Nice frame, and the disc mounts do look nicely done. If I was about to drop money on a new one I would consider Al’s one instead. Not sure I would be fussed either way about the addition of disc mounts, but that’s just me.

But to be devil’s advocate…. (Or just what Al might say of it wasn’t his thread….)
The 2011 frameset is £400, obviously with a warranty. Don’t we often see £400 frames a couple of years old going for £160ish on the classifieds in these hard times?

Perhaps your buyer was hoping you would haggle him/her back up to £160 or so, but has rather alarming way of haggling.

Waaaaay cheaper than ODI, but not as comfy/gruppy as corosstrainers IMHO. The ‘mushroom’ ones are nice, mind.

I suppose the crosstrainers are not twice as good as superstar for being twice as expensive, but then there are folk on here who will spend way more than that on some slightly lighter bolts…..

Cracking debate in comparison to recent ones on here btw, I read with interest.

Bollocks, did i jinx it? 😕

Mr Woppit – Member

He’s French.

ooooh, did someone order a left wing-biased off-trolley Frenchman? 8)

Cracking debate in comparison to recent ones on here btw, I read with interest. 😀

ooooh, let’s see her dish it on the Murdochs then…..

Klunk – Member

oops miss read the headline on the beeb, no longer in charge of the internal investigation

ah well, the intruige continues…

RealMan – Member

How do you get 81?

three rings up front. 3x3x9=81.

Sheldon did it ages ago btw, albeit with a smaller cassette. He seemed to suggest it was a bit pointless.

[eidt] Here it is: http://sheldonbrown.com/otb.html#63speed

djglover, give or take the odd loyalty offer, diesel is not more expensive if you pay in cash, buy a few litres at a time, buy your peparami and newspaper or order it online. Yet it is bought wholesale in much the same way as gas according to your post.

The point is not just about cost to consumer vs profitability, but the unequal and unfiar way those cost savings are brought to different types of consumer.

Earlier:

The whole point of having competion rather than a monolopoly is that there is choice. The choice forces companies to innovate, find new cheaper and more efficient ways of doing thing (to get a competitive edge). Are you really saying that this is bad?

Just there^^

Yep, I have been on the PAYG elec and gas. It is expensive. I’m not saying this system is perfect …its not. It is however far better than a nationalised monopoloy.

1) So is it cheaper or not?

2) ‘Monopoloy’ implies making profits for shareholders. Like Tesco. Or Newscorp. That is not what other posters are suggesting by re-nationalisation. Nationalisation implies not-for-profit, or proceeds reinvested into services or reduced costs to consumers.

The choice forces companies to innovate, find new cheaper and more efficient ways of doing thing (to get a competitive edge). Are you really saying that this is bad?

In the case of utilities, yes.

Current setup favours the internet savvy and well-off enough to have and afford direct debits. Promotes endless provider-switching which of course is not ‘free’ -all the admin etc has to come out of the equation somehow. Punishes the computer illiterate, elderly/vulnerable (doorstepping etc) and hand-to-mouth poor (‘payg’ gas and electricity, ever tried it? It’s well expensive!)

The internet is the easiest way to compare prices but certainly not the only one.

Really? I am university educated and quite comfortable with maths that is all letters and no numbers. But I would be bolloxed trying to work out my best energy deal without price comparison websites. (BTW, how are they funded and where does that money come from in the end?)

“wapping today” sounds like a great name for a newspaper too.

ooooh, Bastille Day on Thursday. 😀

Woppit, yes indeed. I wonder what that’s about.

Surely a part of it is the willingness of politicians/journalists/Hugh Grant to be interviewed, which somehow makes more ‘sellable’ news than ongoing specualtion about an organisation which closes ranks so effectivley. Basically shuffled offstage because it won’t sell papers? Oh, my head hurts a bit now!

Bah, you have spoiled a what was looking like a good clean thread, zulu.

Nice to hear a few folk agreeing with each other about something on here for once. No political party should have to be beholden to an enormous news empire. Otherwise it’s next stop Italy. This poo-storm will be fine for all parties and indeed the easily hood-winkable public once the dust has settled.

Beckham comes home from Harrods one day with a gold plated thermos flask.

Posh: “David, that looks mint. What is it?”

Becks: “It’s a thermos flask, for picnics and that. It keeps your hot things hot and your cold things cold.”

Posh: “Ooooh. What ya got in it then?”

Becks: “A coffee and a choc ice.”

IGMC

The bigger iisues will be:

1) Will the phone-tapping scandal ruin the ‘proper’ takeover of Sky News? Already heard some interesting arguments about how this is not a valid reason not to let him, but that morally ‘right’ decision may nevertheless be forced through.

2) MP’s already getting fierier (is that really a word?) since yesterday, no longer as scared about what the tabloids will say and whether anyone is listening to them anyway. Which irrespective of political persuasion Can Only Be A Good Thing.

3) Cameron will need to do some serious literal and figurative reshuffling of his dinner party placecards. It will be most entertaining (if a little depressing ultimately) to see him distance himself from Rebecca Brooks and Andy Coulson, like a hungover teenage hearthrob the morning after he snogged the class minger. And her brother.

Observers said that she was crying when she spoke”.

Radio 4 reported from their ‘anonymous source’ inside NOTW that she was in there for all of 2 minutes, flanked by security, and she was definitly not crying. But then I expect someone will come along and accuse the Beeb of being partisan about it too. 😕

Lord Prescott interviewed earlier on was well funny. I’d sort of forgotten quite how errr, ‘forthright’ he can sound sometimes. 😆

CaptainFlashheart – Member

I was talking to their pilot at the weekend.

I bet Dickinson is always in the cockpit saying ‘oooh, i wouldn’t do it like that.’ 😆
I think I read on here once that he keeps his air miles/licence going by doing the odd commercial flight, someone said he was their pilot on a ‘normal’ plane once.

BTW Maiden rule! 😀

Anyhow best get to work and get the big man shed/canteen built!!

…with four of you on site, at least it will only have to be shed-sized. Or just a shed….

tj….how do we, the lay-people really know about the failure rate of any bike product?

There may be high failure rates elsewhere whose ‘folk moaning on the internet’ rates are exacerbated or reduced by customer service experience. …which is where you may have a point about ssc of course, but then we are dealing with a company (well, bloke to be honest, I love the way small startups always refer to themselves with the royal ‘we’ or as a ‘team’ 😆 ) that operates almost completely by mail order with it’s own products rather than a bricks and mortar or indeed internet shop referring back to an importer’s warranty department.

The only setups you could realistically compare ssc to in terms of the reliability and customer experience in internet-only sales of (largely) its own bike products is mtb-direct or On-One. [edit] and then only the on-one and planet x branded ‘catalogue parts’ and their wheel builds. Frames and bikes would be a whole other kettle of fish i’d have thought. [/edit]

I refer you to my previous post tj.

To remind you: people are less inclined to post up about things they had no problem with than have a moan. I am puzzled by the amount of folk who I hear moan about hope brakes. I even have a friend who has given up on his hopes in favour of elixirs. (really!) This does not mean they are bad brakes, it means people moan about them on internet forums.

But you know that already. Self selecting samples and axes to grind, anyone who posts on the internet on a daily basis knows that.

Black or grey ones seem to work as well as the red ones in my experience but made with less metal parts and no floodgate. (I am not sure any of the recons ever came with floodgate though so not sure whether you ‘lose out’ in that respect. FWIW I never use it on mine!) The other issue will be the top adjuster, on the cheaper one it just ‘presses’ on; you lever it off with a flat screwdriver, the more expensive one is held on with a circlip. You might find the blue lever from your recon golds fits on and stays on, otherwise best speak to tf tuned or LoCo to make sure you order the right knob.

I suppose a well-informed buyer (you’re selling the fork aren’t you?) will quibble about the quality of the fittings, but then they are getting a new damper in a secondhand fork.

Is it me or is this 100+ post thread missing a few of the more ‘regular’ forumites? I can’t believe a few of the usual ranty/witty folk didn’t have some two-penneth or other to put in. Was it ‘lodge night’ last night or something?

tj, start a thread on hope brakes and a significant number of the replies will be people moaning about them too. Doesn’t mean they aren’t ace, just that satisfied people are less likely to bother moaning about their kit on the internet.
[edit] 9 positives versus 4 negatives or less-than-positive comments on the SSC wheels thread^^ You’ll get far worse odds on pretty much any brake or tyre thread IME.

Pedals, most definitely yes. 😀
Front 20mm hub and rear 150x12mm hub, absolutely fine although I built the wheels myself!
Aerozine headset, hmmmmmmmm…..
Disc rotor, mmmm, ok.
Pads, 50% have been fine, not so much the others.
HT2 BB, rather predictably short-lived.
SS 17t cog , great!

Overall ‘yes’ though. And all of the above were bought because they were the cheapest of what was needed at the time, and all arrived the next day without exception.

Ooooooh, I had a lovely holiday with my folks in Val André when I was 12, watching this afternoon with my dad brought it all back. 😀

molgrips – Member

Have the organisers included more difficult finishes to try and mix up the domination of HTC?

…pretty much what Cavendish was saying in the interview afterwards. My, he is a bit cross about all that! Described the last 200m as ‘proper hard’ about three times in as many minutes. So that is ‘bastid hard’ for the rest of us then 😆

In order to get sensible sag, I have significantly more positive than negative in my sid team. Difference much more than my same year reba team fork. I imagined it was to do with the inside of the left leg/air spring being much shorter on the sid.

Naa, It’s more of ‘an enlightenment’, you know, demonstrating the morals of life & stuff.

but earlier in the thread:

well, I was invited early this year, only went once! I found the racist, sexist, and other unpleasant forms of humur a bit much – but that’s just me.

All lodges not created equal 😕

So anyway, sounds a bit like church but with no birds, no hymns, a bar and fewer needy/crazy hangers-on. Where can I sign up? 😀

The ‘vessel’ being the head part

…so what do they fill the head part with? Enlightenment like a buddhist? Or knowledge like errr, a cabbie?

“Empty vessel”?? Is that like an atheist is to a Christian then? WTF did they fill you up with, essel?

Again, I’m asking because I don’t know and it strikes me as odd that they’ve “got away with it” for such a long time if such things really are going on

I had a mate whose dad was a Gendarme. (One of the ones that rides a motorbike really slowly down the Champs-Elyseés in front of the Président 8) ). I remember a row between him and his wife because he was fed up of pulling strings and cancelling her brother’s speeding tickets, and this last one was the last straw.

So I imagine that if you are a mason and you really take the piss with regards to the law etc they boot you out and you are on your own again.

tadeuszkrieger – Member

“wives of masons”

Would they be the Maisonettes?

igmc

If the stern matron-types alleged to be involved were indeed ‘maisonettes’, then ‘Condominiums’ would have been a bit more descriptive. 😀

Tinners, keep up that level of faith in our Police Force and you too could look like this in a few years: 😀

Most entertainingly there was a “wives of masons” tinfoil hat conspiracy theory going round our NHS trust 10 or so years ago. I felt the ironing strongly in that one 😆

Tinners: no squinting or wincing, just genuine “I just can’t tell you” mystery-ness.

Stoner – Member

Social network, drinking club, charitable fund raising.

you been, Stoner?

Hubby of a friend was invited a few years ago.
Went three times.
Didn’t go the fourth time.
Wife: “You not going tonight love?”
Hubby: “Nah.”
Wife: “Why not?”
Hubby: “Errrr, just not going, is all….”
Wife: “I know you better than that. What’s wrong with it?”
Hubby: “Errr, nothing. Well, I can’t really tell you.”
Wife: “Tell me what?”
Hubby: “Well, anything really.”

…and that is all she knows to this day about her man’s try-out in the Masons. 😕

fight fire with fire, i say.
38 degrees is bit reductionist to say the least, but if the government caves into similar apparent sways in public opinion that the popular media attempt to create elsewhere, and it happens to be for a cause i support then so be it.
It is IMHO more than a little bit funny that this tack is being used ‘against’ Rupert Murdoch, but then he is at least partly responsible for creating the circumstances and climate in which this sort of ‘action’ makes a differece. 😀

Any mileage in getting a towbar? I can’t see how you would get a ‘tray’ one on without boot surgery otherwise. The thule towball racks are a bit pricey but really really great.

FWIW I would always take bikes dirthy or clean inside vehicle if at all possible simply because scallies spot a nice bike on a car, follow you home and break in at their leisure. 😕

I lost my torque wrench and found it a year later 😀

I lost my original Gerber Cool Tool and never found it 🙁

I seem to remember being offered a proper nhs pension when I joined an nhs bank back in 1998. On account of being an employee of the organisation with the same rights as any other. Actually, i don’t seem to remember because I took them up on it. 😀

But how times change. 🙁

they can also get rid of poor performing nurses a lot easier

Not strictly true. You do get a great ‘try before you buy’ effect when lots of your regular bank staff apply for your permanent posts. (which incidentally takes the piss out of the strictly-regulated health service recruitment and selection process since you still have to score all candidates and explain to HR and unsuccessful candidates that the sharpest interviewee on the day didn’t get the job because you know what a dreadful colleague they are when actually at work)

The austerity measures, pensions cutbcks and vacancy freezes do nothing for poor performance for all the staff already in post. In fact it just makes it harder for people burnt out and fed up in their jobs to move to a new post and rekindle their enthusiasm. If you want to make a workforce more effective you need vacancies for new enthusiatic staff and much much more robust performance managment/dismissal policies for crap ones.

TandemJeremy – Member

Its very very difficult at the moment in Scotland with recruitment freezes.

same in most parts of England especially in general nursing. Thing is most hospitals with no vacancies are also runing their regular staff into the ground with poor numbers in wards and over-reliance on unfailiar bank staff in an ‘effort’ to save money. It doesn’t take a genius to see how counterproductive this will be but I get the feeling that if the wheels don’t fall off completely before the next general election or it can continue to be blamed on Noolab, the current government don’t give a monkeys.

Look at Australia/New Zealand if you can bear living abroad for a few years; the pay, comditions and cost of living are all awesome, we have a few nurse friends/former colleagues who have gone, and live the sort of life in the sort of beautuiful house/surroundings that would need a £80k salary over here.

It is as straightforward as poddy makes it look, yes. Once you buy proper rockshox seal kits and dust seals as well it starts becoming nearly as expensive as getting someone like LoCo to do it for you.

Don’t know about the oil. You definitely do need the correct weight and volume of oil for the motion control damper. Not sure if using thinner oil for the rest is good or not: it needs to slosh everywhere between the bottom of the lowers and the dust seals, and i guess it is 15wt so some of it stays in the foam rings just under the dust seals. Just buy some svi rock oil from a motorbike person on ebay; you only need about 30mls per service so a little bottle wil last for aaaages.

There is also someone on ebay who sells non-rockshox o-rings and crush washers for about a tenner. That will do for a dual air reba with motion control. You don’t get the replacement schraeder valves you would in a proper rockshox kit, or the dust seals of course, but that would be worth a look.