I guess it’s down to what you ride, but speaking personally, 80% of our MTB riding is still either from the door, or within 20 mins drive from home and, races and holidays excepting, it’s unusual for us to drive a long way just to go for a ride. On the road bikes, it’s even more extreme and, races aside, we almost never ride anything other than from the house.

That said, I know plenty of people who used to ride like this, but now wouldn’t entertain getting out the MTBs for anything other than a “proper trail centre”, which generally involves at least a 1-2 hour drive from home. In fact, I’ve more or less given up trying to get them out on local rides any more, which is their loss more than mine.

Personally, I think the drive to more capable bikes and many that are “descending focused” has led to a mindset that a traditional, local XC route has nothing to offer them any more, which is a real shame. My son rides with a large and ever-changing group of peers and it’s astonishing to me just how few of them will (or even can!) ride back up the hills to the top of the next descending trail. Again, a mindset that MTB is all about the down and not the up any more.

Strong upvote for Aftershokz. As a note of caution, I’ve killed two pairs within their warranty period and, to their credit, both were replaced without fuss, but I would not describe them as “buy for life”. That said, if I lost them, I’d immediately buy another pair tomorrow.

For cycling they are superb, but they are easily drowned out at speed. This is easy enough as I just hit the button on the side to pause the media while I’m blasting down a hill, and they resume again when things calm down again. Useless on planes and trains, of course – the whole point of them is that they *don’t* block outside noise – but in the right environment, they are superb. I use them when wandering about the house, or working in the workshop as they are great for “background media”.

I’ve even got the “Aftershokz OpenComm”, professional headset which I use for my endless meetings at work. This is pricey, but highly recommended too, if not for the bike!

Noone in the history of cycling has ever worn out a set of bog-standard Shimano SPD pedals. Period.

Another order shipped overnight and is with Evri now going through the normal process. This was ordered on 3rd March, so pretty much bang on the 5 days that Wiggle are saying at the moment.

Have stuck another in for some more cheap bib tights, because….cheap!

Used them this week. Items promptly posted, arrived next day and were all present and correct. Good prices too.

(In my case, some tyres and Shimano D-A bits)

FYI, had a chat to them on live chat. Current dispatch times are around 5 days due to demand and skeleton staff, so a bit of patience is required here, but things should get sent eventually.

Saturday order (wheels): shipped
Sunday order (cheap jacket): processing
Monday order (bars): processing

I’ve now blacklisted wiggle.com to stop myself ordering anything else!

TBH, the risk is probably worth the reward as there’s been some (very) good deals on there and my assumption is that most orders will (eventually) ship. Certainly, every item I ordered is now out of stock so clearly their warehouse clearance has been pretty effective, but I assume there’s a massive backlog now.

I chatted to the Parcel Force chap that delivered me some wheels yesterday and he said he’d never seen so many bikes and wheels being delivered as there has this week. He was aware that they were liquidating and was looking forward to things calming down a bit.

I’ve got two orders stuck in “processing” since the weekend, while another order shipped and was delivered ok. I’m guessing that they have a pretty meaty backlog of orders and almost no staff left to fulfil them (and they probably haven’t got the best motivation to work too hard anyway).

Not a lot of options right now but sit and wait and see what happens.

Put four orders for cheap bits in since they started liquidating stock. One shipped as normal, the second shipped after 4 days, the other two are still sat in processing and will, I guess, get shipped eventually.

Specifically bought stuff that I knew I wouldn’t have to return as I figured this would likely be a futile action now. Shame, really, but I’m still in awe that they managed to lose £100m last year given the jump in bike and part prices since Covid. The industry really is screwed.

Never used a valve cap on a presta valve (MTB or road) for as long as I can remember. They don’t really do anything and it’s just one more thing to faff with in the rain on the side of the road. Chuck ’em away!

Pro trick: Tesa 4289 tape is literally the identical stuff that Stans etc. sell under their own brands, but you can buy from eBay for a fraction of the price in a decent range of widths. It takes a bit of a knack to apply (personally, I do mine in a wheel support so I can pull it tight), but it’s never let me down.

For MTBs, I agree that generic valves are absolutely fine (and it’s what I use). Take care with carbon road wheels, however – companies like Zipp have specific valves to fit their rim profiles, and they usually have a small nick in the lockring which ensures that any air that seeps into the rim void can escape. Without this, there’s a chance that a dodgy tape job can result in your rims exploding when inflated!

+1 for Bearing Pro Tools – excellent, UK made kit (and can buy from eBay too). I’d buy both the extractor and press from them, but that’s just me.

Top pro tip: Fit the extractor and then douse boiling hot water from the kettle over the bearing / seat before knocking it out. Aluminium expands more than steel for a given amount of heat, so this loosens the bearing seat. You’ll find that it’ll take one, relatively gently tap to come out. I’ve been doing this for years and can’t remember the last time I had to dremel out a bearing shell from a tight bearing that exploded while being removed.

I’ll be honest, I also have wind-out extractors for frame bearings as I don’t like braying these even when heated, but I’ll still heat them up to reduce the work it needs to pull them out. You can need all sorts of weird bits for odd shaped frames though.

Apply a thin sheen of grease before refitting and next time around, they’ll come out that bit easier.

Thanks, I’ll have a look at that. Any feedback so far?

But then you don’t get to have an awkward, hour-long conversation waiting for the money to clear through to their account…

I once bought something locally (not a lot – maybe £200) and, sod’s law, the money never came through. So we stood and chatted for half an hour, discovered that we had a load of mutual friends in the cycling world. In the end, he got bored of waiting and as he was happy to take me on trust, said he’d message later when the money came through. Which it did…6 hours later!

Otherwise, this is the right way to do it – better than cash too.

Yeah, it’s more than just particulate. It’s hard to see from this picture, but those are like very hard stones that literally rattle around inside the tyre making it sound like some tragically bike-themed maracas:

I had also thought “bad batch”, but was looking for other’s opinions before I chucked it in.

Yeah, I’ve since done this – this was taken straight after it was installed.

How short can I go? Should I leave a few mm sticking out?

Praxis are pretty good, to be fair. They don’t last forever in Yorkshire, but I’m certainly not replacing them every week. If I had to rank them by longevity, it would be something like this:

Hope
|
Shimano
Praxis
|
|
|
|
|
|
Butter on a
warm day
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
SRAM GXP

I guess we’ll see what happens, but it’s been a few days and it’s still pretty well inflated, so we’ll see. It’s not what you would call pretty though!

Wych, Kinetic and the usual crowd.

For wheels, I only really buy NSK, NTN or decent Japanese bearings now as they outlast anything else. Stainless for headsets (Hope, if they’ll fit as they tend to be well priced and decent quality!), but otherwise good quality, Japanese bearings. Enduro for linkage bearings – always get the max fill variants if possible and, unless otherwise stated, pack ’em with XHP222 until they are groaning.

Also kudos to SJS Cycles for stocking these little bits and bobs, saved me many times.

Genuinely, I would love to visit their shop. I have a vision of an Open All Hours Aladdin’s cave of weird and wonderful parts, served by wizened old men wearing brown shop coats and offering to wrap up your purchases for you.

I’m sure it’s nothing like that, but SJS is a wonderful resource for weird Shimano bits and bobs! Now, if only Shimano would sell the races for their pedals, rather than just axle assemblies, we’ll all be much happier…

was to stop using Shimano brakes

Well, the master cylinder rebuild job I did last week on my son’s Guide Ultimates suggest that brake issues are not just limited to Shimano. What possessed SRAM to use plastics that clearly react and expand with DOT fluid in an environment where they are permanently immersed in it…?

As it happens, I’ve been relatively free of brake issues on my own bikes for a while, but over the years I’ve seen my own fair share of dribbly Shimano calipers contaminating pads so they sound like a cross-channel ferry manoeuvring into port. Even Hope are not without their problems and I’ve seen a few reports of Tech 4 brakes shredding master cylinder piston seals.

You’d have thought that after nearly 30 years, they’d have nailed these things by now, but…

The diaphram seal can be burst if there’s too much fluid in the system when the pistons are pushed back, but this has since become a serviceable part, presumably because this was happening quite frequently.

If this is your problem, you can get either a left shifter or right shifter kit to fix it.

Definitely a case of Shimano doing the right thing for once and saving people from chucking away otherwise working shifters. Nice one!

It’s still twice the price per bleed

I take your point, but twice the price of bugger all is still bugger all. Even a total flush is, maybe, £1 in genuine fluid, so you might save 50p on a full bleed, and probably just pennies if you’re just doing a routine air bleed.

Anyway, each to their own but I wouldn’t countenance putting incorrect fluid into a safety critical element of my own (let alone, someone else’s) bike for the sake of saving a few pennies per bleed. Oils and lubricants can be odd things and their interactions on things like seals, especially in the long term, can be hard to gauge, especially when used in anger, and with extreme temperatures as in brakes. The savings just don’t justify it (for me, anyway).

While 20 quid doesn’t seem alot to you It’s still twice the price of the alternative.

Easily get a dozen full bleeds out of a pot. Far more if not flushing out completely, so the per-use cost is trivial. If it were £20 a bleed, I might agree, but it’s nothing like that. Not even close.

Bleeding the brakes today as oppose to in three-five days time ?

If you really need it, it’s available for a bit more money, next day on Wiggle Prime.

Honestly, Shimano stuff isn’t massively expensive, so I’m not sure why you’d bother using anything else, especially as you don’t use that much of it, so a litre pot goes a long way…

Is there a GP5000TR? I thought it was GP5000S TR and the prior generation was the GP5000 TL

Ah, probably my bad. You get the idea though.

I took off some regular tubed GP 5000 (also a proper pain to fit on my rims)

Interestingly, my Zipps are also shod with GP5000s and I can take them on and off with my bare hands. It’s astonishing that in these days of micron-level tolerances that wheel rims can be so different when it comes to fitting tyres. My son has some old, Chinese carbon wheels that he used to use for CX and we tried chucking some regular GP5000s on them and absolutely nothing would get those tyres onto those rims. They didn’t have a deep centre channel and when fitting them, they became lever-bendingly tight with a full 1/3 of the bead still not in place.

If you get stuck, I’ve got a box of rusty nails and a lump hammer to help you get them apart ;-) (that video was quite astonishing!)

Obvious answer is literally the GP5000 S TR, which is the sequel to the GP5000 TR and is specifically** stated as “less of an absolutely barsteward to fit” in the Continental literature.

(** ok, so they don’t actually state this, but it’s certainly been mentioned by Conti themselves)

I’ll be honest, for this reason I still don’t run road tubeless. From the year that I did it (I used Schwalbe Pro One tyres) it was more trouble than it was worth (I still had punctures and not all of them self-sealed) and ain’t no way I want to be stuck, in the rain, 50 miles from home with a tyre that I can’t get back on the rim. I now run regular GP5000s and tubes and am much happier.

Thanks all. Stuck a dynaplug in it and it’s sealed ok (albeit after a few minutes of spitting fluid out). Will send the boy out on it later in the week, but looking good.

Might get some mushroom plugs in. Any specific types needed? Do they do them specifically for bikes, or are these motorbike ones repurposes?

About the long and short of it. I think that double duty + VAT is probably what you’d be paying for a > £135 order today.

I don’t know what (if any) frameworks exist that would allow R2 to sell with neither import duty or VAT added for UK customers, but it’s quite clear that it’s well beyond whatever CBA threshold their business has for doing business with countries still busy trying to extract their pitchfork from their own foot.

I’ve ordered obscure Shimano stuff from Taiwan in the past, but I really should try to hunt out a reliable, far-eastern supplier of kosher Shimano bits. OK, so it’ll take a while to arrive, and may end up paying duty/VAT, but at least I’ll only pay it once, and I’ll be willing to bet it’ll be a boat load cheaper (and, more importantly, will have stock!) than buying via official channels. Pre-brexit, CRC/Wiggle were apparently sourcing their Shimano kit from “elsewhere” – wonder if this is still the case, or whether they are now forced to use UK distro channels.

Anyone have any experience of buying one of these kits? If so, who did you buy from?

I recently rebuilt my son’s Guide Ultimates using Risk pistons sourced from here. Apart from the usual slow delivery, they installed and worked an absolute treat, so if you can source a version for XTR (which do seem to be available) then I dare say they will be fine.

Couple of other notes. I have a set of XTR M9000 race brakes on one of my bikes and they also started sticking when they were only a few months old. They were especially bad in warm weather, but by 20C ambient they were unusable and just jammed in (much like my son’s Guides). Shimano warrantied them as a known issue, so perhaps it’s worth talking to a friendly dealer, even if they are out of warranty. My warranty replacements have been absolutely fine since they were swapped.

If you do go Risk, I’d chuck in a couple of sets of spare seals. Hopefully you’ll not need them, but they are very, very tight to fit and if you do end up splitting one, you’ll be cursing that you didn’t have a spare for a couple of quid vs 6 weeks delivery.

I’ve ordeed thing a few times that were over £135 from the likes of R2 bike and never been charged any extra. Is this likely to change now?

In theory, it’s been like this since Brexit. I’ve had larger orders from R2 hit for the full-whack (and, indeed, more – Parcel Force did their sums wrong!) but I’ve also had stuff from China come through that has been completely missed. Last one was correctly declared at around £200 value, RM texted me to say “there will probably be duty to pay on this, we’ll message you when we’ve checked”, but it was handed to me by the postman the next day with not another word. Perhaps it sneaked through, or they just CBA to process it properly. I think it’s just luck of the draw, TBH. Obviously, most China-originated stuff is “exempt” because they label it “Returned parts. Value: $5” which is a rather effective bypass ;-)

Import tax is very similar (if not same currently) for UK or EU.

This is one of the more annoying things. Leaving VAT out, the goods being sold in Germany (presuming they are far-east origin) have already had import duty paid into the EU, so paying a second lot when they are exported from the EU to be imported to the UK is properly offensive to me. I don’t object to paying for import duty (well, OK, I do from the EU because, Brexit) but I really do object to double-paying!

My earlier dig at UK distros was picked up by a few people, but the fact that you can buy from a German retailer, get double-hit on duty, pay VAT and shipping across Europe, pay an additional company’s profit, and it’s *still* cheaper than sourcing in the UK suggests that someone, somewhere is taking the mickey…

There was another thread about tubeless tools, so I’ve plonked for a Dynaplug tool on the basis of a few people saying that they’d recovered pinch flats on the bead without problem. Good addition for the toolbag anyway, so worth the relatively stiff price. See how it goes…

I’ve had confirmation from R2 now, with the reason being somewhat unsurprising:

The reason for our required minimum order value are import regulations of the UK. These state that the retailer must charge the british VAT rate on orders under the value of 160 € (approx. GBP 135). Unfortunately, our shop system does not allow taxation for Great Britain. Therefore we can only process orders with a value of minimum 160 €.

Orders with a value of more than 160 € will be priced without VAT (0% VAT) as usual. In the country of destination, UK customs will charge customs duty and VAT. You will be advised of the amount charged in advance. After payment, the package will be delivered to you.

Oh well, good while it lasted but I’ll be honest, this was more than about cheap bits. Time and time again R2 (like Bike Discount and Rose before) had parts that were very hard to source in the UK, so the loss is a proper pain. Can’t blame them of course – they have to follow the rules and look to their own business – but it’s surprising that there’s not enough UK business to be done for one of the German retailers to consider upgrading their shop platform to support UK VAT!

Worth noting that even were you able to use a normal Works angle adjust headset, that also takes a bit more steerer. My Tallboy was definitely marginal afterwards and I had to remove all of the spacers to get it in! In the end, it was choice between “slacker” or “comfier” and the former won out :-)

Need to have plenty of spare steerer length for that though…

+1 for Works, and a reiteration that if the bearings sit directly in the frame, your options are limited. I’ve got a Works angle adjust headset in my Tallboy 2 and it’s done the job very nicely for years. Cheap way to avoid buying a new frame!

Note: They are pretty fiddly to fit as not only do they need to be pressed in straight like any other headset cups, but they need to be perfectly oriented too as they are (obviously) not symmetrical. I used string pulled across the top tube to align mine and even then I had a few false starts before I got it absolutely perfectly aligned and could complete the job. Not difficult, per-se, but definitely needs a bit of time and care to do it right.

I could imagine R2 don’t want to pay a fee on a return trip to Germany if the item is incorrect either.

They were always very good on this, supplying me with a prepaid return label when they sent me the wrong thing. I guess as they were charging 7.50€ to ship out, the returns would be a similar. Bit more than in the UK, but not massively so.