic components at a tiny fraction of the price***

***Just ONE set of mould/extruder components (forgetting the massive cost of an actual plastic machine, £50-250k) for ONE product line would be in the region of £165k, then 2months down the line when some components change you can throw away a good deal of those moulds and have to commission new ones. Vs. a £5k plastic printer that pays for itself & printing materials over night by making trivial parts for other plastic printers (making spares for other users, setup wedges/dimension checks, extruder cooling kits etc).

Lastly, we’re also looking to start an ABS plastic recycling centre, as we alone generate about 5-10kg of waste plastic in a week that can easily be melted down and re-extruded onto drums for use again and again (until there is no waste, only £££ finished products). But the cost of the machine means we estimate we’d need at least 20kg a week to make it worthwhile, so thought of effectively ‘buying in’ using freepost boxes, other peoples ABS waste/scrap, then sell them back cut-price reels (around half the cost of RRP).

+1 you are going to have to get some proper training done (all of you) and then ruthlessly re-inforce it.

To me there are two kinds of dog intelligence, when you point at something, there are those who go to where you are pointing, and those who look at the end of your finger as if biscuits are going to pour out of it.

Amazingly, its the latter thats the easier to train as they generally don’t question your actions/think too much. Wheras the technically more intelligent dog, MIGHT respond very well to some straight cut training, but more likely will be a royal PITA as they think they know better.

Also I would guess the dog probably thinks its a human and is above everything you are trying to do with it. So for a period of time, keep the dog on the floor/seperate rooms etc, and make it feel distanced from household life**

**we have a rescue dog, got him when 11years old, he’s now 14 and for a time he was WORSE behaved than when we got him, as people at home at been treating him like a cat/human/part of the family. Took about 6months of being more firm with him and now he’s much much better, can still play/reward him when he’s done something but generally much less of the barking at everything that moves/trying to protect house/climbing on chairs etc.

AS mentioned already, the differences in quality of steel is massive, infact, biblical.

A gaspipe/low end (old or new) is going to suck no matter who builds it. But some proper steel will see you right.

For me I like a road bike/racer to be either decent steel or decent carbon, I find aluminium generally much harsher on lower back.

Also consider putting a carbon fork in there, handbuilt quality steel forks are often as much as the frame! vs. an off the shelf high end carbon fork will likely handle better/torsionally stiffer + absorb more shock/vibration than any steel or alu fork would = more comfort, more control and ultimately lower weight (if thats important to you).

Weight can be a factor, but my 40yr old bob jackson build (equiv of ultegra group + 27″ 32c touring wheels) with modern pedals weighs just under the 10kg mark, and would be about 8.5kg with similar age sprint wheels on, which yeah its comparable to a low/mid range alu framed current gen racer, but it won’t be as stiff for the same weight.

I think what would save a LOT of lives/incidents would be better car control from the test.

Iceland/Finland (and probably many others) have proper extended tests that cover many aspects of car control in all weathers. I’ve seen SO many accidents where kids in small FWD car’s have over cooked it into a fast A-road corner (that a loaded 42t artic could take at the same speed/same conditions and be OK), feel it go a bit loose, then lift off or worse, brake, then spin it to inside of corner, often overturning it, and often slamming into oncoming traffic with disastrous results.

And that happens at LEAST twice a year on the road I use every day, its got one of the BEST surfaces of any road around, its an A road, it has mostly excellent viability and sign age, and was reduced to a blanket 50mph about 5years ago. Yet the accidents deaths are at least the same (certainly no fewer deaths, but it does feel like it has gone up if anything?), and I would say every time, itst he age old FWD lift off oversteer at work and young/inexperienced school run drivers who simply do not know what to do in that situation.

I feel a decent two day car handling course (could be done in groups like the motorbike tests are done) on old airfields etc would at least make more people aware of what a car does when it breaks free, or at least make people aware what NOT to do in certain situations. If done properly it wouldn’t even be very expensive to operate.

Just to add, Finland/Iceland have predominantly gravel roads, often with appalling weather and for the most part they drive pretty much the same car’s as we have in the UK, save snow tyres in winter, and more open treaded gravel tyres the rest of the year round. The times I’ve been to both countries I would say my road car skills are good enough (used to have a race license, and have several dozen hours of stage rallying under my belt), and even in a decent car, I’ll be put firmly in my place by the school run parent pretty much drifting a stock 30yr+ volvo/saab (with NO dents/scrapes/moose prints in the bonnet) around in total confidence. Goes to show!

I would urge people who are in favour of 20mph limits being stretched out to obscene distances to visit Norway.

Never have I wanted not to drive so badly in my whole life. Everywhere you go (except toll roads) there are mad low speed limits, and they are in-forced ruthlessly (which they really are not around here, I might see a speed camera wagon once or twice a month?) which means everyone commits suicide before they actually complete their journey. This is very dangerous for other road users as the driver less cars just plough into people**

**ok so a tad exaggerated and borderline offensive. But the point stands, what happens when you extend town limits (20 & 40mph buffer zones) is more often than not, drivers (whoever they are) feel like they are loosing time by adhering to the limits, so whilst yes, they may not be ‘speeding’, they are driving more aggressively in that area.

I’ll make an example. You are turning right out of a side road onto an A road with a 40mph extended limit (when it used to be 60mph) just outside of a towns 30mph limit. You will find it VERY difficult to get out now, as the cars are all bunched up, as they are trying not to loose any more time/any other cars/road users into their space. Vs. before the limit was lowered, yeah you get some people pulling away fast from the 30mph zone, but generally there will be MORE SAFE GAPS IN TRAFFIC TO PULL OUT INTO.
And that actually a fact, highways agency have done many studies on the subject, I read it somewhere that wasn’t a newspaper 😉

Costs?
Get a paid lesson FIRST with a local instructor, make them aware you are a novice and are using the lesson to gain awareness of what gear is out there, and what might suit you.

Lesson £75-150

New kite, anything from £200-3000, but you’ll likely be in the £400-600 range for a half decent de-power (if thats the route you are going down)
Harness, £50-80 for a basic sit or waist harness (sit = more comfortable for beginners/land only, waist for water/landboard)
Landboard, £100 will buy you an aweful excuse for a board, but fine for beginner. £250+ for anything that you will still be using after even a few weeks
Kiteboard, these are ALWAYS expensive, I spent £475 (and that was with about 40% off) on a nice carbon job a few years back, but promptly split it (used for maybe 7 or 8 days?) by landing on a well placed submerged rock. Beginner foam boards are about £130 last time I checked and you’ll be using that for quite a while I’d say.
Wetsuit, its England, its cold out there! 6/8mm wetsuit is going to set you back at least £150

Then once you become completely addicted, you’ll be needing a VW t5 van conversion, a complete quiver of kites (for all winds).

I got out of it a few years ago as I simply couldn’t keep up with the amount of cash it takes to get out as regularly as I was, must be about 2years since I was last out, and now only have the ancient Peter Lynn kite, and little traction kite and an older carbon landboard which is now sporting a lovely great crack running along the deck. yeay.

We should just pick up the whole country/island, and move it so we adjoin Canada/Norway/Japan/South Korea and have done with it.

Also think the Olympics would have been better placed somewhere like Manchester/Glasgow/Birmingham/Bristol/Newcastle, somewhere that has AMPLE brownfield sites going for peanuts, and have significantly more people willing to get the key jobs filled out and done.

Up north all we ever hear/see/actually happens, is London/ the south gets everything remotely worthwhile, and we’re just lumped with the combined bill when it doesn’t work out. Thanks for that.

^yup. Hence why I’m asking whether I need to go up a level, or infact down as I’ve seen people (180lbs/80kg+) in Canada running the softer spring and reporting an improvement too. The firm spring appears to be a hell of a challenge to get hold of, but a few US stores appear to have them in stock, will have to confirm though.

I actually used to really like some of manitou’s higher end products, unfortunately their joke of a UK supplier/distributor/reseller/whatever the hell they claimed to be let them down BIG style in the UK, and I think they pulled out completely a few years back?

I also rate TPC/TPC+/Intrinsic damping systems very highly, they are well made, easy to service, easy enough to get spares (standard sized O rings throughout) and damp brilliantly. Bush’s yeah, I’ve had TWO sets of manipoo forks give out on me in a very short space of time due to excessive bush wear, though there were numerous reasons why that probably happened (I was running too large/higher power brake+judder, and I ride very hard on forks that weren’t spec’ed for what I was doing with them).

Manitou have made some good forks/shocks over the years, but their quality control was frequently a problem (though I would say Fox are worse IMO, numerous new forks failing from swarf in them!), and they also made dozens of utter crap products, and that is what they are remembered for, well, that and their woeful after sales support/non-existent in the UK.

^^ pretty much they charge out each unit at about 2-3 what they are actually paying them (would hazard a guess at £20/hour/per unit), so because they’ve been so cheap/ greedy on the personel front, they are going to get well and truly turned over.
Serves them right for being yet another greedy supplier/contractor to the olympics IMO

^^ yup, theres about 50ml (when only 5ml is suggested) in there of slide lube at the moment which does help it ramp up a bit, but nowhere near enough.

Yeah, winding up the compression damping obviously improves it from blowing through all the travel, but then there is not even mid bump (4″ tree root) response, just solid and then bumf!

Will try and find a firm spring, as sounds like others have done the same and it sorted it. Stock medium/red spring seems to be for about a 60-70kg MAX rider, and I’m about 77-80kg with bag.

Used to years ago, still have one somewhere!

Have two kites, a little 3.5m flexifoil traction kite, which is great in high steady winds for a buggy, but useless for anything else. And a 10/11m2 peter lynn guerilla2 (quite old now!) de-power /self inflating kite, and thats great for most weathers, very versatile and easy to setup and use, very forgiving.
The inflatable leading edge kites (can’t remember name?) are now VERY popular, if not all de-powers are of that type as they are really easy to get back out of the sea when you ditch it, and handle a lot sharper than the older arc’ type kites.

If you haven’t tried anything big, would suggest tracking down your local club and having a go before you buy!

what, a car IN oxford? You must be mad!!!!!

I was once verbally assaulted (lol in itself) by a taxi driver in Oxford (or maybe it was Cambridge?) because apparently your not allowed to reverse into a space on a one way in that town, its a special bylaw?

Take photo’s now, ask questions/ collect your free £140 compulsory compensation/ speak in court later when you are cleared of yet another bogus section 44 stop.

I used to poke my nose/camera in all sorts of places and have met MANY uninformed police, generally the actual written text/meaning/spirit of the law is not known by average jo cop, they tend to make it up on the fly (don’t tell me this doesn’t happen, because it does, much more regularly than you would like), although sometimes it is necessary for the greater good of mankind lol!

Anyway, back on topic, the concrete structural analysis machine inside me says to me that structure has been degrading for years, but only because of the relentless spending spree ahead of the olympics, someone in the right place managed to shove the right bit of paper in front of the right person with the readies to actually do something about it**

** same has happened ahead of the olympic torch, every road its travelled on has had emergency repairs, even when some of the holes have been there for 6months+ and received a lot of complaints, and the verges cut etc. Magic eh!

Yeah, I pretty much do that already.

From what I’ve read, pressures above 60psi on that fork don’t actually make much difference, as the air chamber then starts pushing down on the ‘ride’ kit spring which makes the first 10-20mm of the travel even softer! I kid ye not.

80/90psi is the recommended max, though the mftr rates it to 200psi, which if you put anything over about 120 it just doesn’t move at all.

manitou 83-3219 firm appears to be the part number I need, but answer products/manitou seem to sell out in about 2009!

apparently you get arrested if you climb the climbing tower/sculpture thing next to the stadium, makes for a pretty good day out.

I live way up north in cumbria/lakes, and yeah do enjoy a good drive once in a while, but also being a cyclist/walker/jay walker (lol) does give perspective, and from passing test you soon realise driving like a dick = going to get someone killed pretty quick!

Generally I would say the two categories of driver who NEED the 40mph limit are those dick’s who drive their 1.0 corsa’s on their doors everywhere regardless of road conditions because its ‘cool’ to pretend the road between teh villages is a racetrack, and the other group are those who can barely handle a car at the best of times (lets say school run ‘parents’ to avoid the obvious) and in my 15 or so years of riding, it is THAT group of drivers who have nearly killed me/nearly hit me/actually hit me whilst out on the roads.

When I’m down south (do quite a bit of work around Gloucestershire/Bristol & east of there), and FUNK! how do you people survive/not go crazy/end everything. Pretty much all the roads, including the damn motorways! are restricted right down. Huge sweeping A roads with AMAZING quality surfaces, fantastic visibility that would be the normal 60mph (and could be driven faster if you were aforementioned dick), were 40mph and you would often barely manage that as cars bumped up so close to each other all the time, same for the minor roads; you’d be steaming along, next time, road reduces to single file to negotiate a traffic calming measure/speed bumps out in the middle of no-where and general madness.

One of the weeks I was down there I had an 18mile commute, up here, even with moderate commuter traffic would take me a max of 30-35minutes, down south? 50-70minutes FFS!

/rant over. However I do appreciate there are places where a 40mph limit OR at least an advisory (square sign) would be great.

^^ at the end of the day, most of them seal the pistons with pretty bogo o-rings. take it out then take them down the bearing/hydraulic shop and they’ll likely be able to find a part!

Always found it very cunning of shimano not to supply parts

^^^ There was an LBS at fort bill weekend with a pile of current year chama’s at £299 each (choice of sizes) so suggest £275 is trade+vat price

I think the number of events has increased year on year, and with less people with cash in their pocket, I think the bubble has burst!

a compressor.

Unless you have one of those older Michelin tyres that take 4 men and 16 tyre levers to get on, you don’t stand a chance.

I had to effectively hot wire our factories monster compressor in order to get enough volume of air (not pressure) to get the beads on, and even then…..

I now work in an engineering works, place is a giant rabbit warren of small rooms, but you CAN make a loop out of it…. cue INDUSTRIAL VELODROME RACING!

I had a fox rp23, serviced, sat for over a year without use, then on FIRST ride it blew just riding down the street (damper cavitation).

Seals need to be improved, or they’ve moved to a different supplier as I have 2x much older fox shocks that can sit for years, then just be put on a bike and just bloody work, no sticking seals etc! Backwards evolution in progress.

What are the chances of the frame being out of alignment/ not machined correctly, thergo its the equiv of a HT2 BB being sat in a frame that hasn’t been faced = lasts a few weeks max vs. years if it was faced correctly?

Or is BB30 machined right through the frame?

tiagra = old style routing

105/ULT/DA = newer bar tape style routing

some of the lower end (and older 1990s) STI levers have the cable coming out of the side of the shifter instead of into the inside of bar/routed under bar tape. Thats what they’ll be refering to.

Office I used to work in, had 3 toilets, gents/ladies/disabled. But was on the second floor, of a building with some of the dodgiest steps ever (outside metal steps which I slipped about 10x in 1 year, though no-one ever broke anything thergo.. nothing changes).
So the unused disabled toilet became all the riders/runners drying closet. Was at least twice the size of the other toilets, had a damn across door to keep all water in (not wheelchair friendly!) and was sited above the boiler room so was always very warm (30C+) with good extractor fan on it.

All they have to do is nominate a closet with an external wall, put an industrial/vinyl floor in (few hundred £ for a few sqM room), a £50 extractor fan, and an oil filled heater radiator thing. And there you go, instant drying room, makes people happy, keeps the stink away from the office and you can boast about your ‘amazing drying facilities’ to new recruits etc.

This one’s from Silent UK who broke into the Shard in April and captured this beauty at night.

Got to love the media.

‘Broke into’ could be substituted for ‘walked in the door’ and went up some steps (albeit near an hour of climbing!). Media blows everything up into painful hype.

I quite like the building, its location I believe is very good, all around that area is on the up anyway.

The wind turbine tower over in E&C was very strangely placed (and the turbines can’t be run during the day because of vibrations/noise running down inside the building) and AFAIK is STILL not fully occupied (and likely never will be) and its been there at least 18months. Same for Heron tower, there’s still space going.

The guys that build these things don’t expect to see returns in 1-5years, more like 20-30years, so the current economic climate isn’t really too much of a bother, it will pick up (years away), but when it does, they will have tens of thousands of square footage ready on the market ahead of those that only build in times of prosperity.

Is is just me or is there some casual racism going on in those letter blocks?

I quite like it, remember being on the top and couldn’t wait to get back down out of the cold/sleet; shame they never probed as deeply as they could have into the King William Street tube tunnel. We had a good bash at it, but getting enough gear onto site to do it undetected was an impossible task.

I have a keen interest in many sports that are featuring in the olympics. But I don’t care much for being messed around to the nth degree, so personally couldn’t give a rats about the whole thing. Glad when its over and I can get back into London without having to que to get so much as a cup of coffee.