Just about finished building mine – couple little bits and pieces to tidy up this week then hopefully get out on it at the weekend.

I’ve got a Specialized one and also a cheapo one from Decathlon which can be mounted either way round. Had plenty of use on long tours/rides with luggage and performed just fine.

Anyone got a link to a suitable, reasonably priced headset for this? On-One or otherwise. I used to understand things when it was 1″ or 1.1/8″, external cups. I just looked at a bunch of headsets with various numbers and am now totally confused.

Also, a week or so ago there was a headset linked to from the Scandal frame page, now there isn’t. I just found something on there somewhere after lots of clicking around that possibly looks suitable but it’s not listed under the ‘headsets’ category and now I’ve lost it again. Also it was £35 or £39, when most of their other headsets are about £20.

I’m a bit lost on the headset front.

Returned from our first holiday to Morzine yesterday. Wasn’t a biking holiday as such (I rented a DH bike and got a lift pass for one day while we were there – amazing), but the kids loved it. They’re 3 and 8. Youngest loved doing some pony trekking, eldest loved the toboggan/luge, we did loads of swimming with our Mutipass, walking, Mrs went paragliding. Crepes galore. Plus day trips to local towns/resorts/lakes etc are all a piece of cake and worth the odd bit of driving.

Already thinking about going back next year (but driving and taking my bike).

It’s the stock SRAM groupset on my Marin Pine Mountain, not sure what brand the chain is, SRAM as well I assume.

Yeah, a good rinse probably would have sorted it, although I had no water on me as I was only out for an hour. I’ve had chain suck and chain dropping issues on 3x setups before, but never like this where the chain would simply not drop down into the teeth without a press of my thumb. Even just turning the pedals by hand, half a turn was enough to drop it straight off again.

1x setups are new to me and I’d never really inspected it that closely before, but I didn’t realise how tightly the chain fits over the teeth, unlike a regular chainring where there’s plenty of space for things to ‘wiggle about’ a bit. Hey ho, lesson learnt. Perhaps a bit more derailleur tension would help too.

Old thread, I know, but I thought I’d add my observations for the sake of Google searchers.

Had terrible trouble with my NW ring today. Not worn at all, it’s probably done 5 or 6 rides of an hour each in total, so it’s like new. Today was the first time I’ve ridden in heavy mud and I had to walk two miles back to my car as the chain wouldn’t stay on for more than 2 turns of the pedals. The closer/tighter fit of the chain on the teeth just wouldn’t allow for any claggy mud to get into the chain. When it did, the chain just wouldn’t sit down nicely on the ring unless I pressed it down with my finger. Never had that problem in 30 years of hard riding through all conditions on regular chainrings on many, many bikes.

Concerns me that I could have been stranded somewhere more remote. Ho hum…

“6 minute mile pace on the distance stuff”

Putting aside the argument about what fitness is (see above) and talking absolute performance, that doesn’t sound particularly fast?
Two and half hour marathon isn’t particularly fast? Hmmm, ok then.

I’m not entirely convinced cross fitters have the best levels of overall fitness. They’re certainly strong, but I don’t see how much of what they do promotes real aerobic efficiency over endurance events that last hours and hours. At an amateur/mere mortal level, I’m sure I could join some of my cross fit friends for one of their sessions but I’m not sure they’d come join me for a 50km run.

Excuse the chip on the glass

Raspberry Cairpirinha:

My hardtail / bike packing bike / single speed is an inbred 26er currently running bb5(or 7 can’t remember) and midge bars. Works fine.

Same here. Inbred 26er singlespeed with midge bars, 700c wheels with CX tyres and bb5/bb7 MTB brakes with v-brake pull drop bar levers. Have have a set of 26″ MTB wheels I can swap in easily and a flat bar/stem setup with levers ready to go. The drop bars need a shorty stem and some height spacers though else they’re not comfortable.

It’s my everyday bike, gets used way more than my MTB or road bike.
Shown here in kiddie trailer mode

I’m experimenting, but currently on 36:15 which is easy enough to ride slowly and up hills, but still gets me to over 20mph which is more than enough for what it gets used for.

Debating the merits of a 1×9 setup with a bar end shifter in my head at the moment too. We’ll see.

stick bigger wheels on your current frame. At least try it!

I did just that, and I quite like it. I think this’ll keep me going nicely for a while until I can afford a new frame. It’s damn fast now!

Before and after pic:

I blagged a day in Hanmer Springs, on the south island, during my honeymoon. There’s some fantastic proper MTB trails there maintained by the locals. Just pop into the shop in town – not the tourist/adventure centre, but the mountain bike clothes shop next door – and the guy there will give you a map of all the MTB trails with recommendations on where to go to get a good day’s riding.

He does a nice line of clothing too – Krank dirtwear.

Oooh, nice. I thought the swappable dropouts was a nice touch before, as well as the disc mounts on the chainstays. Still like this a lot though. Hmmm, what can I sell to raise funds…

Interesting. Is that a sample of a new Kaff you’re referring to?

Kaffenback isn’t a cross bike. It’s a road frame.

The taxonomy is irrelevant, I don’t really care what it’s called. I’m not about to go riding cyclocross courses with it. I intend to ride it on the road, but have clearance for something more than a 23c tyre and not be quite as head-down as my road bike. Pannier mounts are essential too, as are discs. And I’d like to be able to go up/down the occasional kerb and be able to ride a gravel canal path in reasonable comfort.

Thanks for all the useful comparisons between the two. I think top tube length is possibly the main issue to consider. On my 26″ inbred I’ve had to fit a short stem and a few height spacers to get it comfortable with drops (but it does ride great as a result). 32mm cx tyres would probably be more than enough, I’d have thought. It’s not going to be ridden in mud. I may not even bother with those, and go for some touring/city type tyres.

If I had a grand spare, I’d go out and buy a nice touring bike. So, in that sense, the Kaffenback seem like the sensible choice. I just can’t seem to ignore the versatility of a big inbred though, being able to stick some proper fat tyres on occasionally and have a bit of a laugh up the woods. I could even swap it over to flat bars in about 30 minutes…

Excellent, thanks. We should have plenty of time, so a little loop here and there could be factored in.

I’d forgotten about the c2c-guide off road sections page, ta!

Out of interest, what would be the difference between a Kaffenback and, say, a 29er inbred? Fitted with midge flared drops.

This is my current mincing about/commuting/pub bike:

It very occasionaly does a bit of offroad but mainly stays on paths, and I’d like to run bigger wheels. Been looking at the Kaffenbacks, but wondering if something like this would be more versatile:

with the option to run fatter tyres when the mood takes me, but presumably still pretty quick with some cross/town/road type tyres on?

Thoughts welcome!

Cheers, lots of useful suggestions here. The Kinesis forks look nice, but a bit pricey and blingy for a commuter/pub/occasional tourer bike.

Either the standard Kaffenback fork or the Cotic fork look like the sensible choices. Surly do some nice looking 700c disc forks too but they’re over double the price.

Just gotta wait for Kaffenbacks to come back in stock now…

“Any old fork” will make or ruin the naff

My point was, as long as it’s the right size/length, I’m not fussy on colour, brand and so on.

Hmm, the Cotic forks look nice. I’m not fussy really, just need any old 700c forks that have disc mounts.

Just looked at some 700c Project Two forks that are 440mm axle to crown – exactly the same length as my On One rigid forks that I was told would be useless…

Fair enough. Only £40 for a set of Kaffenback forks anyway. Thanks

I did wonder about rim width, but then I looked at some road rims on CRC that were 16 and 19mm wide. An MTB Mavic 117, 317 etc is 17mm wide. Crudely holding a ruler against a crappy old road bike in the office here suggest the rims on that (with 25c slick tyres) are about 15-18ish mm.

So I’m hoping rim width might not be an issue. Could be wrong though.

I’m gonna go research the kit used on things like the Croix De Fer and Charge Filter…

All good, except for being impossible to engage SPDs…

I try to sound like I know what I’m talking about when it comes to geographical information systems and online mapping. I can convincingly blag online marketing and web development too.

I’ve lived here for 20 odd years (and have also lived in London and a few other places too, so I think I can make a fair comparison).

It’s not at all soulless, and is a fantastic place for family life. The only real difference to other places is that it’s spread over a large area so you can’t get about on foot. Not having a selection of pubs that can be walked to is the main drawback for me, unless you live in one of the outskirt villages like Stony Stratford or Newport Pagnell.

Those who criticise the place tend to be those who only visit for a few days, or have seen a picture of the concrete cows in TV.

The areas to avoid are generally the ones that immediately border the centre, with a few exceptions. The nicer areas tend to be those that are slightly further out. I’ve lived in Great Holm, Two Mile Ash, Downs Barn (not great), Blue Bridge, Wavendon Gate, Deanshanger (one of the outer villages), Furzton and now live out on the western tip in Oxley Park, which is really nice.

As mentioned, plenty riding in Woburn without the need for a car – even from the far side of MK it’s only about 30 mins by bike.

330 Clubsport. Not entirely appropriate I guess, although I’ve not yet tried getting the bikes in/on the MX5 for full inappropriateness points

GPSBabel is another free tool worth downloading. Converts GPS files from/to pretty much any available format and has a neat filtering function so you can say ‘chop off everything after 15:35’ for example.

Thetford offroad Duathlon – shattered now.

I’ve got Midge bars on a singlespeed, so no STI shifters, but don’t see a problem. The levers might be at an angle but then so are your hands so you’re still pulling on them nice and straight.

Had a ’95 Zaskar LE until about 2 years ago. Fantastic bike. Oringinally built up proper pimp with Pace RC35s, loads of x-lite, Hope etc, then later stuck a pair of Judy DH on to make it a bit more long travel 😀

Gave it to my brother 2 years ago and I think it’s been ridden once in that time, sat in the garage gathering dust.

There’s some great riding in Hanmer Springs. I was on the South Island for a couple of weeks just over a year ago and managed to get a day’s riding in there. Go see the guy who owns the Krank bike shop there. There’s a pretty big trail building community which he’s involved in and he’ll give you a map and point you in the direction of some good riding. There’s some proper marked MTB trails plus plenty more natural stuff too.

There’s hot springs and a spa etc if you have a missus that needs entertaining for the day too.

Ahhh, I wanna go back!

Tsukuba – 53.703 (just using TC)

I’ll try the other tracks a bit later today

We need a table of some sort to see who stands where. If we were all in each other’s xbox contact list then you can view the leaderboard of all your friends but I think that is only for a specific class and track and can’t be filtered to just laps with the flying lizard. Hmmm.

Maybe c&p the top fives times into each post on here or something…

Gonna try and set a couple of laps myself this morning

Oooh this looks like fun, will set some lap times in the Porsche later this evening

Another vote for Flows with yellow tape and standard tyre here. Been running Nevegal/Blue Groove for about a year now without any probs. I’m 15st ish and run pretty low pressures, no burps.

Just a light dusting at Cannock Chase. Minus 9 on the way there though and slippery as **** all over the place with lots of invisible ice.

Got an O2rc on my FSR, been on for 18 months with no probs really. Adjustable damping seems to work well. I knackered the thread on the air valve (my fault) and got a replacement from the x-Fusion importers/dealers. They were pretty helpful and can handle all servicing if necessary.

I’m 5’11” and ride a large. The medium needed the seatpost at the very limit of extension for seat up pedalling which I wasn’t keen on so went for the large.

Here you go:

Mine look similar, might grab a photo later. Tried to keep a more or less straight flat line running along the top of the bar and across the top of the hoods of the levers

I’ve got an M4 on the front and Mini on the back. I find the Mini needs a bit more attention and can be prone to sticky pistons and then alignment issues. The M4 never seems to have any probs though as if one piston gets stuck, the other piston will automatically unstick it. I’ve never touched the M4 in 4 years other than to change pads. The Mini needs the occasional 6 monthly fettle.

Lots of power and feel without being grabby. Lovely brake IMO.