Blazing Saddles don’t do bike rental any more. It actually cost them money to run the service, because people kept **** the bikes on the trails

Heh. Aracer beat me to that joke.

I’ll take mine shaken, stirred and smashed over a child’s face with a d-lock

What Aracer said ^ [more articulately that I could]

Oh, of course, yes. You can accuse people of all sorts of character flaws and actions on the basis of no evidence at all other than a made-up sequence of events that differs from every single media report (as far as I’ve seen, anyway) and it’s fine because it’s the internet. I forgot that. God bless the internet!

Bez, I read all your articles and have a huge amount of respect for you. I don’t mind that you disagree with me, but I think this ^ is all a bit beneath you to be honest.

I was blowing off steam, offering an [admittedly robust] opinion based on the info in the link. The internet is full of opinions. Tears in the rain, my friend, tears in the rain.

I apologise if I’ve offended you.

Coffee’s for closers

I got some great Gore ones at a discount online. Windproof and water resistant. And warm

I have a Rapha “Fixed” LS jersey, size medium, that is too big for me, if you’re interested. £40 would do it. John dot mediasuite at Gmail dot com

Chinese carbon components. And whether or not you’ll die if you use them.

Strava.

Chinese torches as bike lights.

I had a ’94 Bear Valley SE.The grey one. I loved it, but don’t think I’ll be returning to rigid steel now, nice as the new Pine Mountain looks

I hope you never do jury service, hebdencyclist.

Don’t be silly. This is an internet forum, not Crown Court.

Don’t get me wrong, I get why someone lacking in self moderation, a bit stressed, and probably prone to temper tantrums would do something like that in busy rush hour traffic… It’s still not right though under any circumstances.
As soon as you resort to violence and/or vandalism you’ve lost any claim you might have had to the “moral high ground” (if such a thing exists). Especially when the focus of your rage is someone who didn’t bare you any real malice, they’re just stupid, thoughtless and unused to dealing with any real consequences to their actions…

Yep – I agree with all of that. I don’t condone what he did, nor would I do it myself…

…but she deserved it.

“Stupid, thoughtless” people kill on the roads.

I don’t see this. If you just went around banging on cars because they were in front of you, you’d get sore fists quickly!

Well, I’m a geek for 18650 torches from Deal Extreme. On the commute I have a pair of 300Lm torches that make road signs glow from 200m. I have a pair of 1000Lm torches for off road riding at night. I paid between £7-£10 each for them, then batteries and charger on top.

Meh. Not bright enough for me. There are other options for similar money

Yep. Driver squeezes cyclist. Cyclist bangs on roof. Passenger could apologise at this point, but, because she’s a typical clueless, selfish ****, she gives it the verbals instead, as if the cyclist should just accept being cut up and “have some consideration”. Cyclist breaks her **** window. Had it not been for the baby in the back then I’d say some natural justice had been served at this point.

But baby, glass, face etc makes the cyclist as bad as her.

She comes across as a mouthy, obnoxious, entitled **** who cuts up cyclists then shouts at them from the safety of her metal box about “consideration”, as if having a baby in the car means it’s OK for her to barge through anywhere she likes.

He sounds like a childish gorilla who thinks it’s in some way acceptable to do his talking with a D lock.

No one emerges from this story with any credit.

D’ya know? That’s actually a really good question.

Before there were chains and sprockets to gear the cranks up, the ratio of crank speed to forward motion was controlled by the size of the wheel, hence the shape of the Ordinary Bicycle (nicknamed the Penny Farthing).

Therefore, my unscientific assumption is that bigger wheels = greater distance covered per turn of the crank, although in the real world the difference will be too small to notice.

This happened to me once. I gave the guy his money back.

We are a collection of individuals who should go out of our way to be good to each other. We are not Barclays Bank, selling our grandmothers for a buck.

Yes I think you are in the right re the sale. I would still give him his money back. Because it’s the nice thing to do 🙂

Don’t worry about it. You have a record of the correspondence where you told him to arrange a courier.

If you want an end to it, tell him you’ll wait until x date for him to collect it, then you’ll dispose of it.

The Pro isn’t a killer by any means but I wouldn’t want to be doing Sportives on it! Well not without one of those huuuuuuuge gel Bell saddles they do in Asda

What’s probably confusing is I’d read that and assume it was something to do with some sort of harshness in the ride, rather than being down to the geometry of the bike. I guess it could be something to do with your position on it, which could partly be down to fit and geometry.

Plus, the PX does not have particularly aggressive geometry, and is excellent for all-day riding. To try to create the opposite impression, to someone looking for purchasing advice, is unhelpful.

Ah wait – you said 700c. Sorry

I have a 90s M-Trax steel & titanium MTB frame & forks (along with other bits like stem, seatpost, bars etc)

PM me if you’re interested

1990s mountain bikes, however fondly we remember them, suck to actually ride, compared to modern standards. Discuss.

<ducks>

The Pro isn’t a killer by any means but I wouldn’t want to be doing Sportives on it! Well not without one of those huuuuuuuge gel Bell saddles they do in Asda

I’m sorry man but this is bollocks.

I can’t be arsed picking apart the wrong assumptions and misunderstandings in the above quote. I’ll just say – OP – you can safely ignore it.

I don’t think it’s that controversial. I can see how this would be useful/enjoyable for many people, ie people with limited mobility.

+1 for the Planet X Pro Carbon. I love mine.

I use a weight weenie rule of thumb. It’s about £1 per gram to save weight on a bike, although Chinese direct sellers are now bringing the cost of saving the first kilo on your bike down to about £600.

Assuming your mate isn’t loaded, save weight on the cheaper items first. Tubes, rim tape, tyres. Just upgrading these to lightest versions can make a big difference to rolling resistance.

I got a Selle SLR titanium saddle (137g)on eBay for £20. Chinese carbon seatposts can come in at around 100g.

1300g Chinese carbon wheelsets can be had for under £300.

Chinese carbon finishing kit = black with no logos. A lot of it has a matt finish option

Were there any cross/gravel/gnarwhatever bikes?

Shimano, SRAM and Campag all do black versions of their groupsets, I think

Sigh.

Everyone has to start somewhere. I’ve never built a bike before. I’ve pored over websites and Youtube videos, bought a workstand, ordered all the tiny parts and tools required, even though I’ll only use some of them a handful of times in my life, and have fitted the BB, headset, cassette, cranks, rotors and mechs. As a mechanic, I’m learning.

I need the bike sharpish, so I’m putting it into a bike shop to fit and set up the gears and brakes. If I had more time to teach myself how to fit and index the gears, I’d do it myself. But I don’t. Next time I build a bike, I’ll give it a go.

If I’d have tried to fit my own brakes yesterday, I would have come up against the same problem as the guy at Spa, and have had no idea why. Would it have been something I was doing wrong? Would it have been I was trying to fit an incompatible part? Would it have been a tool I needed? I would have had no clue. I would have wasted an entire day and still have had no bike.

I wish I was a workshop hero like so many of you, but right now, I just need my bike to be rideable. Quickly. So I’d rather pay someone to sort it out.

Sorry.

Good thread.

I think that the sport of cycling has grown and diversified. Along with that, bikes and components have become more specialised.

SO… in 1930, your average club cyclist may have had one bike. A steel touring-type bike (racing was for those deviant continentals) with bombproof wheels which would have coped with roads and the odd farm track on the Sunday outing.

But cycling infrastructure is better now. Sustrans, trail centres, better quality road surfaces, etc etc, mean there is more diversity of riding available. And as a result, it’s more fun being a cyclist in the 21st century, but you need more bikes! 🙂

MTB marketing doesn’t help, though. When I were a lad, you had one MTB and did everything on it. If you were rich, you had suspension forks, but that was pretty much it. If you took seriously everything they write in the mags, these days, you would need a 29er HT, a “marathon bike, a “trail” bike, and “enduro” bike, etc etc. This is what I think is a bit silly.

When I come to replace the mountain bike I had nicked last year, it’ll be an “all rounder” which will just about meet all my needs. A FS with 140-150mm forks. I couldn’t justify the expenditure of having a fleet of mountain bikes for every conceivable terrain.

Ah yep I meant headset.

All in all it’s been a trouble-free build, but I can’t be arsed doing the brakes and gears. I’ve never done it before, and what would take me a day of pissing about would take an experienced mechanic an hour.

I’m not convinced there’s anything wrong with the frame. I’m going to let another bike shop have a crack at it.

I don’t want to pillory Planet X just yet. I’m only reporting what the mechanic at Spa said. Which, precisely, was, “It needs facing but I don’t have the right tool”.

It may be that the frame is out of tolerance (although I accept Brant’s comment that it’s a one-piece stay).

It may be that Spa don’t fit many disc brakes so the mechanic didn’t get it right.

If it can be sorted by a resourceful mechanic with a file or a drill, all well and good. If not, I’ll be taking the bike back to PX and asking them to strip the frame and build my bike back onto a new frame… and if they do that, along with a voucher or two for diesel and inconvenience, then, again, all well and good.

But if the frame IS out of tolerance, AND Stuart in Skipton cannot get the brakes to fit, AND Planet X knob me off, THEN it’ll be pitchfork time 😀

But I don’t expect it to get that far down the line.

just wait ’til you try fit a seatpost…

Seatpost fitted fine!

(And so did that cheap BB that someone recommended that wasn’t supposed to fit)

Use an Avid caliper (e.g. BB7) that has slotted mounting holes and conical washers so adjusts in all directions.

Thanks – if all else fails I’ll do this but I’m trying to keep costs right down. Sub-£500 including frame 🙂

Right. I’ll try Stuart in Skipton in the morning. Hopefully he can fit everything then file/**** it as required.

File. Thanks 😀

Will post next question in new thread.

They both look like an explosion in a Chinese tat factory.

In 2003.