I love the mechanism on these hubs, it’s so easy to service and will be simple to replace if it ever needs that. It is a bit noisy though and I have added a little bit of grease that did the trick, it shouldn’t cause any drag unless you have added way too much, a light smear on the surface of each ratchet should do it. I used shimano dura ace grease and from what I see it looks very similar to the grease Scribe supply.

My transporter fits your description perfectly if you can see past the mileage. 2010 T5.1 with 180k miles but those are motorway miles mostly and it has had loads of money spent keeping it mechanically perfect. Insulated and carpeted, removable second row of seats, currently an IKEA sofa bed for camping duties.

I was going to keep it until spring as my upgrade won’t be available until then and it’s probably a bit over your budget but needs absolutely nothing to be the perfect bike van.

There are a few of the older transporters popping up in your price range but do go up a few years and the price is bonkers.

Id also recommend a 2010 t5.1 as tax is only £110 a year for them due to some government incentive at the time.

Apologies, couldn’t resist the personal ad!

It’s so hard to quote for jobs like this unless you’ve done the same job on the same bike before. I made the mistake of giving a mate a rough price to fit bars to his ‘dale system six, fully internal. What a bollox of a job that was. When it comes to needing a service I’m going to be too busy!!

Altro is used in bus floors and commercial kitchens. You would have to be really trying to damage it.

For durability and easy to clean in a van I’d go tour for Altro vinyl flooring. The down side is that it’s slippy and loads can slide about as you drive.

I’ve put the foam rubber tiles from Halfords on top of my vinyl and it’s great, warm to sit on, soft enough to be comfy on your knees. Easy to take out and clean, doesn’t absorb water or oil and is very cheap to replace if you need to

Lifeline one seems pretty good, a mate has one and says it does the job as well as the park one. Maybe it isn’t as durable but it’s cheap enough to be replaced.

If I am replacing old cables I tie a bit of thread to the end of the old cable before removing it and dab it with a tiny bit of superglue, pull it through with the old cable then do the opposite to run in a new one.

If it’s full length outers, the reverb red thingy is great, they tend to bend though if you are having to route around awkward runs or sharp corners.

Local company to me, they make really nice looking budget bikes. It’s not going to be a lightweight race bike or anything but for the money they look really good and are very well kitted out.

https://siltmtb.com/

These are the off-road version of scribe wheels, very good value wheels and well worth checking out. They sell out almost immediately when stock is listed though so best to jump in quick.

Just count yourselves lucky you aren’t in Northern Ireland. Uk mainland companies and couriers have halted delivery to us as we are somehow still in the EU and EU companies won’t post to us as we are in the UK.

It will be sorted out eventually I hope

This has been discussed quite a bit recently in the press and I’ve heard a lot of lobbying from one group in particular about this. With the phasing out of coal the popularity of wood burning is only going to increase. If I was an influential person with the ear of politicians it would be great if I could start a certification scheme, get it written into legislation and then have it law that my logo had to be on every bag of firewood sold in the UK. That would be I tidy little earner.

Funny enough a scheme of that nature has already been set up, you can be sure the woodsure scheme will be law before too long and the people behind it will do very well out of it.

I’ll just add a song that popped up on my Spotify wrap playlist, Paolo Nutini – Iron Sky. Worth it alone for the Charlie Chaplain speech clip.

I think this calls for a singletrack recommendation playlist on Spotify. If I get the time later this evening I’ll build a list with all the songs on this added to it.

Just listening to purple rain again, what a song

Definitely agree that 30l is too big for a mountain bike pack. I have the biggest KUDU 18 and it’s as big as you’d want to go. It also has straps and bits to support body armour, jackets and helmets on the outside of the bag so will take much more than the 18l if you think you need it.

The new camelbak toro 8 or kudu 10 sounds like the bag you are looking for, they have a really comfortable integrated back Protector that can be used on its own.

In a sneaky stealth add I happen to have both for sale on eBay 😛

A lot depends on the foam, there are different types available. If it is the bog standard expanding foam type I’d be concerned anyway as it isn’t breathable and tends to cause issues with rot around roof timbers.

Recently some companies have gained certification for more breathable foams that allegedly don’t cause issues when used full fill between rafters. If it’s one of these breed of foams you should be ok, you will most likely need to add an additional board insulation below the foam prior to plasterboard but that simple enough. Ask for the building control cert for the loft insulation and beware if none available.

The biggest cause of all this is privatisation of the various parts of testing and enforcement. Profit rules and those that stand up for proper standards won’t survive. BBA certificates used to be pretty reliable but the competition from other cheaper test bodies has meant even their certification needs to be read much more carefully. Suppliers demand that certificates are written in such a way that they infer compliance, that way specifiers incorrectly believe that products are suitable for certain applications and they end up used. The supplier gets the big bucks and can pass the blame to someone else in the supply chain. They will say that the specifier or contractor didn’t read certs properly or didn’t ask the correct questions.

A very common statement I see on Kiwa certification states that project specific design should be discussed with the certificate holder. That’s a brilliant get out of jail card as you can be pretty sure that doesn’t happen. I have raised my concerns about various product certification over the years and there will always be a fudge or a grey area introduced to make sure no changes are needed that might hurt the profit margin. Push it further and out comes the usual bully boy tactic of threatening legal action, unfortunately when it comes to that I’m too far down the ladder and too low paid to be considered relevant and have to give in. That is the way product certification works when it’s been privatised

To make matters worse Building Control privatisation is a nightmare. Where is the incentive for a building control body to reject work and increase the cost of a project? Do that too often and the contractor will just employ a different surveyor.
Even the creation of any new legislation now is open to corruption, the so called experts that are consulted when considering changes to legislation are usually from the industry. It’s an open check book for them to make sure legislation forces the sale of their product or services.

It’s hard to be in my side of the building trade and care about safety and quality before profit.

If you haven’t listened to the regular bbc grenfell inquiry podcast please look it up, it is a very good bit of journalism and the host either knows the industry or puts an impressive amount of work into finding out. The one part that stands out to me is the interview with the building control surveyor, it’s worth noting that contractors and architects try to point the finger at him saying it was his job to keep them right. I’d imagine he was the lowest paid link in that chain but was expected to keep everyone else right?

Rant over for now

Absolutely the best game I’ve ever played on my phone is call of duty mobile, the single player battle royal is so addictive.

No issues here at all. If I remember correctly I had to authenticate my account at a time many moons ago. Something to do with the amount going through the account, not that I was dealing with big money, I sold a bike and that put me over some threshold?

I’ve been using a set of sks blades. I was sceptical but they are brilliant, no need for glasses or goggles even on the wettest day. Big advantage of being removable in a few seconds with no tools. I should have fitted them years ago.

Also bought a worx hydroshot, that and the mudguards just make riding in the dirt much less of a chore.

It’s been on my folks house for 30 years or so, no issues with it at all. It looks pretty new.

Be sure to check that the roof has good ventilation under the tiles and into the roof. If it isn’t ventilated the tiles will certainly outlast your roof timbers.

Bent mech hanger is possible but it usually results in perfect shifting at one end of the cassette and not the other, it’s unusual to be just one gear. If your shifters are older it may be a bit of wear in the mechanism and commonly in the most widely used gears. I have had one occasion that this seems to have been the case with a campag shifter, I changed the cables, aligned the hanger fitted a new chain and cassette and still could not get two gears to index properly.

Check out the cable pull through each gear by hand, if the mechanism for 8th click is damaged or worn you might feel a shorter or longer release of cable than the adjacent gears?

Of course it could just be the mech hanger and that’s an easy fix with the right tool.

This happened to me a few years ago, after a number of parcels went missing I happened to mention it to a friend who lived locally, he was having the same issue. We raised this with chain reaction who looked into it, it turns out a local post office worker was stealing parcels with the chain reaction logo on them and selling stuff on. He was caught and convicted thankfully.

It might be worth raising this with wiggle to be sure you aren’t suffering the same issue.

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/ex-postman-john-woodhouse-jailed-for-stealing-cycling-gear-packages-from-mail-36584007.html

I couldn’t agree more about staff being redeployed, that would be ideal. I would be as happy as a pig in dung to be given a shovel and a barrow of tarmac to go mend roads. It didn’t happen in my case though as I still had plenty of work in my normal role, although it was reduced about 40%

Redeployment was all the talk but now that access to the magic money tree has been granted things have changed.

I don’t think I’d worry too much, I’ve always been nervous with the shimano torque settings for shifters, it somehow feels like more torque than I’d want to put on them but I don’t recall it ever being an issue. The bars will be designed for the clamping force in that area, the noise was more likely to be the nut against the shifter as you tightened it.

It’s surprising the pressure carbon can take, ive experimented with offcuts of steerers and seatposts in the vice to see how much deformation they’ll take before they fail, it’s impressive, not very scientific I know but it seems a shame to just bin them without some sort of destruction

I wish I hadn’t sold my old hardtail with z1 wedges on it. Those forks worked really well and were so simple to service. They moved from the CNC alloy arch to the cast alloy one shortly after that model, mine was the cast arch which was connected to the lowers by the v brake mount from memory. It didn’t look anywhere near as nice as those forks though. I look forward to seeing those on a bike.

Unions are all over this kind of thing but in my particular case it’s probably better to shut up and keep your head below the parapet. That scenario only applies to a small number of staff and would be too easy to find yourself singled out.

Always good to have some sort of opinion in my back pocket though!!

Double IS brake lugs?

Edit nixie beat me to it, I was owned with bombers

Just getting back to reading your responses now folks, work was crazy today. It’s an s plan system with an additional valve yeah, Honeywell valve and it could be The motor, I changed it before.

I was thinking it wasn’t the motor as the hot water demand wasn’t there with the tank stat fully up, hot water circuit on and valve manually opened. From what you are all saying it’s likely to be the micro switch and I’ll test that tomorrow. At least it’s a simple fix though not cheap for the valve head.

You never cease to amaze me in this forum, it’s like an encyclopaedia

I’d be shocked if this hasn’t come up on STW before but it’s great for those that like to read up

https://www.bicyclerollingresistance.com/

Personally I’ve used GP 5000 and really rate them
I’ve used pirelli P Zero and found them susceptible to cuts on rougher roads and also not as long lasting as the continental

I’m using Hutchinson Fusion 5 at the minute and so far can’t fault them.

I discovered an interesting issue with my setup yesterday doing the Innsbruck circuit, two climbs up the hill. In the lead up to the first climb I was feeling fine, peaks of 350 watt and 250 comfortably, I reached the climb and really struggled to hold 200 watt, normally I just put this down to being a rubbish climber but it was annoying me thinking its just watts, why am I struggling so much with less than 200 watts. I had noticed a bit of tire squeak on the climbs but didn’t take much notice of it, the climb is long so in my frustration I got wondering if that was where my watts disappeared to. I stopped on the way down and turned the trainer difficulty to 0, second time up the climb was a completely different experience and I was 2 minutes quicker and still not feeling totally wrecked. It amazed me how many watts that squeak was robbing on the climbs, is it any wonder I was totally destroyed on vo2 efforts in training programs

I’m off to investigate and clean/degrease everything to see if I can stop the slipping. I’ll up the tension but the cyclops Magnus I’m using has a preset tension thing built in that I need to override.

It certainly is a good thing that timber sold for burning should have a low moisture content, my bug bear about this legislation is that it is creating a monopoly and a nice little earner for the private scheme administering it. You can be sure that this legislation will require sellers to be part of this certification scheme and self certification of moisture content by suppliers themselves will not be sufficient. It is a great earner as the scheme owners ensure a percentage of all sales of logs throughout the country. I agree with the principles in the legislation but then all legislation needs to be dressed up as positive in order to be pressed through.

The clean air act is in place to deal with this problem in areas where it is a real problem, if councils were funded properly to enforce this legislation and the supply of logs of a suitable moisture content was part of this, it could be enforced by them quite easily. It also addresses the issue of burning coal in towns and cities and allowing the continued use of it in rural areas where it causes no issue. That wouldn’t make hetas a nice tidy sum though would it.

The Right Firewood

Read it for yourself, the text of the legislation hasn’t come into place yet but I would be willing to bet that this scheme is at the heart of it.

The same body have in the post managed to do something similar with self certification of stove installations rather than involve building control. Again profiting from legislative framework.

This proposal isn’t about the environment or clean air. The effect of burning wood and coal over most of the country is really small, particularly in rural areas, if the existing clean air act had been extended and implemented properly it was perfectly adequate.

What we have here is a private industry body who set up a scheme where suppliers and manufacturers have to sign up and pay them to use their logo on their products. Being an industry they have been allowed to lobby the government to set up a nice little earner. Only suppliers that are part of their scheme will be legally allowed to sell wood at garages and shops. Of course it will be policed by this body as they will profit nicely from it and have the law on their side. It isn’t about the environment but rather about creating a monopoly.

The really annoying aspect of all this is the fact that they have eliminated a large part of the competition that they couldn’t control by banning the use of household coal. The environmental impact of burning coal in stoves is tiny, particularly in rural areas. Banning the use of coal in power stations would have a far greater impact on the environment. The banning of household coal has a far greater effect on the profitability of this scheme though which is the real issue.

Depending on the kind of trails you like there are plenty of options. Closest to cushendall would be Ballycastle forest, it is all natural stuff (proper trails) ranging from nice flowing technical trails to some scary technical steep stuff. It’s the best in that local area. It’s old school so not really a loop, fire road climbs and downhill trails. Have a look on Strava and you’ll see the trails.

For more natural stuff further afield, Tollymore is the best in NI, not easy to find the trails though if you don’t know it. Again you’ll see most of them on Strava.

For trail centres, davagh and rostrevor are the pick of the bunch, plenty of info online about those

I just fitted a token ninja bottom bracket into a new press fit frame, seems to be a great solution where the two sides screw together aligned properly. Time will tell how long it lasts but so far it’s creak free. I think it will just be a case of replacing the bearings when they wear out

I bought a set of the prime rr50 wheels recently, I honestly can’t fault them and can’t see that spending twice the money would get me a better wheel. The hubs are cartridge bearing and easy to service, the free hub is very easy to strip and service. Maybe the sealing isn’t as good as some but I don’t see that being a big deal (if it’s even true) as half an hour will do a full rebuild anyway.

Just an interesting point, wiggle didn’t have the rear 12 x 142 axle in stock. I bought an axle from hunt to convert it and it fits perfectly.

I can confirm after some workshop raiding and tinkering that they have the same hubs as the hunt 4 season v1, so anybody looking these axles hunt are the place to go.

I got the wheels with the gopping decals and they are growing on me when I see them fitted, I think I will keep them on for a while (maybe)

Akira, that’s the one yeah, the 54 measures up the same as my KTM 55 so I’d say they are about a size bigger than normal.

Wzzz I will drop you a message if A trained monkey I know doesn’t have one kicking about his (extensive) workshop!

Interestingly I think these are the same hubs
HUNT Rear Axle Adapter Set for All Disc Wheelsets

I got them as a few riders I know have been using them for quite some time and never had any issues. The sealing in the hubs isn’t as complex as some but bearings are easy to change so no big deal in my opinion. Rims do what rims are supposed to do and only a very slight weight disadvantage over wheels three times the price.

I’m building myself a nice De Rosa and would have loved bora wheels but just can’t justify the price for almost no gain in reality.

Ok just getting back on now, I have the wheels with prime R020 centrelock hubs, happy to send on the qr setup to anyone for a swop, I’m not sure they are the same as the R010 though.

I think I’ve located the front ones, just need the rear really (12×142)

Wiggle had them for sale at £7.49, always out of stock but someone selling them on eBay for £25!!