Singlespeed commute yesterday, headwinds both on the way in and way out. Bloody horrible, each time adding 5 minutes onto a 30 minute journey. Argh.

Made me right mardy it did.

Could be worse, you could be putting clipping paths round photographs of hairdos…

Been a fun day.

Some type of hard-bristled roller brush tucked under the seatstay wishbone and fork crown?

Or maybe have a large camelbak feeding a dynamo-powered jetwasher directed at the top of each tyre, cleaning and spraying as you go.

Or a mixture of the two, if alone they aren’t ridiculous enough.

I do.

I’ve got a pair of Crossrides, they’re great VFM!

Mundo with fixed rear hub, drop bars and CX tyres. Done.

Or more seriously, a vote for the Mundo, cos I want one.

Riding out of Wharncliffe last summer a bunch of local kids swa us and started chanting this following snippet of bizzarreness:

“XC Bum Me, XC Bum Me!”

Whatever they meant by that I don’t know.

Marvellous! Looks like a good ride was enjoyed by all. Nice to see old bikes being used rather than languishing in sheds, and on a good route too 🙂

BETD advertise a VT bearing kit on their sit for £35, but the picture is just a generic one, and it doesn’t have any deatils of what the kit consists of, go god knows if that’s just the main swingarm bearings or all the linkage one too?

I saw a full VT kit on another site a while ago that included new rocker arms with pre-installed bearings, but can’t find it now 🙁

Having currently got a Pro2 shod wheelset on order, I’ve been paying more attention to threads talking about them.

It seems every half hour someone is moaning about them, breaking flanges, going wobbly, having rubbish bearings, having the freehub body scored, being a pain etc etc.

So I’d say Saints.

Whitby is ace for people of all ages. Boat trips, steam bus rides, open top bus tours, ghost walks, the Abbey, rock pools, the best fish and chips, nice beach, touristy stuff (donuts, arcades etc if that’s your bag) interesting geography, history, hour’s trainride from NYMR.

Well recommended. One of my favourite places.

Warrington is ace – it’s the home of Pete Postlethwaite, star of Brassed Off and Among Giants.

I wouldn’t choose graphic design as a career again.

I like this one of Noel Gallagher.

The Kona A?

I think that TwentyFourSeven bike I mentioned above did/does too.

As do a couple of Lenz Sport bikes.

Then there’s the Rotec RL9, which is odd in that it has a pivot round the BB that’s rendered redundant by the licencing of the Lawwill rear end.

Im sure the edge design precedes the dw or giant …now theres a law suit if ever I saw one if only they had lasted a bit longer

If I recall correctly (and I’m both apologetic of and embarrassed by my being such a tiresome geek) Edge’s linkage configuration was designed so that the rear axle path was BB concentric, as opposed to the more “involved” route the DW’s takes.

The linkage layout is very similar though. Anyone remember the World Force VR1? That was very similar too, but from a decade or so earlier. And there was the more recent Cortina (DH1?) that also used a similar setup.

Anyway, back on (this long forgotten) topic:

If McGrath gets a mention, maybe we can mention Millyard and Mr Big?

err yeah except I’m not just starting. I’ve been riding a lot, to say the least, for years and never had anything like this. even after some 12hours in the saddle on several occasion.

My bad, re-reading your first post, I have no idea why I assumed you were a newbie.

A genuinely shocked “wow” from my direction!

That’s the most expensive mainstream mountainbike (ie not some irrelevant “handcrafted by virgins” titanuim and lark’s tongue crap) I’ve ever seen. Madness.

Everyone gets saddle sore when they first start. You just have to get through it and eventually it will stop happening.

Some of us can’t imagine being attatched to the bike!

So they’re saying men look for more genital control in times of social unrest?

I can’t be doing with boxer shorts. I need the better support offered by ‘jockeys’. So am I always slightly worried about something?

I just assumed I must be well-endowed. Damn.

Mogwai – Fear Satan
Orbital – Belfast
David Lee Roth – Yankee Rose
Joe Satriani – Friends
Stevie Wonder – Sir Duke

You need to make sure it is from the headset. It could be play in the fork bushes, the headset, the disc rotor, the hub, the caliper, even rear shock bushes.

If it is from the headset, and you can’t tighten it out, chances are the top cap is tightening against the top of the steerer, so you need a few more mm of spacers 🙂

If it’s definately the headset but not being caused by that, there is a chance the headtube on the bike might be flared, and the cups are able to move in there. Fingers cross it’s not that.

Wow, Colella – a blast from the past that one. He made some nice frames.

X-lite had a pop at a DH frame didn’t they, for a brief period.

Curtis make one,or did at least, albeit with a bought-in back end.

And Edge bikes didn’t last long did they.

And Twentyfourseven had one, for a while at least. Don’t know if they’re still going.

Great link, thank you.

in fact, judging by the bell on the handlebars, I’d say they have.

If it was making the hollow bin noise as it rolled along, the last thing it would need is a bell 😀

3. Oranges are noisy because they have hollow swingarms, how bad is that going to be!!?!

Maybe they thought on and filled it with expanding foam, or stuffed it full of loft insulation.

How do they go backwards without the pedals turning?

I don’t know how something can simultaneously be both the best and worst thing I’ve ever seen, but that is.

That Scanny is nice.

The old man bought one a while ago complete with trailer. It’s great – I’ve spent many an hour practicing tricky reverse manouvers in his living room.

Sweet, sounds good to me. YGM. Or will have, shortly.

I too am fed up of static pictures of bikes in Singletrack. Next time you test a bike, could you print a series of pictures of it in the top right hand corner of every page. Then I’d be able to thumb through the magazine at a variety of speeds getting a very real impression of how it will ride.

That’s a genuinely brilliant idea. Free ‘video’ with every copy!

Blacka’s fun. The drops we do here are through blacka plantation and there’s some great rutty runs to ride down. The stuff over Totley moor has some nice swoopy bits too.

I’d happily show you round

That’s a good offer, I might take you up on that. You’ll have to give us a shout when you’re next heading out there.

Was that a bump?

I’ve never ridden Blacka. Obviously messed around on Houndkirk plenty, on my way into the Peak. Is there anything worth doing out that way of an evening, or would I be daft to make the trip out considering I live in the Shadown of Wharncliffe?

I run a shimmed seatpost and have done for 5 years. I adjust the saddle very frequently whilst riding. It’s not the end of the world, and you get the bonus that all the crap and grit that gets sprayed all over your seatpost doesn’t get rammed into the frame when you lower the saddle, scoring it half to death.

I only have it because the bike came with it. I wouldn’t choose to run a shim over running a proper size post, but I certainly wouldn’t go out of my way to get rid of a shim. A tiny bit of extra attention when adjusting the saddle is a good pay off for saving a few quid.

But then I am a Yorkshireman, so I might just be a bit tight…

I wish I’d have hung on a bit so I could have eleventhed it.

Thinner tyres is the only real thing that will have made you quicker than a mtb on that commuter.

I don’t know, it looks like he’s got a nice big chainring on that thing, and it looks like the chain’s on it.

5 mins off a commute is a massive jump in one go, don’t be disappointed. And it’ll improve as time goes on. A full on roadbike might knock that much off again, but it depends if you want to ride such a thing day in day out. I wouldn’t.

I’ll ninth In Bruges.

Front was a ball ache though. I’m assuming the OP has Roadhog forks on their Roadrat already. The mudguard eyelets are in the ‘normal’ position. Fitting the calliper was a faff. need to turn the mount upside down and shim th ecalliper in and out to get the alignment right. Also turn the rotor round so it rotates in the right direction and then flip the hub. If your tyres are directional you need to swap it round too.

Regarding the Roadhog fork, with my last discs I fitted the mount upside down like you say, but the pads ended up not properly contacting the rotor resulting in a lip worn in them at the top, which caused rubbing after a while. I also didn’t realise I’d worn the pads almost completely out as they looked fine through the viewing hole 😀

When I fitted the BB5s I didn’t want this to happen again (the pads really should contact the rotor correctly) so I fitted the mount the right way up. I just had to spend a couple of minutes with the file to remove a tiny bit of material from the top corner of it so it didn’t foul the fork leg. It’s very soft alloy and it’s the tiniest bit of material that needs to go.

Now everything aligns properly 🙂