That piglet looks yum. 🙂

Is there any stiffness/performance benefit to the three finger chainstay? I remember it being a great solution to chainsuck/clearance but I wondered why its there instead of a ‘normal chainstay on the QED singlespeed…

The rims are made and re-logo’ed as SSC by Mach 1 rims, (also French but not Mavic).
Sold as mach 1 for nigh on same prices as Superstar ones through cyclelife affiliated lbs’s if you want to go and have a look at them for real. I’ve seen some at the superstar stand at BBB last year, and although they are nice looking rims they are more 317 than 717 territory.

Some of the hubs are same as Halo ones though i forget which.
I just built up a superstar rear hub for a mate and certainly seems well made/machined, most problems were with the eaqrlier superleggera ones.

I am sure a simple search on here will reveal some comments of aftersales support, though I would also try a few other bike forums for their views, as this forum would seem to have a special level of poor regard for SSC.

Julianwilson, OK, london weighting – regardless, as its a standard formula rather than market competition – take another example, Liverpool versus Edinburgh…

Gladly. They don’t want you to know they do but they certainly try.

Plenty of nhs trusts have monkeyed around with their job (well knowledge and skills framework in HR-speak) profiles so you get a higher or lower pay band (or ‘grade’ in old money) for similar posts jobs in different trusts. Reason for this is supply and demand or retention of existing staff in areas with high turnovers. Conversely, empty posts are often re-banded to save money if they think local applicants are desperate enough to go for it rather than go elsewhere. In the old (pre-agenda for change 2004) days, trusts could start staff part way into a payscale in order to make a crap job more attractive to staff at the bottom of those payscales. Whilst doing this on a couple of service areas, my trust also always refused to pay ‘psychiatric lead’ (flat rate ‘danger money’ related to where you worked not what position you occupied) because they knew people would just work here anyway cos it was sunny Devon. (they had it dressed up in some faintly ridiculous blurb about ‘lifestyle benefits’ 😆 )

Think about if the NHS pay settlements were not national – you would probably get paid less to work in the North than in London,

Ahem.

High Cost Area Supplements:

Area
Level (1 April 2010)
Inner London
20% of basic salary, subject to a minimum payment of £4,036 and a maximum payment of £6,217
Outer London
15% of basic salary, subject to a minimum payment of £3,414 and a maximum payment of £4,351
Fringe
5% of basic salary, subject to a minimum payment of £933 and a maximum payment of £1,616

This looks just like the same plastic fittings as my zéfal one from wiggle for twice as much. Same factory perchance?

errr, yeah, anything that goes down to 2mn then. Chances are that at £40ish they will all be of a very similar standard or even re-branded versions of the same one anyway. I have seen my ice toolz one with various other stickers on the case.

@ Tragically 1969

My ‘non bike specific’ allen key set includes 5.5mm and 7mm keys. I have found a bolt on my old fiesta’s brakes that takes a 7m key but i really have never waved the 5.5 and 7mm near anything on a bike. Actually never used the 5.5 one at all…

Wouldn’t it be good if someone made a t-handled set of just the ones you actually need for a bike? 😕

singletrack riders digest often ends up in my junk mail 😆

strangely ebay does too, often if i get a load of messages from ebay from several sales ending at the same time, a couple of them end up in junk and the rest go through to inbox.

The first time Juan emailed me i spotted it in the junk mail too. 😕

unfortunately all the videos of me riding a bike really really badly seem to be on other hosting sites than vimeo or youtube so i can’t post them. Shame.

Elfin, I think you have the makings of a shamelessly derivative magazine article, in which you (oh it would be so much funnier if it was Glupton but he’s either gone or hiding) build an xc bike out of other STW-ers’ cast-offs. All you need to do is either enter a race or go riding in each place you visit, plus obligatory sampling of local pubs. And I think you need to get the spotty lad in Evans to help you build it in their workshop at the end.

As above.

Tell them it’s like Corsica but not an island, and it gets its ownb national rugby side. Just a thought: were you pronouncing the last ‘s’?
Fags: “Gaul-wazz” (mmmmm, fond smokey memories, muuuust resiiiiist…)
Welsh: “Gal-wa”.
(both with a ‘hard’ G like ‘get’ not ‘gent’.)

-Trail pixying/tidying/pruning of existing trails, and helped 'build' a couple new ones, one of which I am well proud of when hearing other riders talking about it. It's highly highly cheeky though so I could never admit to having ridden it let alone made much of it. 😕
-Financial: Sustrans and local DH club membership/direct debit.

[edit] oh, and I make a point of answering a few of those easy technical questions posts that sit on the bike forum for hours and hours without an answer. I know there's a search function with a dozen similar questions answered, but it if keeps people fixing and riding their bikes… [/high horse 😉 ]

yes. If i was servicing them properly I would still invest a couple more quid in dedicated suspension grease for the seals but that will be fiiiiiine.

Oooh, I've got my nosey nose on now Les; is that why the road was closed up there a couple of weeks ago?

You could hide a trail like 'the cuff' in any number of places within a couple of miles of your loop, I am sure it won't be swamped with newcomers. Despite doing it a number of times now, I still have trouble finding it myself sometimes!

Aracer, lots of other reasons for and against I am sure, but if you ever see someone for your own mental health problems, a family history is of great value to your assessment and treatment. Just because you don't know your granparent took their own life that doesn't mean you may not still be more predisposed to do so yourself for both biological and psychosocial reasons. It is somenthing else to get preoccupied about of course, but as a professional I would still rather know that about my own family than not know.

I use rsp ultra-slick, although any other proper fork grease would do. I see that crc do stendec easy-slide, pace rc7, manitou prep m (expensive though) and rock'n'roll super slick greases. Any of them would do better than your normal grease as they won't do anything nasty if they get near your seals, (and definitely use proper fork grease if you are actually dismantling and servicing the fork rather than just swapping the spring.)

When you change the spring, don't forget to lie the fork on its side throughout as you will lose the 15cc of oil in the bottom on the floor otherwise, and then coat the ourside of the spring and the threads of the top cap with your grease. There used to be a guide for changing pike springs on the tf tuned website: process is pretty much the same for all RS coil u-turn forks.

Happy fiddling! 🙂

the intense intruder is possibly the wrongest named bike product ever!
A few of my mates have intense tyres, for some reason the dh ones (but not the xc ones) seem to get 'hard' (on the knobbles that is) a bit sooner than others but I quite like 909's as an all rounder.

Otherwise minions and swampthings are just ace.

Wrong end of stick

So I have 😳

In which case their priority will simply be profit via high sale price, getting your car at px for next to nothing, finance package or 'warranty' which will be likely full of holes/exceptions and via a 3rd party. (So don't be too swayed by that unless you have a good old look at the small print).

Anyone remember whether cash is better than debit card for that sort of money? I seem to remember someone saying on here that for legit prtoperly vat'd purchases, sometimes a big stack of cash is actually less profitable for the business to bank than a debit (not credit) card transaction.

CrispyB, 'film set'?

did i miss them filming something or is that another cryptically named trail?

Oh, you ought to have made it 33 miles and taken in a cheeky Wizard's Cuff.

budget?

Servicing wise, I have an excellent relationship with aforementioned local Saab specialist

…so they already know you really really want a Saab? Perhaps you are looking elsewhere, or at different cars altogether, and may be less bothered about buying their saab from them for what they want? I suppose that depends on whether the person negotiating the sale is on his own comission or has the interests of the rest of the business (ie you will be using them for servicing etc).

Is it just the sourth west or are there lots of Italian-sounding bike shops with very very english staff in them everywhere?

I dream of opening a 'Platini' cycles one day. 🙂 Or my mum's maiden name, that would do just nicely.

No but he is a paramedic is he not?

oh indeed. And as the first point of contact for many folk's journey back into healthcare, I expect despite no mention of it in his job description, he's well used to being on the recieving of people's frustrations about the wider system he works for and 'represents' despite having little or no say in how daft some of it all is and next to nothing to do with what happens after they move you 'upstairs' from A&E. Lord knows I have been there! That's why I thought yours was a crackin' economically worded but funny post, Elfin. I expect I've ruined it by this bletheringly long explanation of it though. Sorry.

Anyway, back on topic, not just Evans for mechanically daft advice. In our usually very knowledgeable if a bit expensive Big Single Brand Concept Store I was recently advised to buy a whole new headset when I popped in for some new cane creek bearings, because apparently (without seeing the bike, of course) rumbly cartridge headset equals the death of the whole headset. It's not like they didn't have them in stock, just that the lad either didn't know what to go and look for, or wanted to sell me something more expensive…

I'll ask someone else, take the £15 bearings and fit them myself, thanks. 😕

Not as niche as the original ones with spelling mistake

If you're going to spell pâtisserie correctly complete with circumflex and only the one t, (that was the mistake, non? Oh and fwiw I always forget my cicumflexes, the slippery rascals) you might want to add acute ones to Vélo and pédale too.

Drac – Member

Don't take it out on some poor bored sod on £6 an hour.

Why not they're the point of contact at the time.

Elfinsafety – Member

You're a paramedic aren't you?

😆 Those five words are one of your beshtest replies I can think of, Elfin.

My mum only found out her dad wasn't her real dad in the midst of a row (with her cousin not parents) when she was 19. She has never got a word from her own mum about it, everything she knows about her real dad is from relatives. Its not even that bad a story except that her real dad literally left town overnight when he found out he was going to be a dad ( 🙁 ) and her 'new' dad and much older half/step brothers stepped in and treated her exactly like their own flesh and blood. ( 🙂 ) I suppose being a pregnant single woman in 50's france was pretty badly frowned upon…

On a funnier note, my father in law has a 'secret' holiday home in Northamptonshire (Northants: why???!) that he thinks that none of us know about. That sort of secret is just plain daft. Unless he has a skunk farm or the bodies of his business rivals in there. I think one day I will suprise him by posting a birthday card to him there 😆

Here it is, courtesy of the Sram website.

It's for all their 08 forks so best to print off the relevant bits and leave the bots for other forks. Then you have the pages in front of you and you can make a mess!

I wouldn't fiddle with oil weights: only the right hand upper leg would make any difference anyway (other bits are for lubrication not damping). Just put more air in if you are bottoming the fork out.

oh hell, the 'i hope you lot aren't gay' wadrden was at glyncorrwg campsite not afan. 😳 Sorry afan campsite people if you're looking.

The warden at afan campsite once checked that a group of my mates weren't gay. He was proper serious too.

Nice enough campsite for straight people though.

you use a ht2 bb spanner- hub should come with a lockring that suits this and you use that instead of the one that comes with the rotor.

s – Member

Is there only one still flying now?

Yes. http://www.vulcantothesky.org/%5B/url%5D

Heavily sponsored and got a big ol' lottery grant. Which, I suppose if you consider the national lottery (or more specifically lottery comission funding for sports, arts and heritage stuff) to be a stealth tax on the poor, means it is kind of 'funded'.

My father-in-law is the man you see at airshows selling jigsaws with vulcans on to raise money for them. He tells me it costs thousands just to taxi up and down the runway a couple of times, never mind getting it into the air.

'I luv Drac' jerseys are all over south west sportives and audax events this summer too. I had no idea you were so popular.

superstar hubs also convert quickly, as do expensive specialized/roval ones nowadays. Not sure if they still make them like that but you used to be able to easily swap atomlab 20mm hubs back to qr, and Halo spin doctors can go between 9 and 20mm too, (don't know about 15mm though) (I think they may be veeery similar to superstar ones come to think of it!)

right at the end of the bbc clip she says 'I strive also very hard to…'

-putting the 'also' after the verb instead of before it is also (ahem) very european indeed. 😕

Nick, your mining father sent you to private school? Did he own his own mine or something?

protec ace here too, too hot for much at this time of year but nice in the winter. The vents' position on the ace mean you can get a velcro-mounted headlamp on in a sensible position for night rides (but look like a pot-holer!).

mmmm, vélo's….
mmmm, caaake…

what's not to like? 😀

They are from round Penzance way aren't they?

on such a nice and indeed expensive fork, with a damper that's basically been unchanged (ie normal motion control one) for 6 years, that's a bit sloppy if the lever still moves around. FWIW the old looking plastic/rubber compression lever on my old 2004/5 pikes didn't move (on its own, that is…) and I gave that a right hammmering!

I wonder if an extra o-ring and a dab of grease under the blue lever would help?

Tomorrow I will be telling mrs julian that if she really really wants to put silly flower decals on our van, then I will be painting the house in the colours of the mighty Hornets in my week off next month.

I like humous, but I like to scoop it out of the pot with my little finger or some t-bone steak flavour roysters. Sorry, proper humous-eaters. 😳

[edit] I reckon if you don't know what Roysters are then you are definitely upper middle class plus.