To be fair, I’d say it’s far more likely that it’s the other way round…..

i am far too polite to insinuate such a thing. 🙂

tj, I think someone might have already used that one on another ranty helmet thread yesterday. FWIW, I’d recommend Protec SXP as apparently you can bounce it on several smaller impacts without significant deterioration of the shock absorbing foam.

A shiny/glossy one though, this craze for matte ruberised finishes on helmets can only result in stiction and consequent increased rotational forces on skate ramps or polished desktops.

PeterPoddy – Member

In fact, they’re the same ones, aren’t they?

Those Pedros ones are a stoooopid price

Yes. Also, I bought this for a fiver

which I spotted after nearly buying this one for £12:

If i was mr Pedro’s I’d be well pee’d off with these rascally tool manufacturers who pinched my design and sold it for less than half the price. 😕

Yes its the black thing in the middle of the spring in that jejames link. Yes, its heatshrink sleeve so heat may shrink it/tighten it on a bit more. I would try a hairdryer on hottest before you try a lighter, and see if you can degrease the bit you are sliding it back on to first so it holds better. And if you resort to a lighter, wipe grease off the surrounding area first as I am sure it is a little bit flammable!

This one is half price at £14.99 for the 1/48!

Elfin, I built the airfix chinook as a geeky teenager, bit disappointed with the moulding and fit IIRC. Lots of poor fitting windows. 🙁

There used to be a great guide for swapping the spring on tf tuned website but their tech help area just links you to the enormous sram service guide now.

TBH if you haven’t ever done so I would have the lowers off and clean/relube, its not that hard at all. But if you really don’t want to, no pics but here it is in my own words:

You need:
-5mm allen key
-2mm allen key
-adjustable spanner (baaad) or 24mm socket (good)
-rubber/soft faced mallet.
-15wt oil in case you spill any.
-fork grease or car grease (as long as its not white or silvery it will do)

1) Wind the fork out to full 140mm travel, and then undo 2mm screw in the u-turn adjuster, carefully remove the adjuster and store three ball bearings and springs.
2) Remove fork and disc brake, or if you are lazy, lie bike so fork is totally horizontal and remove front wheel and brake pads.
3) Use big socket to undo the top cap, this has the spring atached to it so it won’t pull out yet. Comress the fork about 20mm so the threads are clear of the fork crown.
4) Undo the foot nut about 4 or 5 turns. It is really important that the fork is horizontal from here on in, as the oil will fall out the hole otherwise.
5) Leave the allen key in it and hit it with the mallet until it pops in.
6) Remove the spring out the top of the fork, twiddle your rubber sleeve thing back up the spring. Slather the spring in grease (should also help with the noise)
7) Refit the spring, do the top cap up first (a little grease on the threads and O-ring wouldn’t go amiss), then push the lowers hard back on before doing the foot nut back up. Then put springs and ball bearings back in under u-turn adjuster (grease under these too), and put bike back together.

If you lose any oil, its about 20mls of 15wt fork oil per lower leg. I can’t remember the torque settings off the top of my head, but they are in a handy chart in the rockshox guide IIRC.

Have fun!

TJ, “I really like this jacket but the sleeves are much too long”. 😀

being bombarded by a load of Shi-ite by a set of sanctimonious a$reh0les

…so says the person whose last post on this forum was a poor joke about someone else’s spelling mistake. 😛

But yes, most entertaining how flustered folk get about technical/bikey things. I thought that the chat forum existed to enable us to respond more sensibly to threads in the bike forum.

Of course my children (who have been to watch/fallen asleep in campring chairs at most of the races mrs julian and I have done) still think that the king of all bike events is that annual southern softy stw love-in that is always being punted about on here.[/url] 😀

SPAM set2rise, only with running water, bikewash and a few showers. Its pretty much my perfect event.

-it’s at night!
-team pair or solo enduro
-nice longish lap.
-proper noodly funny singletrack.
-big old climb do-able lap after lap on a singlespeed (if you want: I won’t!)
-low riders-per-km ratio (set2rise is one of the best iirc)
-did I mention the night bit?

Sadly the Erlestoke site doesn’t have much in the way of running water or even a stream nearby, and I suppose that limits it in terms of the size and duration of even you could hold there, by needing plentiful water supply water to wash bikes and people after a certain amount of time. Ace to have a proper surfaced car park if its really boggy, mind.

The Shred night-time cyclocross at newnham the other week was truly hilarious as well. The opposite of a mountain bike enduro really, but still one of the funnest races I have done.
-It was at night!
-Some singletrack involved.
-Live band pumping out proper pub raaaawk!
-Course had to be laid out like ‘intestines’ to keep it at least a bit floodlit, but consequently great for spectators and indeed other riders heckling each other, as you passed within the same patch of jeering/cheering folk several times a (about as short as is allowed) lap.
-commentator was good: knew the riders well, and was just the right side of dastardly and sarky and got the spectators shouting a lot.
-Did I mention that it was at night?

All it needed was a beer tent (preferably with the course running through it), and a couple more daft/tricky obstacles/features.

riding three abreast too, tsk.

no idea about bearing replacements, but you can adjust the play/tightness on crossrides: they have spanner flats on them similar in appearance to shimano ones, and some blurb in the instructions about it. I never needed to on mine (since sold on classifieds here) but I think the process was just like shimano ones ie loosen outer one, nip up inner one and tighten outer one again to lock together.

never had the pleasure of Trailmoney’s company, but CrispyB certainly has an abundance of enthusiasm irrespective of what the weather is doing: top bloke!

errr, anyway, back to the Originaaal Post: can we at least agree that if you are riding a big bike round a trail centre and thinsk it gnarly enough to wear body armour, it certainly ought to be accompanied by a helmet?

Then we can be ‘hysterical’ about the less clear-cut areas of radness/dangerousness.

had to shell out for a new bolt kit.

in case you have trouble finding the right shape one, CRC/nukeproof seem to sell a few sizes for not silly money.

[tangent] Bernaard, bike on holiday picture at Bedruthan Steps? Mmmmmm, Noooorrrrth Cooooorrrrrnwallll…. [/tangent]

18 months and drive side starting to wobble on one set, 18 months without a whimper on the other. One set went from ht to fs half way through, the other has gone from fs to singlespeed half way through. No idea on mileage but the singlespeed ones (still going) have been ridden at least weekly in that time in all sorts of silly weathers.

My mates ones (further 3 bb’s) have similarly good longvevity, we bought a load together to get the free tool from betd and at 18 months, mine were the first set to go. I wonder if we all got a ‘good batch’? FWIW I found the seals to be a really good fit on mine, and little in the way of gunk behind them. Perhaps its a change in outer seals rather than the bearings?

Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

awww, tj I love a good protest. 8)

Here’s me racing on my ladies’ rigid singlespeed. Again, I managed not to get off and push at all that time.

TandemJeremy – Member

Julian – Ah – but I prefer to ride my bike not get off and push on every incline. I don’t have much of a tendency to facial hair and my name is not Ned Ludd

I have geary and singlespeed bikes. 2 of them have 8 speed cassettes though. All have 26″ wheels. This week i have a beard, most weeks i don’t though.

Its not that hard or silly.

fwiw, once you get used to it you can ride any climb stood up on 2:1 singlespeed that you could ride sat down in granny ring and all but the last 2 or 3 sprockets (depending on the ratios of your cassette). Even when its muddy. I have a skid-tastic intense system 2 on the back of my singlespeed and alightly harder than average gear ratio and I live in devon and ride to and then on dartmoor. If i ride around all day I take the geary bike. If i want to make a short or less challenging ride a bit more interesting, I take the singlespeed. I am not fit, and routinely come last or near last in xc and cross races. With one exception at the BBB where i came 3rd. (On a singlespeed!)

But you knew all that anyway. 🙂

[edit] Charlie also sells bikes with gears too, I seen it on his website. Yes, he has a website. Rumour has it he also has opposable thumbs.

tj, you forget a singlespeed still has four gear ‘ratios’: Freewheel, sit down, stand up and get off/push. 😆

Does this count as a delicacy?

Otherwise,

As featured at the top of the climb at this year’s 24/12.

all above advice is good, particularly mr Nutt’s avoidance of dishes. 🙂

Stevie Ray Vaughan used to use very heavy strings, and when on tour and suffering from knackered fingertips, he was known to superglue the fingertips of his left hand to the inside of his right arm and then rip himself off a fresh layer of skin. Eeeeeeeew!

I heard on here back along of people having tyre bulging type trouble with kendas (in particular) and sealant. However, this is probably going back 2 years and Kenda would have been daft not to have since changed their rubber in light of this.

Best way I’ve found without shelling out for the proper tool is thusly:

Use a couple of stanley knife blades and tap them inbetween the fork crown and the race with a small hammer; once you getb the first one in, you can then wedge a second between the first one and the crown race, then remove them (tap from opposite direction with the hammer: they are still sharp!) and then repeat fron the other side. You should then be able to get a flat screwdriver between crown and race to lever it off. Bonus ponts for using a pice of old inner tube to prevent the screwdriver scratching the crown at this point.

Happy spannering!

scout walker?
chicken walker?

My wife’s and my login names are, errr, our actual names. So in that case, yes I expect we both have.

Such were her knees trembling when she met him, I live in fear of hearing her murmur Juan’s name in her sleep though.

Sorry, IGMC

I wondered what happened, I guess the STW mods flicked the switch on the death star?

…and are about to be inundated by email with pictures of Obi Wan…. 😆

as the larger cassette sprockets are obviously larger there is a bigger torque applied to the freehub body = more damage; imagine the sprockets to be spanners acting on a bolt (ie teh freehub), the longer the spanner the bigger the force applied to the freehub.

oh yes, now its explained that way it makes much more sense, and indeed consistent with scoring being further ‘up’ the freehub. Thanks jamesb.

forgive my rusty physics, but if you seem to be pushing a harder gear in the smallest 3 sprockets (not mounted on alloy carrier) are they not the ones exerting the most pressure (and therefore scoring) on the freehub splines?

I would be happy to be told otherwise though, just something i wondered the other day dismantling a mate’s hope wheel… I also realise that is not what seems to happen in practice (ie scrong occurs futher up the cassette in ‘easy’ gears).

aaaaah, that is one of my all time favourite of your photos CrispyB. And done with a camera phone as well, wasn’t it?

Someone had matching kit for it at the weekend too. Same shade of green with chilli peppers liberally sprinkled…. Was that anything to do with you, GB?
My eyes! 😉

psychle has been trying to sell a frame with one on on it for ages, might be worth looking him up.

old style cassette tools are too shallow. 👿 And if you undo the cones to use it, it will be very hard to get them to go back together nicely especially on the rear hub.

Rather annoyingly, you’ll be needing to acquire one of these.

Still, it works for shimano/sram singlespeed converter lockrings so you can always flog the other two to fund it.

Pook – Member

perhaps he doesn’t want his business to be associated with his personal financial dealings.

+1

Plenty of folk here have a free-mail address for here/shoppping/etc and a proper work one. I certainly do, not least because almost anything non-nhs gets ‘impounded’ before I get it, and I don’t want my work inbox full of offers from play.com, casinos and online pahrmacies.

you may find coil pikes weigh almost as much as your coil lyrik, mine certainly did!

In answer to your quiestion, air revs weigh much less than but share many spares with your pike. A bit less ‘built’ in the crown/steerer area than pikes but I find my mates 140mm air u-turn maxle rev almost indistinguishable in use from his old pike (coil) and my last 2 pikes (also both coil). Air u-turn is a bit more of a faff to service at home than dual air or coil, but you don’t hear the complaints on here like you did about the old 2-step air spring.

A mate has a coil lyrik on his huster and it is a truly hilarious bike to ride (in a really really good way 🙂 ). It even climbs ok with the fork at 160mm.

A hustler is a pretty burly and heavy frame, you will have to throw quite a bit of money at it to get it really light in weight, light fork or not. If it was mine I would keep the lyrik at 140mm except for longer downhills and just enjoy it whatever it weighs, you can always save a heap of weight in rims, tyres and tubes (or lack of) and keep the performance of your lyrik for fun bits. Bear in mind how much you will lose trying to sell your lyric and get a new fork.

They’ve been doing 29ers for a few years now…

Ah, they are just being daft in that case. Amazed they still haven’t got round to selling them here. If they can’t make them fast enough they ought to have caught up by now. When you consider they will sell all manner of nichey tt/fixie/singlespeed cx stuff in th UK, it can’t be that much of a stretch of the imagination to sell those frames here too.

BTW, I had a drool at the new Yeti 29-er HT on their stand at Newnham at the weekend. It has swappy dropouts and ss dropouts will be available. It looks well nice, and will be just shy of a grand to buy. If you bought the s-works one and had it shipped over, it wouldn’t be far off that much, particularly if they tax you!

Plus yeti-stu will actually want to sell you one!

The Bike Shed (shop) and also Exeter Mountain Bike Club do weekly organised rides. You may have to get used to the ride up to Haldon though!

Isn’t there a lot of talk of the US market being so in love with 29ers that there’s none left for the rest of the world?
I guess if Spesh USA have customers/shops waiting, they’re not going to send any precious stock out to other markets.

Here’s a thought: having not done 29er before, I wonder if they also might want to live with the design for a year to find out is there is or is not a whiff of mud and chainsuck clearance before they start selling it anwhere wetter than the states. That might be sensible if annoying…

If the internal width (and therefore width of chainrings and individual sprockets) is the same, then is the spacing on chainsets/front mechs different? Only reason I ask is that whilst shopping for new cranks i see that crc sell different priced shimano 9 and 10 speed chainsets.