It means your mech breaks rather than your hanger. I know which I’d prefer…

…so essential for those rare and slightly ill-thought-out bikes without a bend-able or replaceable hanger. There was a bloke on here the other day who had to buy a new seatstay for his scott genius; that’s why I have a hanger banger on mine.

Such was my food intake and riding/metabolising rad-ness, I did five (proper, not ‘ill’) poos at a 24 hour race last year. Does that count for anything? (most cr@p?)

Lady Grinning Soul. Probably my favourite song by anyone really.

I like MisterGnar. Well, the login name is fab anyway, never met him/her.

Imagine if your name really was Gnar…

19 years of guitar here too, plus violin and harmonica (if that counts!)
If I may stick my head over the musical parapet a bit further, I also have a rather excellent falsetto, which seems to disappear after 3 pints. I am sure there is a science reason for that, or just nature’s way of protecting me from the consequences of drunkenly singing Prince songs at folk.

bear in mind that air forks will ‘ramp up’ at the end of their travel as you squeeze the air into an increasingly small space. I have never bottomed out my rebas, i reckon i have only ever got the top of the seals within 10mm of the fork crown. 108mm sounds ok (i’ll have a look at mine later), you could always let the air out of the bottom valve (do this upside down with the release valve on a shock pump else all the oil comes out too!) and see if the lower legs extend any further out. and don’t forget to pump it back up again after or it will handle like poo.

get slower friends or get fitter. I can’t imagine that 5.5kg on your bike/back is going to be offset by that sort of power, particularly on proper rough or loose trails. It is a biiiiiig investment!

I suppose a compomise would be meEting your riding mates half way round their ride and then being all fresh, might keep up and enjoy yourself more. Its true, when you are hanging out of your arse trying to keep up, it is hard to enjoy it and your skills/handling suffer.

happy fitness-building! (i hope!)

I won’t bore you with mine, apart from:

wondering if anyone remembers the black-to-fluo-pink-fade ‘townsend equalizer’ from about 1989 (my first mountain bike)

and realising that I haven’t bought a brand new bike since 2001. Quite a few second hand frames and forks though.

and realising that the only components I have ever properly broken (as opposed to worn out) were a quill stem in 1992 and a crank arm I cross-threaded with a crank puller (you only make that mistake once!). I must not be riding hard enough.

I like this one:

let the junkies have their smack – then they don’t need to rob to fund their habits,

long time since I had much to do with drugs rehabilitation (for my job, that is!) but if i recall rightly, burglary and particularly conviction for burglary used to be part of the way the effectiveness of rehab/methadone programmes used to be measured.

they won’t develop the health problems associated with poor quality drugs etc.

Although methadone is also pretty bad for you (‘methadone teeth’ being an obviuos symptom), it is not half as bad a poor quality heroin. I remember a couple of years ago we ‘lost’ a couple of heroin users from there being a dodgy batch with cement in it.

To say that legalising or state control of heroin will reduce bike theft is a bit too optimistic and not the whole story or solution, but TJ has a good (if probably quite contentious round these parts) point. It seems a bit wierd to most people (especially my times-reading parents) but suprising how many professionals in the errr, ‘trade’ agree.

click on this, all ladies who love the feel of juan’s wheel. :-)

second the charge spoon.
Truvativ hussefelt 40mm stem: about a third the price of anything else that short.
Troy lee Air and xc gloves.
smica components in general.
Are we talking ‘bargain at full rrp’ here?

the thing i like least about my 4 year-old Scott Genius is the rather in-your-face logos all over it. It is gopping to look at. Nevertheless, riding past the skateramp near newnham park after a nightride, accompanied by several thousand pounds worth of posh new enduros and epics underneath my more financially solvent friends, the kids hanging round gave me a “nice bike mate, oooooh, its a Scott!”.

it’s to do with getting the middle ring ‘around’ the crank arm: i seem to remember having to have my granny ring off and rattling around the BB in order to be able to able to angle the middle ring around the arm: this was on fairly ‘flabby’ octalink cranks though so may be easier on slimmer ones. Still easier and less ‘tool-ey’ for the total novice than having the whole crank off though.

…i hope your mate has hex-key chainring bolts to do back up again. :-)

[Edit] Actually that first try was verging on mildly diverting (outer reaches of slightly intersting).

I’ll try again: one worrying potential side effect of the group of medicines known as phenothiazines is the prolongation of the Q-T interval.

la femme d’argent is proper, errr ‘smoke’ music. I have just downloaded Sexualité on your reccommendation, D-L.

Oh and if i am only half french with a convincing janner accent do i still get in the BBB?

great news.

they must be seriously well built for wheelpro to be selling them, what with all he has had to say in his book about wheels built in factories or in a hurry. It also looks as though he has stopped building wheels to order. My mate had some tubeless dh wheels built by him and hammered the bejeesus out of them for a couple of years with little or no wobble, only bent one in an enormous crash at a race this year.

Roger Musson used to post on here back along, p’raps he will be along to tell us how good hope hoops are by his standards.

I’ve had a set that came in a pack like that before and it was five pre-cut pieces of outer and enough of those plastic ‘long nosed’ ferrules with the rubber bits that go over the ends plus 2 inners. They shift perfectly after 18 months of fairly average bike ‘hygeine’.

top half of an axle stand (for a car, that is) is just the right internal diameter to use as a crown race installation ‘tool’ if your steerer isn’t too long, and you can really whack the bejeesus out of it. This was invaluable on my surly fork as the steerer is ‘stepped’ rather than tapered at the bottom.

Also the reverse of this would be that my kids like to put the end of my track pump in their tummy buttons and pump, making entertaining little farty noises. Hours of fun!

a mate has a small 07 i think. Cables pop out ocasionally and frequent mis/ghost shifts. And rear mech bangs the chainstay a bit too. On the small size frame, the rockers go so high up the seat tube at full travel you can’t use a qr seat collar. Otherwise it is great, and a capable and versatile bike.

my scott genius has’nt got a replaceable mech hanger (you replace the whole seatstay bit at silly cost) and it has got a silly rapid rise rear mech. So I have a hanger banger on it in the hope that one day it will trash the rear mech and not the seatstay. I have broken or bent 2 other hangers on other bikes since i fitted it to the scott, and the stoopid r-r rear mech lives on. Grrrrrr…..

I heard it’s one of these people:

the ridiculous faux-BC style “inator” suffix is popular with (the rather childish!) Trail Snail Racing at the moment.
Hence, amongst other more normal sounding names, we frequently ride the:
Vasinator
Diversionator
Herman Schmerman Berminator
Badgernator
Barbinator
Gorseinator
oh, and (to be said in a powerful schwartzenegger voice) Man Line.

what is funny is the names other people give to the same trails.

can you not get romic serviced anymore then?
shame, always heard ok things about them.

ton, we could ask for some kind of tidal causeway between our islands and borrow Bowie from each other. As long as you don’t try any of that Deacon Blue nonsense on me. :P

Sartre was half right. Hell is other people(‘s record collections). :wink:

I am sure my indispensable 5 songs would drive anyone else crazy too! I think today they would all be Bowie. In fact, can i just take side A of Ziggy Stardust?

Let’s hope our desert islands aren’t too close to each other, eh? :-)

Millions of undesirables

surely this is a joke?

surely?

…looks like it was cut and pasted from the nonsense leaflets from the BNP.

It shouldn’t be about the rights of others to stay here in relation to the Gurkhas. Their issue should and can stand on its own 2 feet.

crikey, even the Motherland, err, France allows foreign legionnaires citizenship (and a new french name if you want it too) after they leave. Mind you, i read somewhere that the with sort and amount of conflict they get sent to, 1 in 10 leaves in a box. 8O

Outrageous not to give these people full uk citizenhip considering the wages and the risk. Is it still the case that they get paid les than regular Army?

yes, any 160mm will fit: i use shimano centrelock ones on my k24’s at the moment.

Although have a look at trying to true your rotor first (use the calliper as a guide and then just bend it with an adjustable spanner closed over the offending bit.

in my experience brakes rub ‘on-off-on-off’ if the rotors are warped, and they squeal if they are contaminated or just wet. My formula’s turn heads with their honking at races when they are wet but dry out if you drag them and heat them up a bit.

You may find they still squeal whatever you do to them is what i am getting at…

yep, although the howitzer that came on mine, err yours was a ‘one-size-fits-most’, and had 3 spacers between the cups and the frame which add 7.5mm, so if needs be you can fit it with 3 spacers to a 68mm shell, 1 spacer for a 73mm shell and remove one as well if you have a bb mounted chainguide or e-type derailleur. Much like shimano 68/73mm ht2 cranks and cups, if that makes sense.

btw the howitzer is well heavy!

…if it is the one you bought from me, it is definitely 68mm!

stiff or twisted link in the chain? that would explain it being every 3 (ish) revolutions of the cranks as it would take that long for the troublesome link to come back round and over the top of the cassette (which is where you would notice it skipping if it was that).

I like the the ‘genuine’ side of courteous (you know, not trying toohard), and someone that gives you the impression that they want you to have the right product rather than just to make a purchase regardless.

My favourite bike shop person has not sold me anything on a number of occasions because they didn’t have what i really needed (but probably could have bamboozled me into buying something else…)
I shouldn’t name him or his very large and glitzy employer, in case this apparent ‘good advice over making the sale’ technique is not shop policy, but I would much rather deal with him than any of the other eight or so salespeople there. Oh and over the years he has sold me lots of stuff i did need too, including a whole bike, and been realistic but not completely pee-ripping both in advice and service charges over rescuing me from a couple of episodes of mechanical incompetence on my part. Oh and my kids like him.

God bless Stig Blomqvist.

They should do a spin-off of that spin-off with him solving motorsport crimes in an S1, and being all quiet and deadpan.

…yeeesh, so with an Avid bleed kit rrp being £39.99 (or 40% of the price of a whole juicy 3), does that mean the far eastern factory is ripping off Sram, or is Sram ripping off the distributor?

I would replace the olives at the top of the hoses with new ones too. And add new barbs if you want to shorten the hioses at the same time.

easily the most overpriced product I have come across in aaages. I have one and honestly, the only bits you couldn’t get scrounging around, or on ebay are the little brass bits that screw in the bleed port. I honestly cannot believe that the manufacturing cost of these kits is more than a couple of quid.

what, now?

Sponging_machine lives up that way: usually he is up for a good spin, and a moan about how rubbish the ‘mountain biking’ (i use this in the loosest possible way’) is near Barnstaple.

charliethebikemonger used to sell a ‘threadless’ square taper bb which screws into itself not the shell. Probably only a goer if you already have the right cranks, might then work out cheaper than a repair.