funkmasterp – Member

Downloaded a film last night and have broken lots of laws in my time. Never broke speed limits though because I’ve suffered through the consequences of just travelling a bit over the limit.

And you are completely sure that whatever happened was due to you travelling at slightly above the speed limit rather than other factors?

As I said before, if a road is re-classified to a lower speed limit, does that mean you are now some kind of speeding maniac? Does it mean that when you previously travelled down there that it was unsafe to do so?

mindmap3 – Member

Just backing up myself, seems just because I have a very rigid opinion of speeding motorists I attract angry divisive characters who defend their “right” to speed.

What about those who just want to drive at the limit if / when its safe too….

Angry maniac.

bikebouy – Member

crankrider – Member
bikebouy – Member
You have no idea how long I’ve owned that car, you have no idea where I drive or for how long, most importantly you have no idea how I drive except I drive within the speed limits.
Care to share?

Not with you… it absolutely none of your business… You should concentrate on yourself.

I am not ‘concentrating’ any real effort on you at all, you are implying everybody is ‘angry’ if they have an opinion though you sound more upset than anybody else.

I imagine you wont share this completely innocuous information as it serves to confirm your stereotype.

theotherjonv – Member

as soon as you admit that you allow someone else on the road who is driving perfectly reasonably and within the law to ‘annoy’ you, what does that say about your tolerance? Because they are hesitant / terrified – should they not be allowed out? Or just at specific times / on specific roads?

Exactly – if a driver is hesitant to the extreme (dangerous) or terrified (very dangerous) of course they shouldnt be allowed on the road, is that even open for debate? We have laws to prevent speeding, dont we, so that deals with the idiots on that side of things, how about dealing with the dangerously incompetent?

bikebouy – Member

You have no idea how long I’ve owned that car, you have no idea where I drive or for how long, most importantly you have no idea how I drive except I drive within the speed limits.

Care to share?

You seem pretty angry, stuck behind somebody driving sensibly per chance

Not really, I have been through my ‘phase’ of driving quick cars, im more than happy to bumble along at an appropriate speed and really dont get angry at all at other normal motorists, occasionally annoyed at the the overly hesitant / terrified or 40mph in a 60 yes, but usually I will just find a safe place to overtake and be on my way.

Jesus christ, hardly a commendable achievement, is it?

Why isn’t it?

Im not sure if I am being obviously trolled here or not?

Do you think its commendable if you get out of bed in the morning too?

Evidence for this cars kept in a poor state of repair bollocks? Most people who are members of organisations such as Brake are members because they have lost somebody due to being hit by a car.

Evidence? What do you want me to provide, a government report on the correlation between speeding and vehicle mechanical condition?

My opninion is based on what I have seen of friends and family, their attitude to driving and the condition of their vehicles and attitude towards vehicle maintainence.

Nowhere above did I suggest a member of brake would have a poorly maintained car, nor do I think that, what I do think is that most of the drivers I know of that complain about others speeding and aggression on the road have poorly maintained cars that they just dont care about, they hate driving – why give the car any love?

I do think that we have some extremes on this thread as ever but I have no problem with drivers never exceeding the speed limit. Actually very commendable.

Jesus christ, hardly a commendable achievement, is it?

I travelled down a road every day to work, it was an NSL road, I just followed the herd so long as the car infront of me was driving at a speed I felt safe doing, so pretty much upto and around the NSL speed limit, sometimes slightly over, yes.

Recently, the road was re-classified as a 50mph road, there have been no changes to the road or its surrounding buildings, lighting etc I am not aware of it being an accident hot-spot (never once has the road been closed in 5 years of daily commute or have I seen an accident, its a short, wide NSL stretch)

My point is, speed limits are not ‘real’, they are rules given to us by other people based on country-wide laws and opinion / statistics – Some speed limits seem too low on certain roads, and some certainly too high.

Someone on here a year ago actually said they think people that speed are as bad as rapists, an actual horiffic crime, hilarious.

Oh, of course BikeBouy’s cars only done 4000 miles, he is probably terrified of driving so any journeys of significant size are out of the question after all.

Uberbike is worse than superstar with discounts – there is always a sale of some kind on.

Pads are good though, ordered.

Any thread about driving / speeding always brings out the militant nutters like bikebouy with their absolute opinions.

I find it quite funny that the most cautious / scared / militant type of drivers are often the ones who drive cars that are kept to pretty poor mechanical standards, low tread / pressures, low brake pads / discs, lack of servicing and any kind regular inspection, more likely to fit budget tyres etc as they ‘dont speed so dont see the point’

There is a middle ground of driving speed and competence that most people fit into, then you have the nutters on either side of that, each capable of inflicting their own brand of grief on other road users.

I would rather be driven slightly too quickly somewhere by someone concentrating properly in a well maintained car, who has a decent level of observation / driving skill than some militant ‘brake’ member in their poorly maintained turd of a car who is causing no end of problems by hesitating, driving just too slowly spending more time ranting about other road users / looking in the mirror than actually getting on with the job in hand.

Are the people showering 3 times a day the type that changes bedding every 1-2 days too?

Must be difficult for places like Planet X and Superstar to manage business, I mean are RRP’s calculated with the inevitable sales in mind? Do they plan for the periods where sale volumes dip because everything is at RRP? What happens when you run out of excuses for a sale? – may as well just drop the RRP and be done with it in Superstars case at least, no re-sellers to get angry and all that and all their own stuff.

Went to buy a car with my gf last year from a small dealer, car was OK in my estimation but she was completely smitten by it so it was a done deal.

I noticed several things that would need to be put right within 6 months, low rear tyre tread, discs were pretty lipped from having just pads replaced and the aerial needed replacing – Pointed these out went down the route of saying what they would cost to put right and would you knock a fair amount from the car (£500 on a £7k car so nothing mental as a starting figure) – Response was absolutely no way and he would be happy to say goodbye to us.

I then went down the route of just trying to get a gesture but he wouldn’t budge at all, not even £50 off for petrol, he still got the sale, not sure he would have from me…..

It seems indeed, many dealers just are not willing to haggle anymore, at all.

chakaping – Member

It’s be a challenge to buy from CRC or Planet X when they were NOT having a sale.

CRC have a lot of lines that are discounted but not really on ‘sale’ as such – PX / On-one & Superstar perhaps get the crown for me.

The problem I find is a bit of ‘buyers anxiety’ then, when do you buy? at 20% off, 30% off? both of these did varying discounts over Christmas / New Year, PX even did a countdown…

crankrider – Member (of course SS do constant sale prices so that may not be the case)

Do you guys practice selective reading?

Phil_H – Member

Carboncycles.cc alloy flats £34. Very similar to the nukeproof & nano pedals.
I’m happy enough with the ones I’ve got on my DH bike.

The carboncycles pedals are the same HT pedals that superstar used to sell before going UK made (and arguably the quality went down not up with one side tighter than the other and wearing internals in no time at all) – For less than £35.00 they are a complete bargain.

submarined – Member

My v12s have needed regreasing as well, btw.

re-greasing and rebuilding are different things, I imagine poor assembly could be one of the reasons one side runs tighter than the other and they fail after a short period of time – you have likely re-built them to a better standard.

submarined – Member

Superstar Nanos. Much prefer the feel to the v12s on my other bike.
New bearings after a few hundred miles at 15 quid, but other than that, they’ve taken an awful lot of abuse very well.

Not sure how you can reccomend a product you had to re-build at your cost within a very short period? – At RRP plus £15.00 and your time you are at around the same cost as a set of Vaults (of course SS do constant sale prices so that may not be the case)

Now the Superstar pedals are £50.00 and not the bargain they were I would go for the Nukeproof Horizon at £62.00 on CRC – I have been very impressed with them and they get great reviews.

Had one a few years ago for 3 years, was completely reliable until the gearbox started making a ‘whine’, I got shut of it then as I needed to change car anyway but even advertising it with a gearbox fault still didnt lose much money.

Why did the gearbox get noisy? – It had a gearbox oil change but turns out the oil was cheap crap, the worst bit was I had £90 worth of decent stuff a year before but didnt get round to having it changed.

So my experience of them is at WRX level they are a decently reliable car just keep up with regular oil changes with decent oil and good box / diff oil – They are really very simple cars indeed compared do modern stuff.

I used to get low 20’s on a mixed commute, partly beacuse it wasnt hot until 3/4 of the way to work but did get 30mpg out of it bumbling along at 70, will happily get into the teens if you have a heavy right foot though.

2.0 is considered the most reliable choice and also much cheaper to tax too though mine was a 2.5 and was just fine and didnt use any oil.

As for the ‘chavvy’ / not the best image – are they really seen like that nowdays? Mine was an estate so no big spoiler etc but I see a lot of ‘older’ people using them in the sticks due to the 4wd and being pretty hardy – I dont see that many impreza’s on the road anymore and a lot of the tat is probably rusted into the scrapyard – I would class some modern mercedes etc as more chavvy realisticaly.

Only thing to expect is that they are just not ‘fast’ anymore – A modern diesel repmobile will keep up in a straight line and anything like a modern hatchback will be much faster – if that kind of thing bothers you.

Since when has anything being secured or regulated made for a safer investment?

Sure it’s not ‘backed’ by anything we are familiar with as a measure of value but as we have seen in the past, security and regulation is only as good as the people and system behind it, who happen to have shown themselves to be a corrupt self serving bunch.

Not invested myself but it seems a lot are more angry that they have not made a quick buck than the fact they actually think it’s a ‘scam’ of sorts – FOMO as the ‘millenials’ call it.

From what I see, I think bitcoin won’t be the future of currency, It may also ‘crash’ in the future but blockchain technology will last and is going to play a huge role going forward, that’s obvious – bitcoin will just bring the worlds attention to it.

jambalaya – Member

Well done to Trump on Israel, he has significant cross party support too. He’s also working on ending funding to Palestinian Authority who divert aid money to pay terrorist

Funny how one persons terrorist is anothers army, isnt it?

I think we need to get to grips with this ‘ocean fill’ statement and assumptions about how bad the bicycle industry is to the environment.

I will start by saying that ANY waste dumped into the ocean is wrong, and that I am sure there is room for most companies to improve in all areas but…

Do we have any real facts about this ocean fill carbon ‘story’, other than the Pole / Sick Bikes marketing talk? By this I mean actual facts, such as how much is getting dumped, who is dumping it, where etc?

Do we have any facts about how much aluminium or steel production waste is dumped into the sea or how much the mining of other elements used in its production ruin the environment, the oils used in quenching / heat treating, the resources used in terms of electricity, heat etc?

My point is that it has become fashionable now to just say ‘ocean fil’ to any carbon product – do we think Hope grind up carbon and dump it into the sea for example?

The nature of business will bring waste, it is upto us all to reduce this waste and get behind companies that are actively trying to achieve this but dont get behind mis-information and effective marketing, that wont help anyone!

E.g. Pole – We are going to CNC machine frames now, is that really better for the environment or would producing carbon in their own country be better? I have NO idea, but the facts would be nice to see – are the benefits being guessed at by Pole?

Same example for another speaker on this subject – Sick bikes, though tiny in comparison to Pole talk a lot about this subject, cutting out carbon due to its environmental impact.

If you look at their range though they have Ti frames made overseas (is Ti production environmentally friendly? How about shipping across the world?) They also have their T-shirts printed entirely in the USA – so a single t-shirt is shipped all of the way round the world to get to a UK customer, the excuse is nobdy in the UK can print T-shirts to their liking but if you truly cared about he envionmental impact of your practices wouldnt you knock the product on the head until you could get it done here, Im sure somebody could do it – Planting a tree per sale doesnt really remove the issue, does doing one good thing cancel out the bad, again if you are going to say it have figures to back it up, not guesswork.

Anyone that is vocal about their own environmental practices and is trying to convince others rather than just making a small statement saying ‘we try our best’ will be under fire about all of their own practices – at the moment we dont have any facts about the subject to be able to draw a realistic conclusion. /Rant Over.

Any comments on my non slagging post Jordan? I notice you are straight on FB to drum up support / slag off people on here?

I suggested their frame to someone on another thread, I think their new gearbox bike looks brilliant, I love long slack hardtails and would be the target market for one of their TI bikes but for the fact that the way they deal with people.

Jordan, if you ever pass your eye over this thread again please tone this stuff down just a bit man, not for me but for Sick, you don’t need to lose what you stand for or your identity, ignore the non constructive idiots – of course defend yourselves online but don’t make videos shaming people, don’t get so worked up you have to call them at home, don’t drop to making huge rants on here generalising a whole forum of people, none of it will help. Tell everyone ‘thanks, but if you don’t like it you know where to go’ and get back on with it.

The more you grow the more criticism you will get, you can’t avoid it, you can’t bully people into not doing it and if you try and go toe to to against everyone it’s all you will end up doing with your working day.

When you do something different people will pass comment, it’s their right. You describe the bike industry in a dim light, you criticise current aspects of the industry etc so let people return the favour and deal with it internally.

Depends on budget, the Kingdom and Sick TI hardtails are a good buy when available

What I am a little disturbed about is the inability to take any kind of criticism, even from those that do know what they are on about and even when constructive – the company that posted on their picture causing them to panic and pull the image or Ben on here posting personal opinion from a qualified background.

This has now peaked with them proudly stating that they hunted through the web to find someone’s details who criticised them on Facebook and called them at home, asking their wife to pass the phone over so they could confront the person about it. This kind of attitude is a little worrying – is it an attempt to bully everyone into silence in fear of being called out online or otherwise, or just an inability for owners to let any criticism go ‘without a fight’ – the internets a big craphole full of opinion and trolls, sometimes you just have to leave it, grow a thicker skin.

Has the UBYK discount ended now? that’s a lot of money off a full bike, especially when some margins are only 20%, would seriously tempt me to get a Nukeproof.

Other ‘bargain’ is 20% at Works Components, plus they seem to have dropped the price on headsets recently too by the looks of it.

Black Friday deals outside of the bike world seem to have been really weak.

But be realistic, you want things to grow as a company surely, you cant spend your time making videos whenever you get a bad review on facebook, can you?

The respose to that bad review should have been to shame the customer with politeness, especially if he had not contacted you first to allow you to put the situation right – all you did was make it look like you guys had screwed up and were basically saying “so what if you havnt had your stuff, your a dick anyway”

The STW forum is exactly that, a forum, not a representaton of a company, of course its full of crap and nobody can control that but you have full control over how you conduct yourselves online.

You cant preach about negativity and then dish it out in droves to any criticism and its especially ironic considering how negative you are about the bike industry. As others have said, grow a thicker skin and keep doing what you do best (which you seem to be doing a good job of)

Thats a well mannered and well thought through response and exactly what people want to see from you guys, your own personalality and the companies image backed up by a level of professionalism but….

P.S if you think I’m nasty, read your own horrible comments guys, I’m a dad, working a full time job and making bicycles in my spare time.

What does you being a dad and having a job have to do with you treating some of your customers and public like assholes? – Its not right to call out a disgruntled customer because he has left a bad review as his product ordered months ago has not arrived.

Fighting with people online about their opinion of you or your products is one thing, especially if they are being personal which is not acceptable but calling out people who have given you their money because they like what you do is a really bad show – they bought into and wanted to wear your brand – If you dont deliver they have every right to be pissed, deal with it by saying sorry and going above and beyond to sort the issue not by slagging them off in public – even if it is a postal issue or an issue out of your hands its your issue as you sold the item; your problem until they have what they paid for.

You guys are a new approach to making bikes, you have your own thing going on thats for sure but you dont need treat people like assholes and seemingly laugh about it.

You are going to get to the point that you call people out so aggressively when you receive any criticism that people will be scared to do so, do you really want that – Is that not the opposite of your ‘no negativity’ statement?

andyrm – Member

They’re a modern, disruptive, web based business who’s product just happens to be bikes and associated lines

Not doubting that – but do you need to treat the public / customers like dirt along with this? I dont think so, if anything by treating customers and the public better how could people criticise other than to moan about a business making a product they dont like?

Anybody know the reason their invite to steel is real demo was cancelled?

Nickhit3 – I’m not after support or otherwise?

lots of similarities though, no? People following something ‘new’ despite the bad behaviour and crap talk, everybody rallying behind them because ‘the industry and squares’ called them and supporters dickheads – yea, no similarities at all.

That’s fair enough and clever marketing, I don’t doubt that- it’s been fun watching people froth at the mouth over their designs and some of the crap talk, what doesn’t have to go with that is treating people like crap.

Plenty of screen dumps from slagging matches they have been involved in posted on instagram – check Facebook out, recent meltdown over a 1 star review from a different customer who surprisingly also waited 3 months for something to not arrive and had no communication – response is to call him out publicly on Facebook and instagram live video.

It’s just not good way to conduct yourself as a person let alone a business that is meant to be providing a product and therefore support down the line.

The guys defending them here are missing the point that most people have raised and are trying to explain yet again that it’s because people ‘don’t understand’ or are ‘negative’ but are avoiding the obvious – the owners behaviour, like Donald trump supporters.

What do you think about how they conduct themselves? you can maintain the marketing ethos without behaving so badly to others. – it’s at the point where if you made an order, it didn’t arrive, no email response from them that you would just leave it out of fear of reprisal and public shaming.

I don’t think anyone is doubting their ability to market themselves, most of the issue people have seems to be with how they conduct themselves towards others – the things they have done / are doing are not the usual hallmarks of a decent human being.

What they are doing isn’t on, it’s almost some kind of scare tactic – criticise us and we will expose you to our fans for ridicule.

What is working for them though?

In terms of having a company, its two guys in their houses, no stock (they even dropship t-shirts) using customer money to front orders of frames a frame-builder is making for them.

Their behaviour is getting worse, more posts about how far they have come (on Instagram?), how great they are and how the industry is complete shite and doesn’t understand them.

I look forward to see how successful they are when they move to a business premises, actually stock-hold items / provide support and genuinely have a product for sale rather than using customers money to front orders.

The way they campaign to make public anyone that says anything they don’t agree with is something I have never seen before – recent Instagram video calling out a customer because he gave a bad FB review, after 3 months of not receiving an item, and that’s apparently ok? This is hilarious after their recent campaign to stop negativity, or is it just negativity if it is targeted at them.

I have recently removed them from Instagram etc as I moved from intrigue to them looking like genuinely pretty bad people with a gang of guys that follow / back them up no matter how badly they behave.

It’s that kind of statement / response from them that would worry me to give them such a large sum of money – almost a way of intimidating people into reserving any criticisism even if they are a customer that is disgruntled.

This added to the several Facebook slagging matches they have been involved in, making screenshots of criticism and posting them on instagram to ridicule the person, making a huge joke out of someone waiting 3 months for a tshirt and having a borderline meltdown while self – filming last night don’t help to remove any fears.

Fair enough, be individual / be different but at least deal with customers (potential or otherwise) with some respect.

Rubber_Buccaneer – Member 
Doesn’t sound good, I’ve not seen anything like that
My thoughts before ordering were
The frames are made by competent people whether it is this Ti frame made in Taiwan or the steel frames made by Downland Cycles
The Pinion gearbox is a solid product
Sick have given the frame builders the geometry and the numbers look good to me
How far wrong can it go? In an absolute worst case scenario I will go whining to PayPal but I fully expect to be happily riding around on a fun bike with 12X1 gears
Proof of the pudding will be in the eating I guess

The problem with that is how do you know the frame manufacturers in Taiwain are competent? (I don’t think that is an actual issue) The ‘issue’ here (if any, hopefully not) could be if they will deliver exactly what they are asked? – The usual process here is sending off for samples which are inspected and measured, tested and inevitably altered in some way or another before being signed off for production.

You are essentially receiving the sample here, Sick are very transparent and if they had received a sample of this frame we would all know about it.

There are so many small issues that could be there, cable routing, tyre clearance in reality, the interface between the gearbox and the frame, choice of tubing and if it is suitable for the type of geometry and riding.

£2000 is a bargain for a full TI frame and gearbox, but its an awful lot of money if it doesn’t ride well, isn’t made well, or there are some other issues all of which may be impossible to put right as the frame is made overseas and to specification – The UK stuff they make is the opposite and I am sure you would get great backup as they seem to be using good people there – Whining to paypal would be a terrible thing to have to go through, for them and you so hopefully you fall in love with it when you get it.

Again, I don’t wish the Sick guys any animosity, I find their approach quite refreshing but this method of selling bikes just doesn’t seem ‘right’ to me.

What scares me about buying something from them of this value is that you are essentially buying a prototype.

The frames have not been tested by Sick in the normal way expected before you sell a product, it is a tiny run of frames and if there is a problem what next? – from what they stated it’s even a new factory they have not dealt with before.

As a comparison, pipedream, Stanton, cotic etc all test prototypes before selling to customers, I mean who is doing the QC from the factory?

Aside from this you have two guys that have behaved very badly towards people online (slagging off people and sharing people they single out on instagram videos inc laughing at a guy who waited 3 months for a product) an seen to think that it’s completely fine to do so.

I don’t get ‘it’ – I don’t wish any animosity towards them but they need Bring some more professionalism into the mix before asking for second hand car money for a bicycle frame.

I imagine they are expecting you will use a boost setup (ring or crank etc) just with the non-boost wheel.

I purchased a 6mm spacer and re-dished by 3mm, it didnt take long to do and has worked fine so far.

Shrink wrap over the spacer and original hub cap to keep them together is a good tip too.

I find it hard to believe they stopped sending to AUS because 80% of items went missing, that just doesnt happen – CRC etc all manage just fine – more likely it just wasnt worth the hassle but he seems incapable of being polite on facebook and thinks ‘trump speak’ is an acceptable way to address customers.

Really dont understand the whole ‘stopped selling due to suicidal competitors’ statement, Superstar had a large customer base there and could have easily put up prices to keep profit margins the same, reduced the range to the most popular and still sold plenty.

Then again, biker customers are sometimes the biggest assholes and feel they have the right to question a business about their practices like it isnt privately owned and none of their business.

Superstar should just be polite and splurge some ‘changes in retail model / policy / delivery contract’ rather than go into rude exchanges with customers.