Anyone would think they wanted you to go and buy a trek/gary fisher or something. 😆 Its really not like they can persuade you to buy somehting else from their range, is it?

Or spent even more money in the village in a b&b afterwards…

I’m sure you’ve seen a sanderson weigh 5.5lb on the scales. My medium gas-pipe one most likely does. I expect a 20″ is a bit more as well.

So: heavy ones @5.5lbs, rrp £300-350
853 ones, max rrp £500. about 0.2-0.3 lbs lighter whatever the inaccuracies in the website blurb.
Don’t see any for £550 at all.
Perhaps you should shop around a bit Al.

CharlieMungus, it sounds like a job for SingletrackAvenger!

How about imposing a mandatory 5% price reduction per repost then? 😆

Soggy Bottom series last round in march, 2004. Newnham Park. This course committed the cardinal sin of going the wrong way up the cottage descent and the wrong way through the last 2 or 3 bombholes. 😕

Me: 01 Hardrock pro (still have the frame and sti’s on commuter bike) with undamped judy’s, v brakes and continental vertical 2.3’s on an unseasonably warm and dry afternoon. I knew very little about racing, entered open (as opposed to fun in the morning) so was in with sport, masters and elite, stuffed myself with pasta about an hour before and wore far far too many clothes (it was ok though as I stopped several times for snacks and to stow the excess layers in my enormous camelbak!) Fell off a couple of times through exhausted rubbish handling. Gave up at the end of the third (of four) laps.

I now manage to dress, tyre up, feed and hyrdate myself appropriately for most events I enter although mostly finishing still near the back (suprise night race podium at BBB notwithstanding).

Huge respect for anyone that sticks their head over the parapet and enters their first race, don’t give up, it honestly gets better!

Shimano m520, should be able to get them including the cleats for a whisker under £20. They have adjustable tension so easier to get in and out of at first and then you can tighten them up. Pretty reliable and clear mud better than older style shimanos. Oh and if you are fussy like that, crc do them in black, silver or white.

Does your PC have a good soundcard with audio inputs? You may be able to just use Audacity (freeware) and plug a line out from amp into pc.

My laptop has no such electrickery so to connect my turntable/amp, I bought a k-world USB audio interface, basically just the size of a packet of fags crayolas, with phono in/out, optical in, usb and a little blue light. Worked just fine for me.

and meanwhile a similar debate is no doubt bubbling along on Redsoxtrackworld.com…..

Polis round our way used to have a couple of mx/enduro type bikes to ‘patrol’ the vast areas of claypits/spoil tips. Not seen/heard of any for a while, I certainly see far less cheeky mx-ing than I do cycling!

jam bo – Member

so who does come last?

I came second to last in seniors last night (attracting puzzlement bordering on mild scorn from the commentator for entering on a singlespeed mountain bike), a good 3/4 lap in front of one flustered looking man on a real crosser.

It was an excellent race, floodlit in the dark with a live rawk band and Steve (Shred mag) Toze dressed as Elvis handing out dollar bills with his face on them. 😆

nice tags. I accept responsibilty for the mumsnet one only. 😆

Yes.

Outside the TGV/eurostar/thalys etc bookings system, France and italy charge by the kilometre plus or minus a percentage for clearly defined (on the timetables and all over the place) peak travel times. None of this ridiculous cheap advance fares subsidised by stupidly expensive last minute ones. Its a train not an airliner FFS.

GW – Member

Julian – more than you can possibly imagine!

6? 8? Lost count? Perhaps you look after other peoples’ too?

I have 2 of my own, and spend your taxes looking after 10 of Devon and Cornwall’s most upset ones for four days a week. Those 10 are mostly good a number 1’s though. Occasionally I have to give their parents what could be described as ‘feedback’.

I bet with advice like that, you’re a real hit with the other parents at toddlers club. I would suggest that the trick in avoiding the ire of other parents less gifted than you is to sympathise, relate your own similar experiences (optional) and ‘wonder out loud’ with other parent if the thing you secretly know to be right could possibly work.

“You will go for a pee before you get in the car!”

kid respects adult’s decision and does as he’s told

GW, you have kids, right? Everyone knows you can lead a 4 year old to water but you can’t make him/her pee in it. 😆

GW, how’s the OP’s conversation supposed to go then?

🙂

hmmmmm, feeling another silly boy wheelbuild project coming along… How wrong would a 20mm reba team look with a cyclocross tyre in it?

Only reason for it would be for racing cross without getting another new bike: I already have 35mm scwalbe cx tyres on 717’s, would i be any faster on effectively the same (couple of mm narrower) tread but bigger wheels? The 29-er ‘rolling over stuff’ advantage hardly seems relevant for a grassy muddy cyclocross course, but would the momentum/intertia bits make any difference?

Apparently there is a Sanderson bike frame that both costs £550 and weighs 5.5lb. 😉

Who on earth would buy one of those?

Just googled it a bit. The ‘contractors’ recieved life sentences. How can they justify executing her then?

not altogether familiar with the case. I am assuming that if they caught the woman for taking a contract out on her family, then they have also exectuted the, errr, ‘contractor’?

That new-ish techy singletrack over in Great Wood the precise location of which escapes me,

+1

I liked smith’s combe, but last 2 trips t’wife and I have both binned it in a not-quite ride-ending way, in almost the same spot. So not at the moment.

Stert combe.

Weacombe.

mrs julian has one of those chain tugs on her slotty inbred (incidentally the same one is available not from dmr on ebay for about 1/3 the price, I think it was called a ‘savage’) and it sits really close to the lockring, probably only 1mm clearance.

As above, I’d buy a half link and try and fit the axle further forward in the dropouts with it, as otherwise they are pretty good tugs. Only other drawback is you need to take a 10mm spanner out riding with you to get the back wheel out, or learn to patch an inner tube without removing the wheel from the frame.

Al, which one is £550?

My 18″ not-853 soloist probably does weigh 5.5lb, but it has a hoofin’ great EBB in the middle of it. [edit] and costs considerably less than £550. Mine was £260 new.

fwiw Merlin wheels are usually very well built, despite costing less than the separate parts. I have a CRC built wheel which despite rumours of being built by a machine is still well solid after 2 years, and that would have been about £20 more if i had ordered the exact same parts from them myself. It still turned up the morning after I ordered it too!

Conversely, getting your LBS to rebuild a wheel is well pricey, this is where I end up doing mine and my mates’ wheels at home.

I wonder how many of us have thrown away and replaced leaky/weepy shimano calipers just because they will not do spares?

So yes I would be interested in a bore cap tool if it could be used to replace reliable replacement seals and pistons and competes favourably with £30 a caliper on CRC.

I would also look at minimising cost to consumer by supplying different kits, ie: seals only, seals and pistons, seals pistons and bore cap tool, plus or minus sachets of kluber silicon grease which I guess you could source in bulk from somewhere like formula do.

KT, the likes of Troutie and Smudge seem very welcome on here, what is the difference?

I have the yellow ones, which for me are better than any other ones I’ve tried but nevertheles they still fog up on climbs and then as soon as I pick up a bit of speed they un-fog again. But I might be a very ‘foggy’ rider: I certainly sweat like billy-o. BTW foggy glasses are twice as annoying when its dark as when its light: something about looking through fog to see where your lights are that is well rubbish.

Instead I would reccommend a crudcatcher and a neoguard/homemade ‘beef curtain’ (©captain flasheart) plus being in front of or 20 feet behind your riding mates. I only bother with mine at night on the road or on 24 races when you overtake or get overtaken a lot.

sweepy, it’s called “Eric Clapton shreds with Carlos Santana” and it’s from youtube. Be prepared to have your ears ruined! 😆

I think I will do the night ‘cross at this weekends BMBS at Newnham. I ride to work and singlepeed or downhill twice a week, not really ‘training’ for a cross race I think! I fully expect to repeat my last performance of 3rd to last. It just makes the other racers feel faster: “Hey Bruce, I’m so frickin’ awesome I lapped one rider 5 times! I think a bout of celebratory onanism is in order!”

3 fish, as a guitarist I am actually embarrassed to watch that motorway pile-up of a youtube clip. Just stunning! 😆

Alas, this carbon stumpy has an offset and non-round ‘seat tube’ (ie not full length).

I’m not a fan of and don’t see the point of dual ring chainguides personally, but I’d have thought a 28lb 5-6 inch all mountain muncher supplied with 180mm rotors and 2.3″ tyres would be just the sort of bike that compulsive bike twiddlers wanted either dual ring chainguides or 1×10 gears on.

Basically its really great, and right at the top of the Wall descent/bottom of 4x track. Nice people, nice food (if you stay in the big lodge as opposed to the cabins) and the bedrooms (bunks, 4-6 to a room) etc are comfy enough. I won’t bother looking anywhere else next time as long as they have room.

send it to smudge and ask him to fill it with new cells?

‘In our time’ is currently talking about complex/imaginary numbers. 😯

Not too clued up on capacities etc, but the blue ones work fine for me, I have 6 and they all work the same as each other in terms of run-times. They are protected (as in cut-off voltage so they don’t die when you run them out) and based on the wattage of the lights i use them in and how long they last, they would seem to hold 2500mAh consistently.

Here you go.

I found some pads for my helmet here after looking for aaaaages. Arried quickly too.

Is the gemini definitely 68/73mm bb shell? Is it possible that the 50mm chainline could be because of 83mm bb shell?

[edit] oh, that was the other silver lining to the heavy cloud of howitzer: they do bb’s in all sorts of permutations of bb sizes and chainlines/spindle widths without having to change the whole crank. I bet its cheaper both for the manufacturer and the serial frame-swapper…

Truvativ spec their own bearings which are non industry standard sizes

[devil’s advocate] I have some very much industry standard (actually, never looked anywhere other than BETD so not so sure about ‘standard’, but nevertheless affordable and available) enduro bearings pressed into my dead GXP cups and they are ace, well sealed, long lasting, and £20 a pop to replace if you can be bothered to press old ones out and new ones in. ….Or you can spend 2-3 times as much for a hope one.[/devil’s advocate]

Never looked at the sizes/numbers of my howitzer’s bearings, mind…

And yes, get slx or xt and you’ll be reet. Or even better and cheaper, try finding on classified/ebay some of the old hones on with the steel pedal insert (they have a bulge at the pedal thread which the normal ones don’t have, if the seller doesn’t know)

Truvativ cannot make a decent bottom bracket, their GXP, Powerspline etc are all shockingly poor.

Yes, howitzer bb is huuuugely heavy and ties you into one standard. However in the 2 years I had mine it was super smooth and I found it far better sealed than shimano ones, in fact when I sold it the other day after 2 years, it still had the original blue grease, clean and no dirt between outer seals and cartridge bearings. Looking at the cups, when the bearings do eventually go (and mine lasted better than any other external bb I’ve ever had. Perhaps i was lucky?) you couldn’t replace just the cartridge bearings much as many of us do with shimano bb’s.

But at that weight even the crc price seems like you could do a lot better elsewhere. I swapped my howitzer cranks out for xt ‘cos I am just not rad enough and I saved at least a pound in weight….

Hi Rich,
1) maybe,
2) Only if I can toast marshmallows over a camping stove with you m’dear,
3) if i race the cross too then yes.
4) oh yes

I am also going to ‘test ride’ some bikes i can’t afford and generally loiter a bit in order to effect maximum in-laws avoidance.

second hand kiddy trailer then? The argos one seems to have the same bottom frame/wheels as the avenir kiddy one we had from them for £70. (Plus folk might think you have a kid in it and overtake more considerately.)

[edit] the argos one has a cast metal piece that sits on the outside of the LH dropout and you put your axle or skewer through it to fasten it on. Then you can leave this bit on and attach/disengage the trailer with a flexible joint that goes on with a 5mm wide pin. You need drouputs that are flat with 10mm+ space all round the outside, and not at all cowled to fit it on.