Also love the gates belt drive and its see through drive sprocket.
Auto watches, auto gearboxes, quirky engineering, i love all that.

Does it have to be visual impact? For some reason I happened across a video of the explanation of a Nuvinci(?) Internal CVT hub. The scale of just how left field that hubs designer was made me go wow.

Tried it once in the Highlands about 17 years ago. Went veggie more or less straight afterwards , but remember that I liked it and would eat it again.
If I was to ever eat another mammal again, it would only be wild -shot game. No offense to farmers as I understand theres more to farming than just the endgame of loading them onto the slaughter trucks, but I couldnt morally eat another farmed sentient being again.
Right up until the point it feels the bullet impact, that deer is living the life it was born to, which is more than can be said for most of us. In the absence of major predators here in UK (unless you count the big cats…which is another story) , deer numbers would spiral out of control fairly soon. They are not small animals and can and do cause serious damage to forestry etc, or so I have heard.
Having said that, I have not seen such a magnificent site as camping out during the rut in the Highlands years ago.
Until we run out of veg then theyre safe from harm from me, but the moment they become food, then yes, I’d eat venison again in a heartbeat.

Are you just looking for freebies, or a better alternative which might cost you a few quid? Mild steel can / will rust, possibly expanding in the bore and jamming the post in the tube.
There is a thing called shim steel, which is stainless steel. Comes in all sorts of different thicknesses, from about 0.05mm up to, well , the point where shim becomes plate. I have used 0.35mm shim steel, albeit on press tools, so it can be gotten, but unfortunately I believe it is quite pricey.
Do you know any engineer types? They can probably cut you a square.

Just curious @sv, any benefit to getting rid of the top hat set-up? Also how much are the enduro kits? Their website doesnt load properly for me on my device.

Screwdriver down the hole, jam the nut against the pedal body, use the flats/hex socket to take it off might work ? Think I’ve done something similar in the past.

Yeah I know theyre cheap enough to replace, the rationale behind it is that I have had to replace quite a few external BB’s over the years, and the only issue ever is the bearings. By keeping a spare set of bearings handy, in an emergency I can whip the old ones out and put new ones in in a fraction of the time it takes me to go down the bike shop and buy a new BB.
Yes, I could keep spare BB handy too, but I can sort my cups out in work in 5 mins so why bother? Plus I love messing around with bikes, breaks the monotony of my job.
On a side note, the absolute best external BB i had was a Dura ace one on my Genesis Vapour. And, co incidentally, I had cup and cone bearings on my old XT hubs, and the best balls I ever had in there were Dura ace stainless. They lasted ages.

@stevextc

The initial bearings were 25x37x7, which would appear to be a standard size. They were £6.99 for a pair. Had a mate who used to make bearings for INA bearings check em out and he said they were tidy enough for the price.
They were from mcrbikes on ebay. Free p+p too, quick delivery .

They didnt fit my cups so ordered a pair of 25x37x6 at £8.99 for a pair, from the same seller. Still waiting on those, but I only ordered them last night/early hours so its still early days.
Hope that helps.

@belugabob

On the pair of cups I have here, SM-BB51, the cups look identical other than one is a RH thread and the other is a LH thread. There is a difference in length of the threaded diameter, the cup marked R which confusingly is the LH threaded one,being longer by a few mm. Without taking a calipers to them, I would say that is the only difference between the two cups.
There appears to be no difference in shape, hole size,etc.

Impossible? Nope, took mine out in 5 mins today, did need a second pair of hands and a set of engineering parallels though. Oh, and ,using my new revised method, a block of wood.
So, just place the cup bearing side down on a block of soft pine. I used the crap wood that comes in stillages and pallets. Position this block over the bench leg so that your impact is directly going into something with no flex. Very important , it prevents bouncing .

Using a small screwdriver, about 1/4″ across the flat, carefully position the blade into the wee gap between bearing and cup wall. Be careful not to scratch it, but its not the end of the world if you do, you can always tart it up later with a bit of 1200 grit wet n dry.
Give it a solid tap, not a big one ,on the OUTER race, just enough to get it moving.
Rotate cup 180 degrees and do it again. Be careful not to move it too much at a time, the aim is to keep it as close to level as possible. Hit north south like this until bearing is bottomed out against the block of pine.
Here comes the tricky bit where an extra pair of hands is useful. Place the cups on two parallels , leaving enough of a gap for the bearing to fall out . There is not much room at all, so here is where the extra pair of hands comes in. Position the parallels north south in relation to you, again over a bench leg. Get your handy mate to press the cup into the parallels hard as he can. This is to stop them bouncing in the next bit.
Tap the bearing until you feel a lip. This is the bearing protruding slightly from the cup. You want this, this makes the next bit much much easier. Place the lip hard up against the BACK (south) parallel. Look at the distance between cup and parallel. Try and leave a slightly bigger gap between the bearing and the north paralle l for the bearing to exit. Give the bearing a tap, rotating the cup 180 degrees each time. The idea is to get a lip all around the bearing. Once you have that, just rotate and give it a tap step by step til the bearing falls out.
Sounds rough cos it is, but like I said i got both bearings out in about 5 mins today once I figured out the method and collected all the bits needed. Very minimal damage caused , a quick 10 second rub with the wet n dry sorted any bruising out.
Before you put your new bearings in, give the bearing cup bore a quick rub with wet n dry, i wet mine with plusgas . Dont take much out, just give it a quick 10 second polish.
I replaced old knackered ones with new bearings and reassembled with two blocks of soft wood and a hammer. No damage caused, bearings were silky smooth afterwards.
Problem is, 7mm bearings are too wide for MOUNTAIN cups, so they had to come out again. Again, same method, 5 mins, no damage.
Gotta buy 37x 25x 6 mm bearings now.
This is by no means the best ,absolute gospel method , but it works, and it was worth trying it on cheap deore cups.

Well then ,I am even more impressed.
Excellent effort.

Turned round then milled flat?

Very nice work!
What did you use to radius the con rod? Did you cut the brass gearing yourself?

My 2p worth.
I drink pretty much nothing but tea. I drink a LOT of tea.
My favourites are, in no particular order ,and it will be become clear why later,
Yorkshire Gold
Co -Op Assam in the nice psychedelic grey and orange box,
Whatever my oldest daughter uses, cos her brews are magical.
I am of the opinion that the last 1/3 of a bag of 180 tea bags is wasted because my taste buds get used to it, so I tend to buy small packs of a few different types and rotate them. By the time I get “used” to a particular brand , its run out and I’m on to another. Might seem a bit poncey but I love my brews and thats what I do.

Never leave your teabags open to the environment, even though it smells fantastic, otherwise your brew will be very disappointing, much like finding the top hobnob in the packet goes damp. My dog gets that one every time, I don’t even bother any more. Same with the top teabag in an open container, just dont bother.

People who put milk in first are to be held in great suspicion as it is pure vandalism.

Brews must be stirred clockwise. I can tell the difference.
And any one who puts milk in a brew, leaves it go cold then microwaves it thinking I wont know the difference, gets left out of the will. I’m looking at daughter number 2 here.

Just ordered a Park CT5 from Spa cycles.
Cheers all.

Nooooooooooo! Do not allow that item any where near your frame.
You will need something like this:
https://www.mscdirect.co.uk/HLR-10080J/SEARCH:KEYWORD/product.html

But they can be had for about a fiver on amazon.
Not really much use around the house, so probably better off asking around if anyone you know has one. Or buy one, but its probably gonna be a once in a lifetime application.
The ones with a plain shank are for use in a hand held drill chuck ( not really, but if you had a radial arm drill or similar you wouldnt be asking, i suspect). The ones with a square shank section are for use by hand in a tap wrench. Both will work well.
A drill bit will do the job as well but more chance of snatching in the soft alu.

Over packing the bearings may cause excess pressure and blow the seals off the races, allowing water and shite in. Im talking about the rubber dust seals now, not the pressed metal ones.
Plus the excess grease will splurge out and cover your lovely bike in grease, attracting grit, dust and all manner of unwanteds, right next to rotating machinery. Like packing your bearings with lapping paste.

I have regularly popped the seals (very carefully with a non-sharp dental pick) , cleaned out the bearings and repacked them with quality grease on all my bikes, and the service life increases drastically, in my experience.
Yes, i had access to an ultrasonic bath , but a plastic tub filled with plus gas and a minute of shaking to dissolve the old cruddy grease and knock any rust or dirt out will do the same thing.
I used to then blow out them out with an air line( do NOT do this near any sources of ignition !) , using a rag masked over the top to prevent any high velocity bits of shit and vapour going everywhere.
I used to use a variety of industrial quality greases, some of them crazy expensive, but stopped when I tried Halfords Teflon grease. Best I’ve used so far, the red one, which I suspect is the same as the Weldtite red grease. The green Motorex(?) Stuff is ok too, but red teflon I found worked best.
Then, give them a packing, clean the seals and pop them back on.
Not saying this is a magic cure for shagged bearings, but a little care goes a long way. Also useful because a regular service schedule will highlight any corrosion on threads , which is a major PITA if left too long.

I would defo try a reamer first before a drill bit, but whichever you use, try to use a bit with a hex or square shank section.
Tap wrenches are not known for their vice like grip, and the shaped shank will prevent the bit slipping ,if you decide to do it by hand, which I definitely would do first.

Have a word with your local friendly machinist or toolmaker. The tool you need is a reamer, designed to finish that hole to a very tight tolerance and will not snatch on the soft alu of the frame.
You could use a reamer by hand in a tap wrench too.

I had a Fire Mountain from new in 1994, bought it to commute back and fore work as an apprentice. Still probably my favourite bike of all time, even though I had possibly the quickest warranty claim of all time when the tyre exploded 20 seconds down the road riding it home.

https://www.wihatools.com/hex-tools/magicringr-ball-end-hex-l-key-metric-9pc-set

These shiny bad boys. The strength is very surprising.

Where you can get a spanner on it, do that.Its the best way. Stilsons are handy for stubborn things that are probably going in the bin when they eventually come off. They can really chew up a nut / fitting/ pin, etc. Usually only any good on soft things, hardened things will bugger up the teeth.
I use my old, British made molegrips (actually made by Mole) all the time, my favourite tool for grabbing awkward ,snapped, hot, sharp , or irregularly shaped things. The jaws on mine form a triangle so they force the gripped object towards the jaw rivets, where the grip is strongest. The grip is awesome.
Bondhus allen keys are great, but the best ones I ever had were some super Gucci Wiha ones that were ordered in error in work. They were shockingly expensive but they are the bollocks, cant take your eyes off them in the workshop, everyone wants them.

Waiting for the weather to get colder so I can try a bit of home case hardening, which is turning low carbon steel into a steel with a high carbon, heat treatable skin.
We used to do it with Kasenit before it got banned, but I will be trying out the old pack carburising recipes soon.

If the files are through – hardened, then yes you can anneal, reforge and reharden, but I believe most files are now case-hardened, meaning they have a hard outer skin but a soft, low carbon steel core.
There have been a few old files which I tried to anneal and reharden in order to repurpose into something useful,but no joy.
By the time the steel had got hot enough to anneal, the very thin layer of carbon steel had decarburised and so the steel was now unhardenable.

Copper grease the saddle rails, had an annoying creak on a hardtail and traced it back to that. Cured for all time afterwards.

Another point for OP.
If you want to shape your blade, grinders are ideal. But ,if you want to have some nice , professional looking bevels on your blade, the easiest way for a beginner is with a homemade bevel-filing jig.
Gough Customs on YouTube have some very good videos detailing the construction and use of this jig.
I made one, it was piss easy, and it works a treat.
Have at it and have fun.

Car leaf springs have been known to have internal cracks, so if you were forging it into ,say, a machete or similar, the blade could snap if you gave it a solid one into a tree. Having said that, some of the finest Kukris ever made were repurposed leaf springs so I guess its just down to luck .
Plenty of hardenable, knife sized blanks lying at the side of roads with speed bumps. Those little metal wotsits on the road are bits of dead coil spring, but again, theyve obviously snapped off so the internal crack issue still applies.
I think that you can’t beat a bit of 01 for a homemade, home heat treated knife.They even put the temperature and soak time on the waxed packet or you.
Quick tip. Lots of info about getting the steel cherry red flying around. In my experience of making hardened pins, blades, whatever, that isnt quite hot enough. Heat the steel til its non-magnetic then heat it a bit more. If you are going to grind a significant proportion of the steel away whilst finishing, heat it til you get little glowing crackles on the surface. This gets the steel fully hard, but you may have a soft skin as i believe the glowing crackles are carbon in the steel burning away.

Mary Jane by Megadeth. Love the way it builds.

+1 for O1 steel. Sometimes known as gauge plate. Assuming you are using stock removal methods ,whereby you cut the shape out rather than heat it and beat it into shape.
Easy to harden, easy to temper, keeps a decent edge, very prone to rusting though so keep oiled after use.
Have made press tool cropping blades out of D2, as I remember they were sent out for heat treating, but were very, very sharp , although they were horrible to grind. If I were buying a pocket knife ,I’d buy D2 every time. If I were making one in the shed, which I have, a few times, I would use O1 every time.

Aha, sounds like you like the same type of bike aesthetic as I do.
May I suggest a Sunn Charger, I think it was? It was a steel tubed full sus, skinny tubes, quite slanty like an early Kona.
I’d love one, someone rode one past me a few weeks ago, gorgeous in the flesh.

I love 26″ bikes, the size suits me perfectly, the technology is familiar and easy to get to grasps with, the bike component standards were much more static for a longer period of time, and in my opinion only, the proportions of the wheel to frame just looks “right”.
I was never a good enough rider to see any advantages to all this “progress”. Rode my boys 27.5″ bike and I just didnt notice much of a difference, definitely not enough to scrap off the beloved fleet of 26″ bikes I used to own.
Currently riding 26″ , and dont plan on changing until the rarity of parts forces me to.
So, as long as there are enough people like me around, then the 26″ bike s will always have a value, at least until it becomes uneconomical to keep stubbornly riding 26″ bikes just cos .

Double post. Ignore.

Are these safety glasses or just reading type glasses?
The Uvex safety glasses with the black arms are great and are by far the best anti fog glasses i have used.

Maybe your experiences are different to mine then, I’m only calling it how I see it. All these anecdotes I have written here have absolutely happened,and not just a one off either.
It’s not terrible here, but it definitely isnt the land of milk and honey. I was raised here so I dont know any different, but people I know who move to the area are often taken aback that its not all Gower beaches, red kites in the sky and farm cottages.
Anyway, good luck with it all. Would I swap here for a big city? Absolutely not.

Are you only looking at affluent areas like the Gower and the Vale? For every Gower theres 10 Aberafans, for every Vale theres 10 Merthyrs. Dont forget, these places you are looking at will very much be in a bubble, surrounded by industrial towns, most dying. Next town over from the Gower has a huge drug and education problem.I worked with several grown adults who could not read or write a word. Heroin needles in the toilets, that sort of thing.
I suppose I’m trying to say that the “nice” areas are few and far between, and are surrounded by struggling , grim towns and villages. The outdoors aspects are vast and easily accesible, but the pay off will be mixing with, and forcing your children to mix with, people who might distrust and judge you purely on your English accent.

I’m interested to know what was meant by “of course , it won’t be as nice as Bath”?
I’ve lived in South Wales for 40+ years, and I’d say, if you offered me the chance to swap here for Bath, theres no way on Earth I’d head East. I would say this area is far nicer than a city like Bath.
What exactly are you looking for?

Yeah retro tax seems to be a real thing from what I can see. Had a Ti hardtail for almost all of the 2000’s and some of the 2010’s, so never felt the urge to change bike. Hard times came, had to sell it, now find myself missing 12 years or so of bike models.
That thread is a goldmine, used to run my Ti with Kona P2 forks just fine when my SIDs packed up.
Anything stand out from about 2005 onwards? Like the idea of a Genesis ioid for the simplicity and clean lines, but never ridden one. My current road/gravel bike is a Genesis and have been impressed by it.
Anyone had one?

Have used brake grease, the red stuff, in the past , and it worked fine.
Also used to blow sticky pistons out with compressed air, but be sure to hold a rag over the top to catch all the vapourised brake fluid , and also the piston should it pop out.

Now that is pretty much what I had in mind, an old steel Kona maybe ( I had one in ’94, loved it) , or an old voodoo bizango steel, something like that.
Also had a hard on for the Volvo Cannondales from back in the day in blue and yellow.
Drop bars are a no-no though, which is why I’m giving up on the road biking. Big stiff neck makes it very difficult to see anything other than the front wheel , and I like to have a scan aboot when I’m ragging it aboot.
Vees would be ideal, I never had a complaint with them unless the wheel buckled out on a ride.
Any more ideas/ suggestions? All appreciated.