Wider profile of the tyre may cause clearance issues. Apart from that they should be lovely.

I have Crests and Flow EXes. Crests for the local stuff and XC-ish rides. Flows for uplifts and DH venues. I ride a 120mm full sus and have never felt the need for additional travel with the Flows on. Love those wheels.

Where do you live? If you’re in West London then you could probably have a bit of a go round Richmond Park and go on to the cycle path and all the way into Putney/Hammersmith fairly safely.

A bloke in our club comes out on the club run in the slow group on a fixed. He is an ex track racer, but just shows you it can be done.

Chaino once dumped a load of M077s on the market for £21.99. Can’t find anymore but they were an end of sale special. Maybe worth looking out for something like that at the usual suspects.

If you’re not hard up against a budget then take a look at the AM51s.

Not just school. Where I come from it’s pretty normal for parents to use the cane on their children from a pretty young age.

I got it at home, and it set me up nicely for my first day at school. My mate from Nursery was trying to assert his dominance on the playground. I wasn’t having any of it and smashed his head with my yellow drink bottle. I still remember him looking dumbfounded as Tang sloshed all over his head. Next thing I know, I’m outside the headies office and he gives me six of the best. Pretty much a weekly occurrence in lower school from then on. Headie was a right sadist.

Middle school was much of the same. Another headie who was a sadist. I remember being late for school once and getting caned for it. Seems hilarious that I got the cane because the traffic was rubbish along with 20 other lads on the same bus.

Got to upper school and I remember asking my mate Mohammed Ali (for that was his name) for some food before religious assembly. He always brought in a great lunch. Incensed, I stayed back with a couple of mates, ate his food and hung his bag from the flagpole in the middle of the quadrangle as punishment. Mo rats us out to the upper school headie for eating his lunch, missing assembly and the bag hanging. The headie had a fearsome reputation with the cane, but not so fearsome a rep for his English meaning my first day in upper school was also the funniest. Headie calls us up, and he’s in such a rage that he screams at us to “turn the wall” instead of “turn to the wall”. My mate pipes up with “sir, it’s not turning!” and duly gets his bottom turned to ribbons. The two of us burst into laughter. He turns his rage on us. Must have taken about 20 “cuts” that day. Sadist chalked his canes so they’d land on the same spot each time.

Mo was a marked man after that day though. We made sure we ate his lunch every day from that day forth even if we weren’t hungry.

Two years from that day and we’re in our GCE year. School has a pretty bad Langur problem meaning there was a daily monkey invasion. They’d come in looking for food pretty much any time of the day. General pandemonium would occur if they entered your classroom meaning whichever teacher who was in there at the time would have to write his/her period off. The more enterprising amongst us took to leaving food on the windowsills (we’re on the 1st floor) during the periods we didn’t like. The monkeys turned up without fail until the day we got caught doing it during a particularly unpopular teacher’s period. Teacher makes the entire class (30+ lads) march up to headies office and line up. Headie duly caned each and every one of us. He also taught us and was a brilliant teacher, though prone to fits of rage. He had a quiet word with us afterwards asking us not to play up. Funny how that worked better than the previous teacher’s threats of violence.

I think I got caned pretty much every week for 11 years at school, bar a couple of years where I was a prefect. I still remember some hilarious moments. Like one headie trying to hit a lad who was over a foot taller than him. It was like watching Woody Harrelson in White Men Can’t Jump, except with an apoplectic headie.

I don’t think it did me any harm, though I’d certainly never cane my kids or let another adult have that control over them. Some of the teachers came to school looking to whale on the kids for whatever was wrong in their lives and that was wrong. Also, some kids lived in mortal fear of the cane. You tell them in the morning they’re going to get the cane in the evening and they’d pretty much be sobbing all day and doing anything they could, like ratting mates out, or blaming everyone else but themselves for why they got the cane. Most of us just shut up and took it. For the tougher nuts amongst us getting the cane was like walking to the tuck shop.

Taken me right down memory lane that has. Not sure why the OP wanted to know about the cane, but I had a lot of laughs remembering the above things!

You can buy a Hope front wheel for about £45-50 second hand so I’m out.

How do you know when the headset needs a re-grease/bearing replacement? Is it when it feels a little bit “grindy” when you’re turning the handlebars with the front tyre off the ground?

Someone’s selling an Ibis Tranny for £500 on the Classifieds. Definitely worth a look I reckon.

Njee, are you racing the Gorrick Autumn Series?

The confusion here is Sport has been listed as 18-39 and Masters as 30-39. All cleared up now.

My main reason for entering Open is the start time (1000-ish). 3 laps would be my preferred race length, but I don’t want to hang about all day on a Sunday with race nerves (we all get them even if we’re not racing for first) for an afternoon start!

Cheers for the response mate.

Don’t lose your hard won fitness!

Sorry to resurrect this, but does anyone know if you need a race license to enter the Masters cat, or do these things vary from race to race?

A mate is buggering about. The plan was for us to all enter the Sport cat to start early and finish early. He’s now dithering about where he’s going to place. Personally, I don’t care whether I’m last in Sport, or back of the pack in Open, or dead last in Masters. But why the need for all these categories? It is doing my nut in.

Ah, that makes more sense than me thinking “restricted to license holders”!

Crap. Does that mean I need a license to enter in the Sport Male cat? Didn’t see them ask for my license in the entry form.

For fighting crime, obviously.

My 20s were a bit of a rollercoaster.

More to do with it being because I was trying to make a career, juggle relationships, stay fit, save money and have fun. The massive amount of drinking and partying was probably due to trying to cope with the lack of stability with one or more of those things.

Things are a lot more stable now. Conversely, I am fitter, happier and know what I have fun with instead of what I think I should have fun with. Going out 5 nights a week and all weekend benders weren’t really fun when you look back on what you can actually remember.

Borrowed one for a race. Quit because of the creaking BB. was glad because I was doing miserably and was pretty unfit.

Occasionally ride it now and it is a speed machine. Cannot wait to race it this winter. You’ll love it SS. Probably could go into road bike weight territory if you run it rigid as well.

Forgot to say. I hate the dropout design. Makes getting to the brakes a ball ache.

Very long shot, but you could have split the rim.

If it were me I would be taking the rim tape off (seems like that is a problem for you already so a good idea to do it anyway), checking the rim and taping it up again.

I am running these with some Superstar rim tape (the wider tape) tubeless with some Hans Dampfs and they have been incredible.

When I walk down a long street and make eye contact with someone I know.

The weather is nice so I want to look at the clouds. But if I break eye contact it feels rude, so what happens is an awkward march holding eye contact until they are within earshot when I say “alright”, smile and carry on.

I used to have anxieties about the kiss thing with women. Everyone gets a handshake now. Men I know well get a kiss.

The missus’ mum insists on a hug and a kiss though. Her Dad (ex-Navy) is satisfied with a firm handshake and a look which I know means “hurt my daughter and I will kill you with my bare hands”.

I went to FoD and stayed in one of these:

The Dome Garden

It was pretty good. Plus you have an internal log burner and whatnot, and it is right at the top of the final descent to the Verderer’s trail.

Get tickets to Bestival, get her sloshed and have your wicked way with her.

Not late September though.

Small hijack. Can the padding inside a saddle “wear out” over time and cause plum discomfort?

Large wheels or small bike?

Looks nice though.

throwing gel wrappers at sheep.

Hahaha!

You’d be annoyed if tubeless rims came round at the same time disc brakes went mainstream wouldn’t you? Would mean you’d be stuck with discs only when you could have justified discs AND a new wheelset to the missus.

Hmmm… Definitely will make me think twice about buying a DH bike from them if there are problems this complex. When my Nerve arrived with the mech hanger broken I spent a good half hour trying to work out why on earth I couldn’t get the rear wheel in!

Fair play to apinkone for persisting with getting them to resolve the problem. Seems pretty unlucky that she got two Friday evening special builds in a row though.

Don’t think I’d put XTR on a bike ever again! SLX/XT all the way for me from now on!

Thanks to cycl1ngjb for the dropper post info! I will keep that in mind.

Still seems like new frame is the way to go and 2nd hand forks. Though the X-Fusions are looking tempting.

Thought the 27.2mm tubes wouldn’t? I stand corrected in that case!

What do you mean the “bracket” isn’t right? Have you bough a post mount adapter? I think both front and back are post mount for the Nerve.

Rear mech should just fit on the hanger no? Shouldn’t matter if it’s SRAM or Shimano.

Pictures would help.

Is that the new colour for the C456?

I do like it. But then, there’s no accounting for my taste!

Cheers for the opinions guys.

The frame and forks I’m after new + headset would be around £800.

A similar frame + forks + headset that can’t take tapered forks or a dropper post would only be worth around £450 to me. Once you add in service costs for the fork then I reckon it’s around £550-600. That’s where I’m getting my £200 saving from.

£200 would easily pay for a weekend trip to somewhere nice to ride some trails on my new 2nd hand beauties. Perhaps the best compromise would be to buy a new frame that will let me swap forks out later on and potentially add a dropper post if the fancy takes me so I have the options if I need them.

I don’t think it’s a common story they feed the punters. I’ve been to their HQ to drop the bike off, dealt with the duff guy and also met his replacement who has been pretty straight up with me. This was around May-June.

I was quite patient with the duff one because I really needed my bike for a trip overseas. Didn’t think it’d be a smart move to antagonise the guy who’s fixing my bike. Plus you catch more flies with honey and all that.

If the service is so pants and you’re sure you’re within your rights then lawyer up, or threaten to lawyer up. I’m sure you’ll get the outcome you deserve that way. I’m not sure if you’re serious about police turning up if they don’t send a courier.

Sportfuls with the TC Pro pad for me. So comfy and well fitted you don’t even know they’re there. The lower end ones are pretty good too.

Have one. Love it.

Arrived with a broken mech hanger. E-mailed them the pictures and one was on its way within a week. They even paid for me to have the mech replaced and the gears indexed by my LBS.

Bearings started to creak within a year and were replaced FOC by them. Small problem of one bolt by the cranks working its way loose on the trails but luckily another STWer was around to sort it for me when I was in Spain. Mechanic’s fault for not torque-ing or “Loctite-ing” the bolts. Took it back to them soon as I was in the UK. Seemed like mechanic was a bit of a duffer. New mechanic “Loctited” all of the bolts, even bled my brakes for me and the bike has been on a few uplift days since with no problems.

To be fair to their duffer mechanic, he did do fit my 2×10 + clutch mech setup for free.

Our household has since purchased another one (road bike for the missus).

Next road bike is definitely going to be from them I reckon.

Really surprised to hear the problems the guy above has had. Alex, Damir and Martin at the Kingston HQ have been pretty solid to deal with. The duff mechanic they had was pretty crap at ringing me back and answering e-mails to be fair, but he’s long gone now.

I’ll just leave this here…

How was Bike Park Wales then?

The other day I had a slightly similar dilemma. Saw a bloke riding a fancy carbon Canyon. Nothing unusual about it. Except he was in gumboots, wearing high vis. Looked like he’d just come out of a building site.

Not sure what to do in these cases really.

If it were my bike and I were driving, I’d definitely follow him and find out where he lived at a minimum with the aim of getting police help, or helping myself back to my own bike really.

My apologies too.

I guess this means you’ll lose some of the travel so a 170mm fork on a 26″ wheel becomes 160mm or something on a 650B wheel?

Don’t need it and don’t drink often. Even if I do then it’s never more than a couple of pints and a little bottle of beer over a whole day and that’s it for the whole week.

Very different story last year. Would go for ages without, then binge drink myself into a very embarrassing state.

Absolutely no problem with mates who want to drink loads, but the conversation does tend to get tedious after a while. Makes it easier to say the goodbyes and leave.

Yeah, on the Freeborn site it says a few of them are 650B compatible out of the box. Like the guy above said, not sure what you could do to make it 650B compatible apart from cut a section out of the brace!

I think they were mostly the longer travel ones.

If it happened to me I’d be gutted. Maybe worth contacting CRC on his behalf with the photo and seeing what they say?

Obviously make no promises to the buyer.

Isn’t it 20% off RRP? I doubt you’ll find much even that way.