A friend of mine managed to slice through his fingers with a broken wine glass while washing up and while he was at the hospital getting his nerves and tendons sewn back together there was a woman in there with him who had far worse injuries than him, her whole hand wass sliced to bits, all tendons cut etc… she'd put a bottle of wine in the freezer to chill down, and then when she had reached in and picked the bottle up it exploded due to the thermal shock of her hand against it… the surgeon said it was one of the most common causes of that type of hand injury…

It certainly stopped me putting bottle in the freezer after that! So I think CapnFlashie's suggestion would be the one to go for!

Off up there for a blast around after work this evening… so if it's nice and dry it should be a good giggle.

I've got Transfil Mud Lovers on my 5 Spot, which seem to work rather nicely, and have just got another set for the other halfs new Juliana…

Not had any problems with them at all…

I needed to travel up from Guildford to Nottingham with my bike the other day and was concerned about the whole buy tickets and then book bike thing… in the end I phoned up South West Trains and the guy there was able to check bike reservations on the spot and book the tickets all in one call.

So would be worth giving the train company ticket office a call and see if they can sort it all out for you.

As glenh says, first you need to get the b*gg*rs out… the tool for that costs about £100 on CRC.

Or, you can modify some washers, add that to a length of threaded bar, and you can make yourself something similar!

As for putting them back in… I re-used my extraction tool, and then used a hammer to tap them in.

It took me the best part of 2 evenings to get this done, including making the extraction tool and ferreting about in my big box of tools for various sockets that were the right size.

It's probably in the same place as my entire Lumi set-up… which isn't in any of the usual places and am thinking it's going to be needed fairly soon…

You probably have, but have you looked/tried Paramo gear? It may not be any cheaper to buy now, but seems to last a good long time and is repairable to boot…

An alternative to that is Cioch Direct who do made to measure in the same materials…

clubber.. you must have different olives to the ones on my brakes as they were squashed and molded tight to the hose. I ended up having to carefully cut it off the hose and then use a drill to open up the olive so it was big enough to get back over the hose… it was a right faff…

So yes, far, far preferable to do it with a new olive as it doesn't take hours of dicking about trying to make it all fit!

I undid the hose at the lever end on my Deore brakes, at this point I realised that I'd need to cut the end off the hose as I couldn't get the olive off the hose, and it was too big to fit through the hose guide.

I did this, and then realised I didn't have any spare olives or inserts, so had to fiddle it with the old ones (not advisable).

Moral of this story being, make sure you have a new olive/insert when you do this.

Oh, and no need to re-bleed the system, just don't squeeze the lever at all…

Jujuuk… as I said earlier on the thread, I went through this a couple of months ago or so and spoke to several different people at Halfords when I was trying to sort out what bike to get and there are a whole host of bike brands that they no longer deal with… I understand it's only happened this year and prior to that they would get anything you wanted.

I ended up going through Leisure Lakes who could get me what I wanted, and they took the Halfords voucher.

I use the Pace grease on my 5 Spot and don't seem to have had any issues.. am not sure why one grease should be too different from another in this application, it's not like you need a high temp grease or anything.

Raindog… do you live anywhere near a Leisure Lakes? They take Halfords vouchers and last month I got a Cotic Roadrat from them on Bike to Work which they wouldn't get for me through the Halfords call centre.

I had a custom frame made a few years ago as I was looking for a nice singlespeed frame and about the only ones I could find available over here were the original Inbred or a Kona Unit, or to order something from the US.

In the end I decided to go for a Solitude frame(waves to Alex if he is reading), as it only worked out a little more than a Kona Unit at the time and I wanted something with slidey dropouts…

And I love it… it's by far my favourite bike and it sounds like a bit of an oddity as it doesn't have a looooong headtube!

As others have said though, with the range of choice out there now I almost certainly wouldn't have had a custom frame made…

A new bike? Do you have permission?

:wink:

Sam… I was just thinking that after I posted, but then I thought about my Solitude, it's got sliding dropouts and I only have to change the tension on it every now and again, and certainly not after just an hours riding, so it shouldn't make that much of a difference…

But of course, when it has stretched(I know, it wears really) that's when the magic ratio loses out, as you need to fit a new chain as you can't take the slack out.

Halfords professional tool range is very good…

Unless you have horizontal/sliding dropouts or an EBB, or are lucky and get the magic ratio, then you'll need some way of tensioning the chain to stop it jumping off when you really give it some welly… so a tensioner is a good idea.

Does it have to include pasta? Wouldn't something like a wild mushroom or roasted vegetable risotto be just as quick? (assuming you prepare the roasted veg in advance of course!)

Aaaah, that might be why, thinking about it I don't remember there being any trail sanitisation after the mast until the rock steps on the other side.

I'm guessing I must have done it on a bad day… as I don't remember much else apart from the bog and the steps!

Yes… well, when I say riding, I mean pushing and carrying through the boggy wet marsh that seemed to make up a large amount of the route across the top when I did it a few years ago!

Also, the descent down into Ribblehead had been 'improved' and is a set of rocky steps…

They don't usually die unless they have been abused. I'd be looking for dry solder joints and breaks in wires before thinking that a resistor had karked it…

They are very easy to take apart, although you might need to modify a socket to get it to fit onto the nuts at the end of the legs. This just involves grinding it down so it will fit into the recess that the nut sits in. Or, if you can find a thin walled box-spanner, that should work.

There are special tools available for seal removal, bush removal, lower bush fitting, upper bush fitting, oil seal fitting and dust seal fitting, and all in they cost more than it does to send them off to someone to service them. The bush removal tool on its own costs about £100!

I ended up making my own tools, or using stuff I had kicking around that seemed to fit, and got away without buying any of the special tools.

Service manuals are kicking about the net, but you normally have to search for them, there was a link on MTBR a while back with them all. If you can't find it, I should have them downloaded at home somewhere..

But, as I was told by the person at the Halfords call centre, there is no lower limit as to how much the bike can cost… so for a £1k voucher you could get a £50 bike and £950 worth of safety equipment!

That adaptor converts a PM caliper to an IS fork, mine does the opposite and looks different to that. I'll take it off the bike tonight and try and get a piccie online.

Just a thought.. Hope appear to do half calipers for swapping between fork mount styles, so would it be worth getting in contact with them and asking if they have the appropriate half caliper to make yours into a 180mm PM fit?

{Edit} Scrap that thought as it appears to only be for the non-mono calipers.

If it's a 180mm caliper, it'll be designed to bolt onto a standard IS fork mount. Therefore you'd need a 160mm PM(fork) to IS(caliper) adaptor, which apparently doesn't exist (although I seem to have one at home on my SS).

Anyway, the upshot is that you'll have to either:-

a) run a 200mm disc using a 160mm PM to IS +20mm adaptor,
b) find a 160mm IS Mono Mini and use that same adaptor, or
c) get a 180mm PM Mono Mini

antigee… yes, the existing caliper will work just fine with an adaptor and 180mm disc.

STATO.. the adaptors do exist… I have one on a set of forks at home, running 160mm B4's on a Manitou fork with PM. Got the fork off someone on here ages ago and initially thought I was going to have to get an adaptor and new disc, but the adaptor came with the fork, and it all just bolted up perfectly and no need for a new disc.

But I'll agree on the hens teeth not existing… :wink:

Because it's a 140mm front caliper it'll just be mounted straight onto the standard IS disc mounts on the fork, so to attach them to the Rebas you'll need to find a 160 front PM to IS adaptor, which are usually as rare as hens teeth, usually you can only find ones which add 20mm onto the disc size…

So, you could try using one of them and fitting a 160mm disc…

I use Globals and for me they are fantastic, but some people feel they are a little light. Have had them for over 10 years now and still going strong.

We've also got some Henckels at home which are weightier and very nice to use too, but I do prefer my Globals.

Or, just peel the stickers off and a lick of hammerite will see them good as new!

In the end, are they really worth chucking too much money after if the internals aren't great, as you were talking about yesterday?

Wrists hurt? But we hardly did anything!! We'll have to get out without the ladies for a bit of a longer/faster ride at some point me thinks…

Did you stop drooling over new forks then?

I'd vote for using a blow-torch and wire brush… what could possibly go wrong? :wink:

Try and pick up a pair of Marzocchi MX comps from the classifieds. I think they always had V-bosses, some come with lockout (ETA) and the really are fit and forget forks…

Not that incredibly light though, but certainly not heavy either.

How is the cable split at the moment? Is it split using a proper box? Or is the cable just split out to the 4 different locations?

Depending on how it's done, you might find you don't need a booster at all, and that just having a proper splitter makes everything work better. Something like this.

If it's using a proper splitter, and a booster is required, then just something like this would be fine…

When I was trying to find a saddle for my other half after she insisted on having a 'comfort' saddle, and I refused to buy one for her… I ended up dragging her to a shop with one of them Specialized sit-bone measurey things, and got her a saddle based on those measurements, but it was one of the women specific Spesh ones.

Thankfully she has forgiven me now as she finds the saddle more comfy than the old squishy one.

Yep… you just need 4 for the rear instead of 2 for the front…

As I understand it, the trail itself can be ridden on, but it's in several pieces as the tunnels that connect them are all closed, and the linking sections are footpaths…

The only exception to that is at Monsal Head, which has a BW running up to the top, and a little road, but they are 'quite' steep, and would be a push for a beginner.

I'd suggest that doing a loop on the Tissington/High Peak trails would be a better alternative.

We're just waiting on the valuation to come through for our mortgage… so fingers crossed/biting nails time here…

Anyway, we plumped for a 2 yr fixed rate with Nat West as it looked like a good rate, plus the setup fees were discounted, which meant we could afford it. Then there are no exit fees after the 2 year period is up… and we can overpay etc etc…

I did have a look around at discounted rates but there doesn't seem to be a huge disparity between the discounted and fixed rates available at the moment.. maybe about 0.6% or so, but you are taking the gamble that rates don't go up at all in the next 2 years.

My maths puts it at about £1000 cheaper over 2 years for the tracker with the current rates once you take into account the difference in fees, but if rates do start going up, which they must, it won't be long before the tracker is more expensive. So the gamble is, whether you think rates are going up, and then by how much…

For me, at least for the time being I'd prefer to know I had fixed costs that I can budget for, and then look into what's available two years down the line when hopefully we'll have paid off a little of the extra capital as well.

Pity about the Roadrat, I just got one of those and it's lovely… :D

I'm not helping much am I? But another vote for a Pompino here, although it might depend on what C2W scheme your company are using.