does that make me a looser?

Well, it depends how loose you are to start with I suppose….

….are in the scenery before you can say "WTF are you doing sebastian?"

Lol 8)

Question – is there much/any CFD/wind tunnel testing done modelling the aero performance as 'the second car' (i.e. – how efficient the car is at working the turbulent air from the car in front), or is all of it done for the car in clean air with the assumption that horsepower or a bit trading-paint is needed to make a pass these days?

What more could you ask for?

IME, a BB that will last longer than a trip to the pub (but not the ride home) and chainrings that aren't made of cheese….

<pedant mode>

It's Weever, not Weaver….

</Pedant mode>

Reminds me – Patrick Moore and Brian May used to stay with my in-laws every now and again (astronomical connections). Not met him myself, but I am assured that Patrick Moore is as mad as a bag of frogs, but perfectly pleasant company!

If they were stripped they'd keep turning!

If you'd massively overtorqued it, yes. If you'd overtorqued it, but not stripped it, the threads will plastically deform in the crank – you can get the bolt out, but when it goes in next time the thread pitch is deformed from what it should be, so there is a lot more friction. It feels like you've done the bolt up (applied lots of torque), but most of that is overcoming friction against the damaged threads and not pinching the cranks.

I've done this myself…. 😳

EDIT: Shedfull – very good point.

Clubber – I think the OP is saying that the splines to the axle are the problem….

though to the OP – might be worth checking the threads on the pinch bolts are OK – if the threads had partially stripped you may think you're doing the bolts up tight, but you may not have been clamping the crank onto the axle. Either way, sounds like a new crank arm.

If you're lucky, you can pick up a spare arm on Ebay for peanuts. Got a brand new Ultegra 6700 one for less than £4 the other day. Retail is a bit more than that…..

All sounds odd – I'd try and diagnose what happened so you don;t get a repeat any time soon (I accept this may be quite hard to do after the event just looking at the shagged bits and a pile of swarf….)

'kin hell – you must have legs like treetrunks…. or you didn't do the pinch bolts up 😉

When I've done this (not tightening the bolts up enough) the crank arm has broken the plastic pretension cap and slid off the spiles rather than rotating (que comedy double-take trying to work out why the crank is still attached to my shoe, but not making the bike move forward….). Are the pinch bolts actually still there/very, very loose?

I've had USB drives that do as you've described. Problem traced to me mapping network drives to other letters immediately concurrent with the physical drives on the machine. i.e – physical drives are assigned letters A: to E: and mapped network drives from F: upwards. As soon as I unmapped F: the USB drive appeared/was usable as it wanted to be the first drive after the physical drives.

Probably not as simple as that if it's on a home PC…..

Mira Super Sport, as said above. Simple to use, but very clever on the inside (I know a shower designer at Mira ;-).

As Toys says, warranty is VERY good – helped enourmously if you keep the orginal receipt in a safe place….. If you're in a hard water area and use it alot, don't expect the heating element to last more than 3 or so years, but they are easy to replace.

As an aside, I hear that the piping and electrical fittings and locations are being standardised over each model 'range', so even if choose to replace it in a few years you should be able to bolt the latest model straight to the wall without redrilling the fixings or moving the pipes around.

Oh, yeah, and a mixer will be better if you have a combi. Mira Combiflow (IIRC) is good and good value.

sfb – it depends how you interpret strength. You are interpreting it here as the failure load of the member, but in the engineering sense it would be more commonly interpretted as the specific failure load of a material – i'e failure stress, which is material dependant. Either approach is valid and depends on the framing of the question.

The I-beam analogy is relevant in that the sizes of the I-beams are chosen such that they're failure loads are similar to the their flange or web buckling loads under the primary loading regimes, such that they are 'usable' in most applications (failure under all applied loadings and possible failure loads for each applications needs to be checked though).

Spoon – In the limit, tensile buckling modes are as much a problem as compressive ones, esp for mixed-mode loading, such as that seen by a top tube. I agree that this is unlikely to be an issue for any 'real world' wall thicknesses though.

I read the title as if you were going to see how many people you could kill, in Portsmouth, in an hour. Must be nearly home time… 😕

Well then, if the loading is quasi-static and you assume the geometry is PERFECT, then that may be true….. but as the wall thickness gets v thin and the diameter increases, the tendancy to buckling becomes much greater and will occur at a much lower load than if the stresses were calculated purely based on bending theory (My/I as per Wors above). So as the diameter increases/wall thickness reduces the bending LOAD to cause failure will rise and then start to fall as tube buckling becomes the dominant failure mode.

M'be 😉

Under what loading? The strength, in terms of yield/UTS will be material dependant, but the load to failure will be dependant on whether it's tensile/compressive/bending/torsion/mixed-mode.

The question is either ill-conditioned, or the answer is 'maybe' 😉

Edit:

EDIT – I'm quoting someone else – I'd assume it to mean "resistance to bending and breaking" or similar.

Well, which is it?? Resistance to bending OR breaking??

The mechanical and wear properties of your average HB pencil have come on a long way since I last checked then……

What's not to like then 😉

Further problems….

5 – Who pays for the petrol? (some form of joint 'slush account', or just brim it before handover?)
6 – How do you sort out bills when it goes wrong/needs service/MOT

Having said all that, my boss has one and does the 5 mile commute most days in it. He won't do it in the rain as he saus it is a bit too 'exciting', it leaks when moving or stopped and cleaning it takes a wee bit longer than a 'normal' car.

Yes, they will send you a letter a month or so before the current policy expires offering you a new premium for the same level of cover. If you do nothing it will just roll on and the direct debit will be ammended/you send them a new cheque. The cost will go up mind, even by a nominal amount (think mine went up by ~£30 in ~£250). Best to at least shop around and see if you can better it (I couldn't)

🙁

http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/cyclescheme-buy-back-to-rise-to-25-market-value

rootes1 – the 'after' shot is extremely pretty. Well done!

Errm, take it back and get them to remove it..

pfft – thinking inside the box… 😉

Hammer – bigger the better – let off some steam 😉

I *THINK* the problem is that your tool is designed to be used with BB's that use bolts (Shimano cartridge tyoe) – your BB has the thread on the end of the BB shaft and a nut that holds the cranks on so you are correct that your tool won't work.

Is the BB on the bike a really old non-cartridge/fully dis-assemble-able (?) jobby, with the BB axle a separate part and loose balls? You'll either have to beat the cranks off with a hammer and wood (have done this – it needs A LOT of beating) or take it to your friendly LBS and see if they have the tool for the job.

biggy – fair enough. If you can live with singlespeed and a bit of bulk/low end spec in return for a lower up-front cost, then all of the above will serve you well and you can upgrade as stuff wears out. It is arguable, perhaps, that the Inbred spec is better and will last longer, but the buying power that Halfords has means the upfront cost of the Subway will still represent a very good deal overall.

N.B. – There is another thread running about the lack of longevity in the BB/chainset used on the Subway. Might be worth a nose.

There you go – perfect timing 😉

If you're not looking to set the world on fire pace wise, then something like the Inbred may be a good choice for you – it'll be relatively comfy (more upright than a road bike, and biger tyre volumes to boot), but the rigid forks will make it feel quick on the tarmac. If you want gears the price will go up, but Alfine might be the way forward to keep maintenance down and keep you on the road for longer with less effort.

At your price point something from Halfords or Genesis might suit, but all of the big boys will have a commuter friendly/hybrid-ish MTB in their range. I have no personal experience here, so await specific suggestions from the hive mind as the clock swings towards 5, or give it a cheeky bump next week for the Monday crowd 😉

Budget? Off road/on road/bit of both commute? Rough length of route? Just going to use for this, or will it be your do-it-all bike? Will you be a fair-weather commuter, or is the ability to fit guards a good thing? Rucksack or panniers (may depend on length of route and what you need to carry)? Do you have a CycleScheme to use at work? Do you want to use it/will it restructive on your choice?

I'd suggest the Inbred will be a soild and dependable workhorse, but you'll need to think about all of the above and more to work out if it's right for you.

Try to be a little more vague please – setting your criteria that tight is going to make it really hard to help…. 😉

4 hours ago I might have made a recommendation, but as it is I'll just pull up a chair and put the kettle on….

http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/comments-please-truvative-firex-ss-chainset

Thanks – square taper noted, and is a good shout, but would like to stay with HTII if I can as I have the tools and all the bikes now have it. Also, I tend to have no issues with HTII BB life, but lets not open that can of worms on a Friday… 😉

Have looked at true track chainsets, but agree chainring BCD is limiting for the ring size I may need and crank arm lengths tend to be on the small side.

My preffered choice is either the Alfine cranks, though I don't really like the look of them with the chain guard (but they are cheap) or some R600 compact cranks with a single ring on it (that looked nice on that single speed MTB thread from a few days ago), but that is pricey unless some turn up on the classified or EBay

Going to go on an Pompetamine as a 'bombproof' winter commuter build.

The BB-made-of-cheese issue is what has put me off in the past. I really want it to be robust/reliable AND cheap, but robust is the much more important criteria.

^^^ hay will appear 'wispy' in bales – straw looks much more coarse

Is it not straw? Seen lots of combines in the fields in the last week or so – wheat grown in flat fields then sold on as animal bedding/roughage to upland farmers with livestock?

Honestly – flog it, ring fence the money for the future.

*Shines "TJ" torch into sky*

I have nothing of use to add, but I have just LOLed at this quite a lot…. 🙂

Because I haven't removed the wall, and I can see there's plasterboard still between it and the beam

So from the ground up: wall > plasterboard> a void > 1st floor floor boards?

What's not to like – get thee thine hammer of doom!!* 😆

* – maybe

EDIT: That's not quite right is it – you're saying there is wall > plasterboard wedged between…. > floor beam > floor boards

Nothing. Maybe a partition wall that forms the built in wardrobe in our bedroom,but that's it

See my post above…. the tank supporting wall went through the wardrobe as well….. 😉

EDIT: Sneaky edit PP! It may be the tank has been removed – do you have a combi boiler where there once was a back boiler?

I have/had on like that in the dinign room that was in-line with the beams, but supported the cold water header tank all the way up to the loft.