Actually, TFT is where my LBS ordered the bushes for mine :o)

Oh right, I see.

So those slot inside the shock eyes, and then the silver top-hats on the top and the tube on the bottom slot in those? Is that how it works? Only ever had the bike shop do mine as I couldn’t get the bloody things out.

They don’t look like any of the bushes you find on a VT to me.

The upper ones are substantial top hat shaped affairs, and the lowers are longer than those.

Hope that helps.

10:30?!?! If only I could, I physically cant sleep until 1am – up at 6:30 is too unpleasant at that point.

Maybe it’s something to do with caffeine, coffeeking?

The hardest bit is making it routine. Once you get it in your head that cycling is just ‘the way you get to work’ it becomes something you do without thinking.

You obviously enjoy cycling or you wouldn’t be on this forum, so I wonder if what you need is advice on how to be more of a morning person. Maybe, as stated above, if you give yourself no choice (by leaving the car at work or whatever) you’ll get into a better routine and then it will be easy.

You just need to break your current routine.

Honest-to-Darwin truth, the reason I started cycle commuting was because I abandoned the car in town one night after an unplanned weeknight’s drinking session and the next morning found myself with no option but to ride into the office on a 6″ travel bike with winter tyres, fully unprepared, hungover, knackered and in miserable wind, rain and cold, wearing unsuitable clothing.

I got to work covered in road filth, sweaty and panting for breath, but my hangover had gone, I was totally invigorated and I had a huge grin across my face. And I knew it would never be as bad as that again.

Shortly afterwards I sorted a commute bike and suitable clothes and started cycling in 5 days a week. And now I resent pretty much any day that I am required to drive into work for whatever reason.

Occassionally I will consider driving (like when it’s particularly miserable out there or I’m just feeling a bit crap) the way I motivate myself to keep riding is to do the following:

1. Regularly take note of the surplus inches around my waistline.

2. Regularly look at the bored faces of the half-asleep drivers sat in their cars as you pass them in traffic.

3. Regularly look at the bored faces of my half-asleep colleagues who’ve rolled out of bed and into another yawny day of drudgery induced numbness without feeling in the slightest bit alive.

I use 25x700s with discs.

Following setups used:

Avid BB5s with 160 rotors, pair.
Hayes HFX9s with 160s pair.
Hope mini with 180 on rear / V brake on front.

All with no over-braking problems whatsoever. Your brakes only operate as powerfully as you pull the levers. In fact the only issue I had was with the V-brake in the wet, being generally rubbish and gouging the rim to death.

When I last heard such a noise from the back end under similar circumstances, I was please to discover it was merely my cassette that had come loose. I tightened it up and it went away.

But I imagine you’ve checked that, so god knows. Don’t know anything about CK hubs.

In my irrelevant opinion, either white with black graphics or black with white graphics. Leave the flash paintjobs to Intenses etc, and stay true to the Nicolai’s form follows function aesthetic.

The P7 is a lovely bike – very playful and fun to ride. And with the slidey dropouts it’s capable of going SS or accepting an alfine/rohloff, should the mood ever take you.

I was surprised the other week by how many shops in Glasgow didn’t have a 68x113mm ISIS bottom bracket in stock.

I got laughed at in two LBSs when I asked for ISIS bottom brackets.

On the subject of What Bike For Cleaning Jacobs, I’d suggest a 20″ wheeled trials bike and a camelbak full of steroids.

Bloody impossible climb is that.

We went the opposite way to you and assumed we’d bump into you about half way round at some point. Now we know why we didn’t 😕

Good vid anyroad, my favourite RATM song that. And I suppose you could have picked a worse day to have a million pinch flats – last time we were up Jacobs it was hailing horizontally…

Will – I don’t suppose you were one of the chaps we parked next to at the start of the day? I think I complimented you or your mate on your brilliant taste in bikes.

The linkage is pretty similar, though the pivot point is different if you care about such things. The VT pivots just behind and above the BB.

And as said above, VTs were and still are great bikes!

High Rollers.

EDIT: I think I missed the point of this thread, sorry.

Love the ‘giant bunnyhopping the bridge’ pic, and the sheep pic made me smile. Nice shots.

Gone in Sixty Seconds. The Nick Cage version. Can’t help it.

Diesel: Napier Deltic
Petrol: RR merlin

Although I’ll also take a well sorted Scania V8 any day of the week.

I gather the cable pull of the Alfine is different, so a thumb shifter wont work.

If that wont do, cos you’re a drop/tri bar user or whatever, there is this Alfine/Nexus specific bar end shifter from Jtek

You could pick the canal towpath up at Valley Centertainment and that’ll take you into the canal basin/Victoria Quays at Park Square Roundabout.

Or to make things a touch longer you could turn the other way along Shepcote lane and pick the canal up at Tinsley Viaduct.

Although I have a feeling they can’t run a granny ring, so you’d have to swap the BB out for a regular one if you wanted to run full gears.

What about an external eccentric BB that fits in a regular BB shell?

If you’re gonna get in the car anyway (which as stated above is a bit unneccessary really for Holmfirth, it’s really not far at all – 10 mins from Stocksridge in car…) you might as well head out Buxton way – a few folk on here were talking about good long darkside climbs out near the Cat and Fiddle a while ago (might be old forum).

You don’t want short sharp climbs? So that’s a no to Pea Royd Lane where they’re holding that hill climb race 🙂

Long 20 minute plus climbs? It’s all a bit short and sharp round here isn’t it. Suppose you could do Holme Moss, or maybe that road that goes from the bottom of the Woodhead over the dam wall and up over to Glossop.

There might be some good long climbs that take you up to Spicer Hill windfarm too, I’m not near my maps or else I’d have a look.

With on the way in, so looking forward to commute home against it…

Please define Pedal Feedback

This is STW so I’ll be slapped down instantly of course, but what I know as Pedal feedback is where the rider can feel the suspension moving through the pedals.

All the bikes you mentioned have a reasonably high, forward placed pivot, giving a backwards arcing montion to the rear axle path. So the distance between the rear axle and the BB grows as the bike compresses through it’s travel.

This can be detectable as the pedals are effectively pulled backwards slightly under compression.

The positive side is that under power, the chain wants to pull the rear axle forward thus acting against the suspension and stiffening it slightly so when cranking along it should counteract the bike’s tendency to bob.

My personal experience is that on some bikes with high forward pivots when you pedal hard through rough terrain it can feel a bit like the bottom bracket keeps going momentarily stiff. And stood on the pedals coasting through rough terrain you feel more of what’s going on. It can only be a tiny sensation but after 10 years of riding other types of bike it was noticable. I’m sure I’d get used to it, and would quite like to as I’m starting to lust after the Orange 5…

The closer to the BB the swingarm pivot is located, the less this will be felt. But the more bob you’ll get, and the more you’ll have to rely on platform damping and swish shocks.

Pedal feedback on that bunch, I would have thought.

For the use it would be suited to I’d rather have a Surly Big Dummy :o)

The fitting/removal tool for those BBs is very specific and you’ll likely never use it again, but I’d be worried about using anything else for the job as it would be very easy to make a mess of the BB shell, especially if it’s tight/siezed.

My LBS had to have a rummage around for that tool, not many folk use them these days apparently. They’re a bit of a liability really, the BB fitted to my commuter uses that method.

To remove the cranks using a hammer you’ll likely shag the crank splines, so unless you want to use them again use a proper crank extractor with the ISIS/octilink adaptor. The splines are quite deep on ISIS, just applying brute force might take a while, a lot of flesh and is very risky.

I didn’t see it as I was at a Richard Herring gig :o)

brooess, I had exactly the same setup. Flat bar/bar ends on a ‘Rat. I too found that I was ALWAYS on the bar ends, so I decided to fit some bullhorn tri/track bars similar to the ones in teaandbiscuits’ link above so I could get the brake levers up where my hands were.

It’s a fantastic setup, wish I’d done it sooner. Proper bar tape right the way up, no having to shift hand positions to get to the brakes and the hand position is comfier with a bit more variety (and shh, it also makes your bike look cooler in a fakeneger kind of way 😉 ).

I totally recommend it for a fellow singlespeed Roadrat bar end user 🙂

And that front wheel drive Mike Burrows thing looks quite nice, too.

I’m quite a fan of this 20″ wheeled Azub ‘bent.

Really nice bike. If I lived well away from busy roads and abusive chavs, I’d ride one :o)

I feel a little bit embarrassed that, at nearly 30 years old, I have no knowledge of the subject. I just watched that video and saw the chaps in France camped under tarpaulin who try every night to cross the channel to this supposed promised land. And it made me wonder what they hear about the UK when they are looking to escape their home countries, what news finds its way across the world about the safe haven that is the UK. And who is telling them this? I know it’ll be better than the place they’re running from, I just find it hard to believe that a broken, on it’s arse, overcrowded little island is the most desirable place out of anywhere in the world for so many people.

But I suppose a pushbike forum isn’t really the place for such a conversation. So I’ll go elsewhere and read up.

thank you for your replies, trailmonkey and joe.

Absolutely genuine question. The whole subject is totally off my radar. Thanks for the dismissal.

I don’t understand that question, sorry.

I just wonder why Enlgand, specifically, is so favoured for people seeking asylum. England is tiny compared with the entire rest of the world and they’ve come all the way across most of the world (okay, Europe at least), to end up at Calais, trying desperately to get that further 20 odd miles to England.

Just seems a bit odd when so many natives of the UK want to bugger off elsewhere.

I’m a bit clueless here, but why are they so keen to make it to this overcrowded little island having come all the way across Europe?

What’s so attractive about this side of the Channel?

Sheffield is home to the largest listed building in Europe.

Brick Lane Cycles?