Whatever happened to the guy in here that wanted to make/source seals for shimano calipers? (not that I have had one ever fail on the three sets in mrs j and my brakes, or 4 sets on other mates’ bikes) (if you are counting, tj 😉 )

while we are on ‘octupus’ territory, I have heard from several people on here and *whispers* in a bike mag that despite the appaling short life of the ht2/gxp ones they supply, the Superstar Components isis BB is actually very good indeed, especially for the money.

there’s been one on Plymouth University campus last 2 years. Bit shorter than that one though!

oh, i thought of one more: x-tools. Rather like brand-x, less of a brand, really just a logo on products from a few biiiig far eastern catalogs at competitive prices.

eh?
kona- no, just kona. CRC bought up a load of stock to sell on cheap, but not even distibutor let alone owner.
dmr: upgrade distribution. Happen to be sold at crc as well as pretty much every other bike shop.
ns: distributed by hotlines (ie crc) but not owned.

cheez0,
I am a shimano wheel loving person (except for their 20mm front hubs, they look nice but are rubbish).

If your ‘cup’ parts are knackered too then it’s new entire hub time. 🙁 I have heard anecdotally on here of people pressing them out and replacing them but you caouldn’t buy a new cup part anyway as its supposed to be non-user removable.

On the rear hub see if the left hand cup is knackered, if it isn’t as **** as the rest of the hub and you want to keep the wheel built as it is, the cheapest way is just to buy a whole new hub and take everything off it (including freehub, which is a way to replace the drive side cup) and put it back onto the old hub. I did this to an lx hub a few years ago and it is still going strong 3 bikes later.

If the markings are the wrong way round, be aware that the innards also differ slighly left and right on GXP bb’s: the non-drive side bearing needs to be the one with the slightly smaller hole in it, on my old firex cranks it was basically a small collar that pushed into the same size bearing on the drive side.

I like how they have quietly realised sram really were onto something, and also gone to a 1:1 cable pull ratio for their 10 speed stuff.

I like how the creative use of plastic on the middle slx chainring gets you alloy weight and steel durability.

I like how the saint BB cups have a few more mm’s of thread on them for durability. Or for people who have scuzzed up their bb shells, i suppose 😆 .

I like how you can still get older-style xt 6 bolt hubs with the cup and cone bits that stay put. And that you can get them in silver as well as black.

I like how their qr’s stay shut.

I love how easy it is to bleed their brakes, with mineral oil which means it doesn’t degrade and you can use LHM for bulk/cheapness.

If ony they would do spares (by that I mean smaller than lever/hose/caliper) and rebuild kits for their brakes then there would be no reason to buy any others.

(I’ll save the other ‘wtf are you doing shimano?’ grumbles for another thread 😀 )

Aaaaah, I am such a nerd!

Here you go. http://www.oldhousebooks.co.uk/%5B/url%5D

I have a couple, mine came folded into A5 size so will be a bit ‘creasy’ if you like your wall hangings all proper. It looks like they do them rolled up too though.

Leicester is pretty rubbish for mountain bike sales full stop. Now if you’d walked into Julie’s on Clarendon Park Road (oooh, it wasn’t Julie’s you went in was it?) and asked for £3k of italian carbon roadbike they would have probably have baked you a cake! 😀

Dunno about the rest of the county. Is Rutland cycling still open?

Just a guessing but maybe find somewhere else to park?

Exactly. (it was rhetorical question) If this was a car being towed away because of the football, it would be a non-thread. I don’t see how ‘extraordinary’ (not as in ‘wierd’ but as in ‘not the same as the usual weekly/daily restrictions’) parking restictions for a religious festival is any different.

Ohlins, that’s like a cane creek double barrel but beefier and without the shocking bicycle industry markups, right? 😉

Lovely looking bike Peter Kirsty. 😀

I used to live 100m away from ‘old’ Leicester City Football ground. On match days people’s cars got towed from our street all the time. Road was not closed as the few folk with front drives could still go in and out. Everyone else had to find somewhere to put their car once a fortnight.

What if you were used to parking in our street to go to visit or work in the nearby factories, hospital, FE college etc, (no residents permits or staying limits when i lived there at least) and then one day you did it on a match day?

Advantage. Small block 8.

The camel trail is a real comedy free-for-all isn’t it? 😆

Most audi-driving folks’ formative experience of rediscovering cycling as an adult is on recycled railway paths. Especially outstandingly beautiful ones with bike hire and ice creams at each end like the Camel Trail. I think we have to see them and the comedy/appaling cycling on them as part of the ‘solution’ though, hopefully some of these people will start riding more adventurously and even commuting to work by bike.

This thread is useless without SBZ, who if i recall correctly went from a job right in the middle of the motor industry (with his famous zillion miles per year in a car :lol:) to not having a car in the family at all. Despite having nippers and both him and mrs working/studying/training. It would be interesting to hear how the SBZ family get along.

FWIW, we live a broadly similar life in terms of jobs and nippers, both of us ride to work and walk kids to (thankfully only 15 minute walk away) school and manage not to drive our car at all about three days in seven. Don’t know how we’d do zero days out of seven though.

oooooooh, that is my second favourite beer. This month. 😀

GW, I was a bit underwhelmed too with mrs j’s slx (from when ribble were doing them cheap). Don’t know why but they now seem rather firmer at the lever than when we fitted them last november. Is it the warm weather? Or have our other brakes gone spongier in comparison? 😆

Show your mate this thread, where we all agree that:
1)You weren’t a complete tool offering him that advice: the plastic trouserguard has no place on a mountain bike. It’s a mud trap as well as looking daft.
2) we have all hurt our right ankles on outer chainrings, it’s a rite of passage.
3) ..but his ‘rite of passage’ is really quite something!
4) This is why I try and remember to shift into the big ring whenever I am about to do anything fally-offy or bumpy. (chain less likely to fall off on rattly stuff too).

Hope he heals up whether he goes for the big scar or little scar option. (If it didn’t affect mobility of the ankle joint, I would go for big scar by the way. Skin graft means you have an ‘owie’ somewhere else on your body too, they have to borrow it from somewhere…)

Warm out today, isn’t it?

…aaaaaaah. Family website, innit?

I want a “discovery channel man with beard and checked shirt makes simple carpentry with mindboggling array of power tools” box.

Qu’est-ce que c’est que ce ‘p0rn box’?

Bet he’d look cooler marginally less daft than you in a Rawk Mane shake-off though Flashy.

I’m sure I look a right div shaking my pattern-balding (at 34!) grade 2 haired head around in rock clubs these days.

*mane envy* 😳

that looks fast 😀

what grips are those?

fwiw, the ‘aqua’ colour that ODI do some grips is a great match for yeti turquiose (I have crosstrainers on mine), and yetifan.com also do ODI yeti lockons in yeti turqiose too.

Your model just ignores the most significant costs of driving. If those costs were not incurred by someone you would not be able to do what you currently do, used cars do not just appear from out of the ether.

agreed.

To a lesser extent, competetive insurance quotes, cheaper parts and repairs for savvy customers such as the “£700 insurance/mot/etc” posters on this thread only really come about because there are so many people that renew each year without shopping around, use main dealers for simple repairs and so on. If everyone paid as little as what some folk on here do for their motoring there is no way the motor industry could sustain itself.

It is an argument that is little better than saying “I live my life on the internet and so always get the cheapest train fares, what’s the problem?”

Al, was it this one?

Good price if so. Hopefully worth the gamble not trying it out. BTW my old f310 is still one of the nicest feeling (not sounding, mind it’s still a budget laminate top after all) acoustics i have ever played. Just got lucky nosing round a shop in Pau once, that guitar has been all over since.

Welcome to the world of people what love bikes and guitars. 😀 There are loads on this forum.

Yes, steel strung acoustic is bestest for slide (unless you buy a resonator or proper ‘steel’ guitar with no frets etc, but that is like the recumbent bike of the guitar world!). Yamaha fg410 is nice, have you played the one you are after or got someone who can play to have a go on it? (see my comments on the thread linked above^^)

Be warned, slide guitar is really really hard! I have played and giiged normal acoustic and electric guitar for 20+ years, and I still make embarrasing ‘child learning violin’ noises with a slide at some points. Basically, if it sounds dreadful, don’t let it put you off playing guitar ‘normally’. Also thicker strings and higher ‘action’ (how far the strings are from the fretboard) makes slide easier/sound nicer, but if you do that, fretting notes and chords with your fingers is waaaay harder.

Just deleted a longer wibble about the wisdom of spending money on a fragile wooden temperature and moisture sensitive object, on which a quarter of a milimetre here or there can make or break your likelihood of liking it and enjoying playing it, without ever trying it.

Yamahas have better quality control/setup at that price than most and if you really really must avoid walking into a guitar shop then that is a good one to start with, but seriously Al, just go to a shop, preferably with someone who can play a bit, and try a few!

If you have not many parts to put on it already, a complete S/H bike is definitely the best VFM. Depreciation on DH bikes is rather eyewatering so you will seem to get a fair bit for your money.

Avoid:
-older shocks with no service agent in uk
-08-’10 marzocchis (although it may just be this forum, i hear less moaning about 888’s than55’s or 66’s mind…)

Proceed with caution:
-fox 40’s -fantastic when they work, but need more sensible/frequent servicing than others so more likely to be knackered at the cheap end of the market.

And make sure you can have a good look for cracks in the frame!

It would seem to be teh rulez that all STW leftists (and I include myself fully here) also distance themselves from anyone Labour flavoured that came after Red Ken.

Oh, and I like the London one the best out of the three above. 😛

what will they call it in a couple of years?

and:

would look way more intruiging with this on it. 😉

IME the course was either grippy enough for summer-ish tyres in places, or not grippy at all on anything (polished roots, 15cm loose rolling rocks at end of the moorland descent).

FWIW I had a fairly worn SB8 pumped up fairly hard on the back and a 25% worn NN at about 30-35psi on the front, didn’t find it any more or less sketchy or draggy than last year on mud x’s. Although I only rode after midnight, i hear it was a bit faster and easier in the sunny afternoon. As per sharki’s ace description earlier, it seemed to me be more about the line choice and the considered application of brakes or pedalling in places. Which of course i was all over the shop with by the end!

muppetWrangler – Member

Rural France = Farmers market.

Rural Britain = Spar.

I lived in Argeles Gazost for a bit, (sort of shopping centre for much ruralness, pop. only 1200, usually whizzed through on the TDF between Aspin and Tourmalet)

We had a weekly market AND a spar! Only difference was that there were no fags in our Spar (licensing is different) and you could choose a trout from a big fishtank -the checkout person would fish it out and bash it on the head for you. 😀

is it really more cost effective to replace the whole oven rather than the element. I hate to see white goods getting thrown away when so much energy goes into making them.

Just. I guess the overheads of shops keeping a huge stock of spares mean they are more expensive than you would have thought to look at them.

I thought my oven was getting a bit tired and then it stopped, a quick twiddle revealed both elements were gone (i thought it was slow!) and the replacement parts even if i did it myself was about £30 less than a brand new one of equivalent spec/quality.

….Which was pretty easy to fit in the end since I went for the same spec, just disconnected one and put the other in. I may have used a drill for about 20 seconds to secure it into the fitted kitchen unit, otherwise it was all screwdrivers and done in a jiffy.

When the big casting on the back of my £200 washing machine cracked up that was also almost exactly the same price as a whole new one since it only comes riveted to the drum. Again, i could have fixed it but as soon as the next thing broke on it i would have spent more on fixing it than it cost to buy. 😕

xcwanabe – Member

about 9.2miles

😯 😯 Well, that is easily my longest bike ride ever then. I thought I was a bit tired!

Plus you’d get the group of riders waiting for the minute hand to tick over before riding over the line, so they don’t have to do another lap!

I think that happens anyway! After only ever stopping for food, a couple of number 1’s and a number 2, I threw in the towel at 11.45, I must admit i was tempted to have a tactical 16 minute rest just before the bridge back into the arena. 😆

I suppose the idea was that rather than piling all that responsibility onto the rear mech spring, the roller kept the chain engaged with more teeth on the bottom of the chainring irrespective of chain tension, making it less likely to jump sideways off.

Chainstays and fashon i would say. I had a lemon yellow one on my old GT. When it got nicked some bike thief was treated to a whole host of not-quite matching colour choice add-ons 8)

Only bike I’ve had that it would have fitted on since is a steel singlespeed, since all the others had big, square or wierd-section hydroformed (yes you kinesis) chainstays.

Beyond a registration ‘hiccup’ meaning I was Tim Flooks (actually not there at all but presumably next to me on the sign on list) all night, I have not noticed anything untoward with my/Flooks’ lap times. Except that if it really was Flooks they would have all been at least 10 minutes less. Sorry Tim.

A few years ago there was something up with timings for everyone who started or finished a lap over midnight; a team-mate’s lap had 20 minutes added to it and consequently I posted the third fastest lap of the night. 8)

if i leave the switchy thing open then it gradually drips, i suppose back plus straps pressure on the bladder eventually overcomes the bite valve.

I had a cheap old not-camelbak bladder with a ‘pull’ valve and eventually the valve sort of wore a bit, became too easy to open and shut and so sometimes opened and dribbled a bit.

Never had any problems with the switch/lock thing though; if it’s shut it stays properly shut.

I do resent how wickedly expensive camelbak’s spare parts are. New bite valve plus new switch lock thing costs half the RRP of a complete camelbak branded 1.5l system including the bag. WTF?

oooh, proper psychotherapists are a pretty rare breed even in the intellectual hothouse of the chat forum.

I work with one, but I would be three years of expensive chinstroking traning and corduroy elbow patches before I could call myself one.

So on with the frustrating “answers your question with another question”. Or six….

-What is your relationship to the passive agressive person?
-As per tj and toys19, are you sure they are being passive-agressive?
-What do you hope to achieve or change about your dealings with or relationship?
-Does anyone else you know feel the same way about them?
-…and has anyone else tried to challenge them or their behaviour?
-if so what happened?

in preparation, as much empirical and un-arguable/wriggle-outable information is key, as well as keeping your head screwed on and not making it into a ‘crusade’.

You are not going to change a person’s ways and personailty overnight in calling them out successfully over a disagreement or problem even if it is clear to everyone around them that they have screwed up or treated others terribly, and shaming them is unlikely to get anywhere in terms of your future interactions.