looks like a proper cross bike, for racering fast on, and not a cross bike for someone who thinks they’re too cool for a tourer :-)

good race at Brighton, biting wind and a bit of snow for the last lap, perfect!

“What shall we do with the grumpy pirate?
Early in the morning
Hooray and up she rises”

what exactly are they doing to him to make him happy?

you can swap axles in Goldtec rear hubs so there’s the potential to move the hub from different rear-spaced bike to different rear-spaced bike, should you see a fleet of SSs in your future

i just got a new axle for mine, swapped from a 120mm spaced bike to a 130mm one, saved me buying a whole new wheel, bonus

i’d avoid ‘proper’ track hubs, they have really rubbish seals on the bearings for outdoors use, fine for inside a clean dry velodrome though

On-One and Surly and the like do cheaper track-spaced hubs, might be worth looking at charliethebikemonger and freshtripebikes for more street based fakinger track product, they might have some cheaper wheel builds in there, if you don’t mind lime-green rims
;-)

i wondered why i hadn’t seen Gordon The Gopher in a while

as the rear spacing on the Langster is 120mm (track spacing) you don’t have such a large selection of hubs to choose from than if it was standard road spacing, but i can thoroughly recommend a Goldtec track hub, handbuilt onto a Mavic Open Pro, it will last forever

front wheel, any hub you have in the shed built onto an Open Pro

“we shouldn’t have to ignore them because they shouldn’t be here.“

like threads about pubs, boilers and power tools, that you’ve happily answered to eh snaps?

in the old days of cup-and-cone hubs some would deliberately leave them with a little play in them off the bike so the extra tension of the tightened QR would snug them up ‘just so’

something’s wrong with the bearings, the tiny extra bit of force the tightened QR is putting om them isn’t to their liking

unpadded bib-longs worn over padded bib-shorts here, padded longs just never feel as, er, connected to me

here he is after someone told him he needed suspension if he was ever going to be any good at downhill

if your forks have a hole for a fork-mounted cable-stop then put one of them on

“Park guide tool for a hacksaw is great but expensive unless you are going to do it enough to make the investment worthwhile. “

the Park cutting guide is on of those “how did i do without this for so long” tools, turns a 15 minute faffy bodge into a 2 minute accurate job, and i’d say pretty much essential if you go anywhere near a carbon steerer, handy for handlebars too

and you can hire it out to friends for beer too :-)

scandium isn’t steel, and an Explosif isn’t made from it

“was does that spin out at ?“

about 45 miles

just the one ratio, 38/18

you could have tightened the crank all the way to the end of the taper, have a look inside the square hole inside the crank-arm and you should see a little ‘ridge mark’ where it’s stopped tightening onto the taper, if you can’t see one, it might be that it’s tightened all the way to the end

alternately if it’s a Shimano BB with a ‘shoulder’ at the bearing end then the crank could be merely tightening onto that rather than tightening fully on the axle

get the Tektro CR720s, recommended

“Maybe i should go for a test ride but only if that abi girl comes with me“

congratulations, you’ve just become a victim of their marketing, oh the irony

:-)

i think this is more your problem than theirs

i’ve used a good old Shimano steel QR and a DMR chain-tug for years with no problems

and you mean track-end rather than horizontal drop-out, yes?

your biggest issue is going to be that the rear-end is 120mm spaced so there’s no chance of getting derailleur gears in there, i haven’t bothered to see if you can get a 120mm spaced hub gear because i suspect it wouldn’t be worth all the hassle

Armstrong is/was a spinner and he seemed to do ok

mashing big gears doesn’t necessary mean more speed

whichever fits best

i’d err on the side of the 54, i’m 5’10" and the 56 fits me like a glove, but i know people of a similar size and taller then me that have gone for 54s, internet advice is no substitute for actually going and sitting on one

a poor workman….

;-)

as you’re pretty much stuck with presta valves for the road and CX bikes it makes sense to go presta for the mtbs as well
if you’re bending presta valves you’re doing something wrong

well i removed the chainset and BB immediately, it’s too big a gear for off-road, to some fakinger on ebay and for the same money replaced it with a Campag compact chainset and BB that’s still going strong, the rear wheel bearings gave up after 5 winter off-road rides and had to be regularly be repacked with grease and have a couple of bearing changes before i swapped it out for a Goldtec hubbed wheel (which has been excellent) the front wheel faired a little better but still needed regular looking at, the headset bearings (real basic unsealed caged bearings) didn’t like it off-road too much so they were replaced with a Hope integrated unit

but i did treat it badly, proper 3hr+ off-road rides through a very puddly winter, a task some of its parts weren’t designed for

the singlecross is good, very good, but some of the parts are "to a pricepoint" shall we say

keep some money aside to replace all the bearings in a fortnight or so

i’d have a posh steel version of my Explosif with little tweaks to make it ‘mine’, but that’s just me, your criteria might be different

luckily i managed to balance the overt Nazi propoganda of my Tintin books by reading Battle-Action comics where the plucky Brits beat the crap out the Hun and the Nip

off-road – no
road – yes

19″ Konas for me and i’m 5′ 10″ and a wee bit, i guess you’ll be the only one who knows if it’s the right size for you

effective

sounds like to need to stop looking at cross bikes and look at a nice tourer instead, i know it won’t be as cool but would suit your needs better

if it’s dry i just rub it off with my hand, it’s not rocket surgery

Ultegra on Open Pro rims

“‘Lock the wheels’ – all brakes will, if applied strongly enough.“

exactly

“Less material at rim = lower mass = less rotating weight = greater acceleration + increased braking efficiency.“

more material in hub and frame to deal with the different forces disc-brakes exert = greater mass = more weight to drag along = slower everything

“Rim brakes rely on very true rims, to be fully efficient. Discs do away with this issue. Dent a rim/snap a spoke on a 100 mile ride, no worries.“

in over 20 years of road riding i’ve had precicely one snapped spoke meaning i merely undid the brakes a bit, this isn’t really an issue

“Makes perfect sense, and youse all know it.“

if it made sense it would already be done, the technology is out there, it just isn’t necessary

you sound like you’ve already made up your mind and are merely being confused by the facts

(knowing wink)

“And roadies are conservative types at heart.“

no they’re not, they’ll try anything to gain an advantage, which is why there aren’t discs on road bikes