Aaaah, the magic zip tie. That was the piece of the jigsaw that I hadn’t thought of. I tried holding the working piston in place whilst pressing the lever in an attempt to free the stuck piston before I split the caliper. But I couldn’t get it to work and couldn’t think of a good way to hold the working piston in place.

Oh well, another evening in the garage….

Well, it sort of worked, bought a bleed kit, fluids and some new seals, took the caliper off, split the caliper in half and got one of the pistons out fairly easily. The trouble is the other one is stuck fast. It wasn’t moving when the lever was pressed when the brake was in one piece and I can’t shift it no matter how much I jump up and down on a track pump!

So now I’m stuck. Does anyone know how to get the piston out of the caliper half? If necessary I guess I’ll need to sacrifice the piston 🙁

Any advice on sizing? They seem to come up pretty big, the large has a 19″ seat tube and a 24.6″ top tube, where as the medium is a 17″ st with a 23.6″ tt….

I went with the Large kaffenback (same frame but with gears), 6ft 1, drop bars, 110 stem. Fits great.

@ Vader: No worries. Freedom of speech? possibly, but you also need to abide by the rules:

If you resort to abuse of other forum users we will consider that a negative use of our forum.

@vader: Care to name who you are referring to as “moaning c**ts”? just want to be clear in case we ever meet in person…..

Yeah I was slightly surprised by the review. I think DIRT really like the 4-5″ suspension, single pivot simplicity, firm compression tuning and fox forks. Kind of a slightly shorter travel, more delicate Orange 5.

I wish I had some carpet to lay.

So what we are left with is;

Community vs Free market economics

I suspect this argument is going to run and run 🙁

anyways what the lecht says is not bollox loads of numb riders on here i reckon

Sorry you lost me there too…. numb riders?

What made me smile was when TLR described how brilliant Brant was to have designed the bent top tube of the ti 456 to act like a leaf spring, then Brant arrived (possibly on another thread) and described how the bend was to allow maximum standover clearance without leaving much seat tube extension above the top tube (to avoid stress on the ti st).

Well it made me smile anyway.

Enthusiasm about bikes, especially ones own is great, just don’t misinterpret it as objective, scientific analysis.

It’s a tricky one this, I’ve sold plenty of stuff through the classifieds over the years and have always treated it as a kind of community resource, often selling stuff for less than it might have made on eBay but it felt good to help out fellow STWers. On occasion the favour has been returned – which is nice.

I have to confess I was a bit dissapointed that Daffy wouldn’t sell me his ti 456, I emailed him an offer which would have seen a clear profit on the £550 he apparently paid for the frame ( what Daffy paid ). But he just left me hanging while he went off looking for better offers. Still what rankled was the lack of communication, not the fact that he was looking for the best price. IMHO Daffy is perfectly entitled to sell stuff for whatever price he wants.

So Daffy how is the downgrading going? I thought you just bought LardLover’s pimped up IF?

Except, I’m not going to start those threads, cos I’m not some sort of whining hater.

Are you suggesting that I am?

Upset? no. Maybe mildly disappointed that a company who used to produce clothes who’s design I liked, prices I could afford and ethics were treated light heartedly, seems to have grown into a company who’s designs I’m not so keen on, prices I can’t afford and ethics are over played.

Finistere looks interesting, although from the website they definitely don’t seem to have the whole lifestyle branding thing sussed yet – which is probably a good thing, depending on your point of view.

I have to admit I’ve bought a fair bit of stuff in Howies sales over the years, I think it speaks volumes though that everyone who springs up on these discussions to defend Howies seems to be keen to point out what good value for money their clothing is in the sales…. says a lot about their rrp.

The had-me-down stuff is interesting, a lot of the value seems to lie in the ten year guarantee, which assumes of course that Howies will be around in ten years to honour it.

Oh well, give it 12 months and they’ll either have been successful or gone bust…. time will tell.

LOL. Are there many of those left?

Got the new catalogue this morning (well actually three of them ‘cos they can’t clean their db) and I have to say that regardless of what you think of their ethics, you have to admire their balls; the country is sliding into recession, people are loosing their jobs and their houses, credit has evaporated and how do Howies respond? they start selling £75 polo shirts, £400 jackets and £160 jeans… what really amazes me is the kids clothes, £15 for a t-shirt and £45 for a pair of jeans, at the rate kids grow those will only last 6 months tops and I can’t remember the last time my son actually managed to wear out an item of clothing before he grew out of it.

Didn’t Howies used to be a kind of scruffy, skate/surf brand? Who is their target demographic these days?

We are looking for a C programmer with UNIX experience, job based in Nottingham. Haven’t had a chance to put an advert up yet.

I want one, but I can’t afford a new one and Daffy won’t sell me his 🙁

Cool, I meant the pistons at the caliper end. Sounds fairly straight forward then. Guess I’ll just have to give it a go and see what happens.

Thanks.

I like CRC but I’ve always found it odd that there are so many prices advertised as SALE when they only have 1p off the rrp….

This is just turning into a version of Mornington Crescent isn’t it…. lot’s of people claiming to know what’s going on but no-one really does. 🙂

Shame they couldn’t find someone who was passing that way anyway and get them to have a look on the way past, rather than send someone specially on an extended backpacking holiday….

Hi Gray….

Yep that was me. Glad you put the Chuck to good use and the hummer is still serving you well.

Ah, those were the days!

Cool – that would do. I’m in Nottingham though so you’d have to post it…… click on my name to email me and we can discuss the details.

Ta.

Tried ’em on my ss for a while, didn’t really feel like I could get over the front and haul on them when climbing, swapped them for fleegle bars – which are great!

No idea, but you could try asking on here:
VW Forum

Works great on my iPhone…… possibly something to do with iPhones not having support for Flash 😉

Me.

2Tyred – I couldn’t agree more. At last some sense.

Kelvin –

Can you not do anything for yourself ChrisS? Just send it back and they’ll pass it on to someone that hasn’t got one and would like one. We had a spate of getting 2, as we’d both separately ordered things in the past. Annoying, but the brochures did get sent back rather than ending up in our bin.

Yes I can do things for myself, thank you very much. The problem is not my ability to complete simple tasks, rather the number of competing tasks that all require my attention in a limited time frame. I have other commitments and surprisingly enough faffing about posting back catalogues doesn’t rank very highly on my list of priorities, I find it’s much quicker just to lob them in the recycling bin along with the rest of the junk mail.

When you’re posted a catalogue on its own, the envelope has a set of tick boxes to allow you to send it back if you don’t want it or have been sent multiple copies.

There won’t have been one on bomberman’s as it came with an order not on its own.

I don’t think the return is freepost though is it? Either way I’ve not been bothered to sort this out and after all it’s Howies who are espousing an eco-friendly approach not me and it’s Howies who just need to clean their database.

I think they are currently sending my household an average of three catalogues……

I guess the Uncle John is a possibility, I really liked the look of the Genesis but I read somewhere that is was really heavy…. the CTC membership certainly don’t seem impressed by it CTC Forum 🙄

Considered a Road Rat, but don’t fancy the funky rear dropouts with a geared setup. I guess a Tricross might do if I wore a blindfold!

Maybe I’m just a picky bugger….

The Thorn Audax MK3 looks quite good but it’s £1099 for a 105 spec….

Well an odd mix of tiagra, xt and fsa with bar con shifters. Weight about 30lbs? Bit of a beast really. definitely aimed at the touring market.

Hmmm, Tiagra, disk brakes, racks, probably heavy? I know you love yours but I’m not really looking for a touring bike thanks.

It’s funny, I had a steel on-one 29er, just the standard SS build with rigid forks, loved it, cheap, cheerful, amazed by what the big wheels meant you could do with rigid forks. Upgraded to the Ti version, swapped all the bits over then was kind of underwhelmed, it felt like the sluggish tyres and rigid forks were holding the frame back in a way that I never noticed with the steel version. Now swapped the tyres for faster rolling WTB prowlers and put a second hand set of fox G2 29er forks on the front and it’s amazing, sooo fast, remarkably agile and yet sooo comfortable, a veritable rocket powered flying carpet of a bike (can you tell I like it!).

Think I’m about 171….

Hi Mark,

Sorry – should have added a smiley. I wasn’t really serious about canceling then re-subscribing. Please don’t ban me for trying to subvert the system 😉

I already subscribe by DD, have done since issue No. 1, never managed to use the bike shop discounts as whenever I’ve checked a) there wasn’t a shop near me (Nottingham) b) ordering online was generally still easier and cheaper. Must admit I’ve also never ordered anything from your shop, I think it’s because the website and layout of the shop are a bit of a mess in my browser (safari 3.1.2) which I can’t be bothered to decipher and I’ve heard mixed reports about how fast things actually get sent out…. Suppose I should really give it a go for myself sometime.