Before Mrs Esher shore got her road bike, she had an Identiti Dr Jekyll, then a specialized myka women’s MTB and a pashley Poppy, she hated each of those bikes. The road bike is the first one she felt comfortable riding.

Not a problem for me, since I faced up to a reality.

I spent my former life as a professional freerider. I rode all over the world for Devinci, Banshee bikes and Da Kine.

As I got older I had to admit it was not a viable proposition, I was carrying serious shoulder injuries and the need to earn a regular income.

Hard to face up to, but I faced it and realised I could still get my buzz riding road bikes and also back into cross country mountain bikes (which is where I got into the bigger wheels in mid 80’s after BMX racing and freestyle).

Still got the bmx and fr skills, but now with road bike fitness meaning I am ripping it up on the road bike and xc mountain bike, loving the move to a more realistic outlook whilst pushing myself harder than ever!

To all riders reading this, don’t worry, find what makes you happy and do it!

@curiousyellow

I had to get a second road helmet this year after she told me 1 helmet was not enough.

I did ask her why, and she said for the same reason women need several pairs of a similar shoe?

I guess its something, perhaps, us men may never understand?

Mrs. Esher shore rides a Specialised Ruby carbon fibre road bike with SRAM Apex, Fulcrum Racing 3 wheels, S-works finishing kit and Conti GP 4000 II tires, bike fully fitted to her.

She also has a very nice selection of Specialized, Mavic and Gore women’s clothing, gloves, shoes and helmets.

Makes me feel like a tramp sometimes….

The S-W frame uses a lighter tube set with thinner walls and shorter butting sections. It also says ‘S-Works’ on it 😉

Whether this is worth the extra money over the non s-w ‘smartweld’ frames is debatable…pay your money, take your choice!

I had an Allez Elite before getting my first Tarmac, the more basic Allez frames with good wheels, finishing kit and drivetrain, well fitted to the rider makes a very competitive bike for racing or fast recreational riding

I’ve recently fitted out our new shop in Docklands and we went for wall mounted units for hanging bikes vertically by front / rear wheel and winch units to take our demo bikes up into ceiling which is 3.5m high

Cannot remember brand but all from Madison and much cheaper than we thought. Both types mounted to concrete using torx driven concrete screws (150mm) with pilot hole made with masonry bit.

Pretty sure I paid £200 for a chain stay for my 2002 big hit fsr when I snapped the drive side weld 7 months into ownership after a ‘funky’ landing off the top at Woburn Sands

Last January SBC UK had big changes. All that generosity they were famous for in the UK, was a result of lax control as ‘goodwill’. Their ‘crash replacement’ scheme was ditched for ‘assisted purchase’ (I.e. a new bike at discount, rather than frame set) all in an effort to draw down warranty dept.costs

Since then, things got tightened up very quickly.Things have changed, which have perhaps left the bikes looking overpriced, despite the fantastic frame sets.

here’s mine – 17″ Stumpjumper – I am 5’10” and its a perfect fit with 70mm stem

Overdrive 2 is just on higher end road bikes, their aluminium and lower priced carbon road bikes and mtbs are regular taper setup 🙂

Riding road bikes up and down hills with my missus, drinking lovely coffee and then guests of a team at the tour of Britain in London. Not a bad day 😉

Giant Stance new for 2015 – brand new at £999 with Rockshox suspension front/rear, Shimano drivetrain and Shimano hydro discs.

Very surprised at the spec for the money, test rode one and very impressed.

2 Chris King headsets – constantly worked loose, clicked and creaked, and started chewing a nice groove into my steerer tubes. Both had damage to the bearings from being ridden loose. Evolution Imports would not offer warranty support but kindly offered to sell me new ones despite both being less than 2 months old. Replaced with FSA Pig Pro at £30 each and no problems for 2 years until bearings went rough.

Shimano XT disc hubs – the rear hub would not stay tight, no matter who tried to set the cones. Annoying, as I’d had 2 sets of wheels built with these hubs.

Specialized All Condition Armadillo road tires. Yes, they were puncture “proof” as you’d spend more time in the hospital than riding, as they were super slippery death treads – watch out for wet roads, drain covers or cobbles.

Specialized Tricross bike – rubbish on the road, rubbish off road. Most pointless bike I’ve ever owned. Sold on quickly.

Tioga XXL DH saddle. Land slightly wrong and the rails either bent or snapped. Went through 5 as local shop selling them off at £5 each, before seeing error of my ways.

Azonic DH saddle – with aluminium alloy rails (!!) = snap. Wades were kind enough to warranty 2 and then gave me a refund on the 3rd.

Marzocchi Junior T fork – worked ok until you went over 20 mph and hit some bumps and then it turned rigid. Sold and replaced with Super T Pro which was a revelation to say the least.

personally? as a professional bike mechanic I cannot stand any of my 3 bikes creaking, clicking or not working properly.

cannot speak for any one else, as its their bike…but my own bikes doing this drives me mad!

My last pair of Hoops for my winter road bike (Pro III mono on Mavic Open Pro) were not particularly well built, with unbalanced spoke tension and poor vertical / lateral trueness on both, especially the front wheel.

Spent some time getting the wheels in proper shape on a wheel jig at work using a Park spoke tension meter, and they’ve been good as gold since 🙂

Whatever they supply you with, make sure you pay your lbs or a competent mechanic friend to set the bike up before you ride.

Speak from experience…

After 2 years of grief with my pf30/ SRAM 30mm crank= new bearings every 3-6 months and constant clicking/creaking

I switched to 24mm shimano hollow tech 2 cranks (xt) and praxis works pf30/ht2 BB

No issues ever since 🙂

@slowmedown

Inspirational writing and fantastic attitude to living your life

Happy trails whether on two wheels, or on an airborne wing 🙂

I’d take whatever cash you can garner from present givers and pony up the rest to get the park ts 2.2 stand its solid kit that will last a lifetime

I have 2 toupe with carbon rails – 1 on road bike, 1 on sports hybrid used for commuting.

I have 1 Romin on mountain bike with ti rails.

Had a number of the older, previous generation toupe fail – all in the saddle base which split, all replaced without fuss, foc through concept store in London.

The toupe is a flatter saddle, ideal if you like to slide around your bike. I like it on my road bike because I can sit back when cruising, sit in the middle when climbing and sit on the nose when pulling forward into an aero position.

The Romin has a curved shape giving a locked position, ideal as i am sitting down on the MTB, or standing up off the saddle, don’t need intermediate positions.

Having said that, have met riders with toupe on MTB and Romin on road bike – typically time triallists.

Evo typically wider in nose

I lived in Newcastle for 5 years and can say the riding was fantastic.

20 mins out the city past metro centre, into the valleys around chopwell, further out into prudhoe

Miles and miles of great xc trails and lots of hills to climb and descend

Do remember the areas around the coast being somewhat flat, apart from the ‘pit top’ at wide open

All the high end saddles are actually manufactured by Selle Italia in Italy for Specialized

I’ve met and spent time talking with Dr. Andy Pruit and Dr. Roger Minkow the founders of Body Geometry, very smart and interesting men (and medical professionals) who responded years ago to an article in Rolling Stone magazine about road cyclists suffering ‘gentlemen’s problems’, they created a custom saddle and sent it to the editor of Rolling Stone.

The editor introduced the Doctors to Mike Sinyard of Specialized and BG was born.

I’ve also seen live the “blood flow” analysis which involved 4 different saddle and seat posts combinations swapped repeatedly into the bike with the same rider on a turbo trainer and a medical device glued to his “whatsit”, watching the drop in blood flow “live” was very interesting and somewhat worrying as I was riding one of the ‘bad’ saddles used in the test.

If a new Specialized saddle causes blood flow to drop below 50% they will not bring it to market, during the live test, some of the competitors saddle dropped the flow below 10% within 2-3 minutes. The problem they said is like liver disease, you cannot “feel” saddle related blood flow issues until its already caused a symptom.

I currently have Specialized BG saddles on all my bikes, and its the one part of my bikes I never worry about, its more “shut up legs” or “I am hungry”.

Probably the easiest test is to go to a Specialized dealer and buy your saddle under their money back guarantee scheme, I am sure you can find something you like as everyone is different in terms of their ischial tuberosity

bear in mind though, that a bad “bike fit” will ruin the potential of any quality saddle whether its Specialized, Fizik, Selle Italia, Selle San Marco or whatever

to clarify my position, I don’t work for Specialized or even one of their dealers, but their biggest competitor, but Specialized saddles are one thing I will always bolt onto my seat post regardless of the bike brand.

@failedengineer

sorry for the bad lead..unless you can find someone doing Manitou’s cheap in your format (120mm/QR15)?

I have been very surprised by the quality of the “forgotten” suspension brand.

I last used a Manitou fork about 6 years ago on a Banshee Scirocco hardtail, it was a Manitou Minute and I was blown away by the fork’s performance.

As with many things in life, its not perhaps the product with the best “performance” that wins, but the best “marketing” and the best “distribution” 🙁

If you try and ride a bike on canal paths in London during Monday-Friday its a total nightmare due to the huge volume of bikers, runner, walkers, dogs, people on scooters, etc.

Many cyclists going WAY too fast, not acting sensibly, not giving any warning either with a bell (polite) or voice (less polite).

Even with a “permit” 😉 and a bell its very unpleasant and not an efficient way to get around…

I gave up a long time ago, and only use the canal paths slowly if I want to spend 1 hour going to work (its a 25 minute ride by road) or its Saturday/Sunday and I have had enough of motorists trying to run me over on the roads

simple?

either ask the CCTV / security people to monitor your bike, or move it somewhere only you have access to.

It could be simpler, in that your bike has some mechanical issues that need addressing like poor quality cabling and / or bad setup

Never heard of temperature causing issues with cable indexing?

It definitely can cause issues with hydraulic disc brakes, suspension oils and freehubs in extremely cold weather though…

if you are running shorter travel forks with QR dropouts, have a look at CRC, they are doing Manitou Tower Pro forks super cheap on sale

just replaced a pair of broken Fox 32 29’er forks with the Manitou forks and the differences in terms of structural rigidity, break-away friction and damper performance is night/day with the Manitou winning on all counts 😉

@devash

Its not uncommon. I’ve had multiple forks from rockshox and fox develop this issue and had new CSU fitted under warranty.its caused by fork manufacturers wanting to offer lighter forks with thinner crowns.

Generally, its not the steerer / crown but actually the stanchions / crown, as the assembly grease leaches out over time or with use of cleaning products like muck off.

SRAM offer 2 years on rshox so you are covered if you bought forks new or as part of a bike. Fox is 1 year but mojo have been quite generous in the past.

Recently my fox 32 evo 29’er fork redeveloped this issue

the CSU had been replaced once foc, this time fork just out of warranty and mojo very helpful but I decided to go with slightly heavier manitou tower pro forks cheap off crc, which in reviews does not develop the same issue due to heavier crown with deeper stanchion engagement.

@dannyh

Yeah that’s true

Years ago riding at a popular public spot that had some small dirt jumps

Horrible man took offence and directed his dog to shat all over the take off to the first jump

Teenage kids took note, approached the man, he started threatening them and swearing.

I would not stand for it. Collected steaming turds in crisp packet, confronted him and threw it in his face after he made unpleasant comments about my parentage.

Thankfully some large Australian and south African riding buddies turned up just after said horrible man made threats to ‘kill us all’ and soon slinked off with his poor ashamed wide restraining him whilst he foamed at the mouth.

@cruzcampo

Your first ‘incident’ ?

Good buddy of mine is a d.s. magnet, every ride he attracted some, no one else ever got it like him….

I spent some time, years ago, talking to Horst Leitner of AMP Research just after he’d done his licence deal with Specialized – I was one of his customers buying Amp rear suspension ‘kits’ to build my frames, and he was polite enough to give me the news first hand because it was going to directly affect my business.

FSR was ‘future shock rear’ in his understanding’ which made sense as specialized was already selling rockshox co-designed ‘future shock’ forks by that time ( i had a pair on my KHS Montana team titanium )

@nick

That’s about it really?

Specialized allez e5 alloy

Spent some time on one last year, very impressive ride quality and handling

I ride a tarmac elite sl4, for comparison 😉

@onzadog

Think one was spliced with footage of a kid trying to launch off a wood ramp into a lake, missing ramp and cartwheeling…

Others were more grisly involving rtc’s

@onzadog

Have you seen the spoof halfords adverts with the ‘alternate’ endings?

Total BS as long are you are talking ‘quality’spokes…

For anyone that has had a wheel built with black (or silver) spokes that has broken a number of spokes, either your wheel builder has used shit spokes or is just a shit wheel builder !

@waderider. Perfect example of badly built wheel..I had to warranty numerous units of those enduro wheels which involved specialized paying us to rebuild with DT Swiss spokes and brass nipples

@orange boy

Its only the roval ‘factory wheels’ that require the procedure you mention – typically found on the top of the range or s-works bikes

Many of the more affordable and mid range bikes use a ‘roval’ branded, Alex made rim which uses j-bend spokes and alloy nipples as normal and does not require any special consideration apart from from when the alloy nipples seize after a UK winter and the wheel has to be rebuilt with brass nipples 😉

my favourite pose of a lady with her Devinci bike, in our old shop at Esher

Campag EPS = pain in the ass, especially compared to refinement of shimano Di2

Had a good number of customers when I worked at Sigma who went to EPS but soon sold it and went back to Super Record mechanical.

Crude and unreliable, and real pain to install and setup, like an amateur version of 1st generation dura ace Di2

Already worked on bikes with ‘campag’ discs co-production with formula brakes, seen on colnago c59 with EPS shifting

the comments about consistent / reliable braking power are apt – its why we use disc brakes on mountain bikes

my comments about the Shimano hydraulic disc brakes on the 2nd Giant I rode were that i found it uncontrollable as there a minimal amount of modulation

this is not a criticism of using a hydraulic disc brake on a road bike, but its something a good number of riders have noticed with Shimano hydraulic disc brakes; almost too much ‘power’ and not enough ‘modulation’

Guess its one of those things you get used to, but lightly touching that front brake and having it lift the rear wheel off the ground, with a judder felt through the fork and bars was quite unnerving

my Nuke Proofs (2 pairs, 1st pair replaced under warranty), Kona Wah-Wah, Wellgo MG-1 (4 pairs, was getting them $20 a pair) DMR V-12, DMV V-12 Mag, Syncros Mental Alloy, Syncros Mental Magnesium all developed “click” – typical problem with many pedals running the common “1 bearing outboard / 1 bush inboard” or similar axle system

over time, the bushing tends to flog out the socket in the pedal body, causing a sloppy fit and looseness which often manifests as a clicking when pedalling. It can’t be fixed by replacing the bushing as its the socket in the body that is enlarged.

All the BMX guys I rode with that tried the V-12 had the same problem, often within weeks of new – one reason DMR stopped advertising their pedals in the BMX mags 😉

always found the DMR V-8 to be their toughest pedal, I’ve sold 100s to customers, they feel rough out the box and don’t get much better even regularly greased but running loose ball bearings both ends mean they tend to run and run as long as there is grease in there.

currently using Specialized Bennies which are a bit chunkier than some, but seem to be behaving after 9 months of abuse