An expartner of mine was a transport studies academic.

She was interviewing some UK drivers who were raging about all the potholes in the road that were being caused by too many damn cyclists.

The capacity of relatively intelligent people to be f**king idiots still astounds me.

Well it is now wheel shaped and only wobbling about 2mm laterally.

Took me some time, particulary as I laced the first group of leading spokes incorrectly, and redoing them was a real faff without loosing phr washers in the cavity.

I’ll prob build a front to match now, but won’t ride them for a while — will check back in when I do.

I should say that before this thread, I was not sure whether to use this wheelset as my trail/am wheels, or XC wheels. From the above comments I think I’m safer using them for the latter.

I think the problem with run’s like Semenuk’s (and various others) is not that it’s just slopestyle, but that the bits we remember are the slopstyle bits. There is also a load of sketchy as **** terrain he also came down — the descent after his opening caveman thing a few years back was particulary insane, for example.

In contrast, techy, sketchy, exposed ground is the focus of Brendog’s run, and while I agree that he was wildly underscored the level this year was so high I’m not sure it was a podium run, probably just a top 5.

Even Pinkbike had a go at the judges this year and did a highlights reel counting down through the top 11 runs in this order:

10th. Kyle Strait
9th. Ethan Nell:
8th. Adolf Silva
7th. Carson Storch
6th. Thomas Genon
5th. Kurt Sorge
4th. Tom Van Steenbergen
11th. Brendan Fairclough
3rd. Tyler McCaul
2nd. Szymon Godziek
1st. Brandon Semenuk

https://www.pinkbike.com/news/video-mens-finals-highlights-from-red-bull-rampage-2024.html

I wonder if part of the judges’ problem is now some sort of sunk cost thing. They’ve been underscoring Brendon for so many years that if they changed now, it would be a massive omission.

There’s underscoring Brendog, then there’s putting him behind Kyle Straight, who did nothing particularly exciting and nearly fell off

Thanks for all the advice again :-)

I popped to my lbs to grab some more spokes (I’m in Switzerland so everything is expensive, hence my reluctance before).

They didn’t have D-lights or a DT equivalent in stock. But they did have DT Revolutions, which are the same profile as my Lasers, so I’ve got some of them. Figured the lightness should be fine given there’ll be 36 of them.

I do also have the PHR washers and associated nipples, so all good.

Yea I think gorrila tape leaks after a while, and probably causes problems like this

Annoying, as it is by far the easiest tape to install ime

Hmm, may be I was a bit fussy about spoke length. Thanks for the advice so far :-)

So, I’ve used two different spoke length calculators:

One is telling me 287.9/286.6 for NDS and DS

One is telling me 289/288 for NDS and DS

The spokes I have are 18 D-Lights in 288 and 18 of the Lasers in 287, so may be I can just use them the opposite way around to what I planned?

The D-lights should be fine for the DS. But will the Lasers be OK for the NDS, given they are 0.9-2mm shorter then the calculators recommend?

I had an Stooge mk4 with some clearance issues. Officially it fitted a 29 x 2.6″ rear, but my 2.4″ Ardent was tight, only 4-5mm clearance either side. Must have been a manufacturing tolerance thing as others were running WTB 2.6″‘s out rear, and those things are massive.

Other than that, fabulous bike that I wish I hadn’t sold.

OK, thanks all, looks like I may be ready to order an angle set for my skinny 34mm headtube :-)

https://www.workscomponents.co.uk/10-degree-ec34-ec34-angle-headset—to-suit-1-18-steerer-tube-1047-p.asp

If it comes to it, they can always be machined out or removed chemically

This is what I do not want to deal with. I’m not that attached to the bike and don’t have the skills anyway…

Good to know, thanks.

The only other thing I should have mentioned is that it’s a steel frame with aluminium headset cups, if that makes any difference?

Thought so. Spacers and chainline I can sort. Was wondering about the relatively big distance from direct mount to teeth vs bolts mount to teeth and bendy chainrings but i guess I’m over thinking it!

Def nothing to worry about there.

Easton EA90 and EC90 cranks have exactly the same direct mount fitting as the Race Face mtb cranks, and the Eastons take chainrings up to at least 50t.

I run RF Next R cranks with a 42t Absolute Black ring and all good.

I’d def go with 700c if you can fit 45-50mm in there, and only have an extra 5mm or so of clearance for 650b

https://www.ridinggravel.com/?s=teravail

Damn that’s a good selection, but fortunately doesn’t have the ones I want but don’t need

Oh dear god

Pinon gearbox.

Titanium in any form.

Modern geometry hardtail.

Modern geomtry full sus.

Full carbon XC full sus.

Fat bike.

Depends on the sealent you have, temperature, how well sealed your system is, perhaps how many punctures you’ve had.

I use Orange Seal Endurance, which should last twice as long as standard sealents. I check it after 3 months then every month and a half or something. It normally lasts 6 months before a top up is needed.

I used to shake the wheel and listen to check the level, until I had some sealent that turned to water a couple of times. The shake and listen still produced a decent sound, even though the sealent had stopped working. So now I try to find the effort to remove the valve cores and use a dipstick to make sure there is still actual sealent inside.

As for cleaning, I sometimes peel the worst off before installing a tyre, especially around the bead, but it doesn’t really matter.

That hadn’t crossed my mind, but a quick glance at my old LBS in Leeds suggests it wouldn’t be that expensive.

Problem is I live in Switzerland at the moment… That may mean double the cost, and I’m not sure there are anywhere near as many framebuilders.

I will look into it though.

Problem is, if I wanted a more modern steel frame, but belt compatible and made from 853 like this thing, it would likely cost a fortune

You’ll always have a very light steering low trail MTB anyway so it may work ok, but if the bike feels twitchy now the new fork (I expect) will make that aspect somewhere between worse and unbearable.

Thanks @jameso, that looks like the answer I didn’t want, but did need :-)

So, I guess I either get an angleset and hope 71 degrees will do me, or I just wait for a large Pipedream Alice to come up secondhand (i.e., the bike I sold 2 years ago…)

@thols2, yes, that’s my understanding now too. At first I thought higher offset was just a way for 29ers to gain some of the responsiveness they loose from larger wheels and/or slacker headangles. Hence the geometry of Andy’s Stooges and to a lesser degree some older Singular’s (55mm offset I think). I didn’t realise it also decreased stability (although def didn’t notice that on the 80mm offset Stooge Mk4…)

I wonder how linear the effect is though, given there are so many interactions going on. So if I already have a steep HA and short front end, whether increasing offset is going to make things worse overall, or whether a longer front end will compensate at all.

My other option, which I should prob do in any case, is a Works 1.0 angleset, which they have somehow managed to fit into an old school straight 1 1/8th headset:

https://www.workscomponents.co.uk/10-degree-ec34-ec34-angle-headset—to-suit-1-18-steerer-tube-1047-p.asp

I used to have a Stooge MK4 with a 66 deg HA and 80mm fork offset. That thing was somehow both super responsive and stable at the same time. But there were a lot of cases where I didn’t want a wheelbase that long.

Yea, the thing is, with an old 29er like this, I don’t have any need to bring the front end back in like the modern LLS things. I also don’t have any need to speed up the handling.

So what I’m wondering is whether, with a short, twitchy, tucked-in front end like I have on this bike, a large offset could actually improve stability somehow (and get rid of the toe overlap I will have if I put a decent size front tyre on there).

Totally depends on the frame. If the chainstays are crimped, clearance can be an issue.

I used to have a 700c frame that had marginally more clearance for a 700c tyre than it did for a 650b tyre.

Freehubs – choose either MicroSpline or xD, don’t care which and then make 9, 10 and 11 speed groupsets that fit as well.

Please, please think of the singlespeeders.

I am impressed  you believe that “climate change will be resolved”, btw, what is that impressive level of optimism based on?

I dont really care if it gets resolved or not. I will be long dead before it becomes a problem and we don’t have kids so no next generation for me to worry about.

So why are you so bothered by protestors damaging property that isn’t yours?

It’ll be OK, but I wouldn’t want a wider tyre on their. DT Swiss still made 20mm internal width XC rims until very recently.

You could run a 2.0″/50mm Terreno Dry on the rear to be sure? Vittoria do a gravel TnT casing version that should be tougher than the XC casing, and hence a big more stable even on a narrow rim.

fwiw, I run 2.6″ on 25mm internal width atm, at under 20 psi on the rear for my 77kg weight. No squirming, although that is mostly for XC riding on a single speed.

So it’s ok to act illegally and commit criminal acts if it’s something you support but not if it isn’t. That’s hardly democratic. I think that’s what North Korea and China specialise in. Is that what you would like to replicate. You have to detach thier beliefs from their criminal actions

It’s democratic if these beliefs are presented to a jury for them to consider if they can be considered mitigating factors and if so, to what degree, which is what was being suggested above. I suspect that’s not the procedure in North Korea, but I’ve no clue tbh.

Why not? Both plan and  organise  criminal damage and vandalism. Both refuse to follow reasonable requests from the police to disperse and let everyone else go about their legal business. Whether you support the view of one side, both sides , or neither doesn’t suddenly make them not comparable.

We can certainly compare blocking roads, to burning down buildings with people inside you consider are the wrong colour. Or pouring soup on sealed artworks, to smashing up the houses of innocent families.

It’s not the concept of comparison that confuses me; its that you concluded these things are equally bad.

I don’t know where he got Tarqin and Miranda from

He’s making up names that sound trustafarian, as that’s what he thinks all environmental protestors are.

We all obviously think that their Tommy Robinson style ‘beliefs’ are nuts, but that doesn’t mean that they hold them in any less importance than Tarquin and Miranda hole their own ‘beliefs’ about climate change, does it?

binners, may I suggest that, if you want to make these constant little digs at a group based upon them being (percieved as) mostly middle to upper-middle class, STW might not be the least awkward place to do so.

All this demonstrates is your own lack of comprehension. As I’ve posted in other threads, despite my alignment with XR I’m no huge fan of Roger Hallam. However, to suggest that he’s unaware of the Overton window is quite simply ridiculous. Firstly, he is aware of it….and secondly….the whole modus operandi of JSO is an attempt to navigate and shift the ‘Overton window’ (no-one really uses that phrase these days) via the radical flank effects. This is something that Hallam himself has written about extensively. #rantover

@Tom-B, my colleague (geopolitics researcher) was telling me the other day that Overton became frustrated about how his ideas were understood, i.e., this idea of shifting the Overton window by acting in ways radically outside it. According to my colleague (I’ve not read up on this), Overton thought this may work when one also has control of the full media landscape, but if not, it’s a real gamble of a tactic. If this is true, almost no one understands the Overton window nowadays.

I should’ve elaborated in my other post sorry.

I have to say I’m delighted with the sentencing for both the rioting nutters and the jso nutters. Peas of a pod just with different beliefs

Those beliefs being:

JSO:  That we should block roads with our bodies to cause mass public inconvience and hence pressure the government to act in the way we want.

Rioters:  That we should block roads with burnt out vehicles; block road junctions and only let through cars of white people; throw bricks at cops and through the windows of random people’s houses; burn down buildings full of the non-whites we don’t like, and hence cause mass public inconvenience (and fear) to pressure the government to act in the way we want (and scare off the non-whites from coming here. And all the ones the born here, too).

I can’t see how JSO’s tatics are useful, and I’m not sure they understand the Overton window, but to see them as equivilent to the rioters we’re seeing getting sentenced is ludicrous.

@timba, four cans is exactly what the Novara report says. And I would say that going to a scene of widespread violence isn’t the correct framing, it’s that he went to a scene of widespread racist violence directed at people like him, with the intention of standing peacefully against it, and that matters.

Edit: jesus I was behind in this conversation. It seems this detail doesn’t matter to a lot of people and four cans was enough to justify the sentence. I’m as bafelled about this point of view as ernielynch is — clearly he lost his temper and f**ked up, but given the context, I’m astounded at the harshness of the sentence.

I’m not saying what he did was right or lawful. I actually don’t really have a clue what the law says tbh.

What I do know is that throwing four cans is pretty average behaviour for your friday night drinkers in Leeds, and I doubt many of them are being sentenced to over a year and half jail time for that.

As for treating people equally, I think someone that attends a racist riot and throws four cans at a muslim because they want them in the country should get sentenced far, far more serverly than someone that is racially abused at an anti-racism protest, has four cans thrown at them, so looses his temper and throws them back.

Both should have ‘risen above’ their behaviour — but the former had so, so much further to rise.

Amer Walid, 24 yo counter-protestor with no previous convictions, sentenced to 20 months for throwing 4 cans at the rioters, who were hurling racial abuse his way and who had thrown the four cans at him first.

Judge Linford told him: “You have never been in any trouble in your life and what you should have done was simply rise above their obnoxious racism.”

So actually, f*** judge Linford. That’s outrageous.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2dg32jxzx5o

Presumably they have done this to avoid any accusations of ‘two tier policing’ (/judiciary). It’s also pretty inarguable that Amer was fanning the flames and escalating tensions between opposing factions. If they’re going to make an example of rioters, they have to make an example of these people, too.

Yea, I imagine that’s the case, but that essentially means they are (potentially) ruining a young muslim’s life to appease the false greviances of the islamaphobes. Which I find infuriating.

Amer Walid, 24 yo counter-protestor with no previous convictions, sentenced to 20 months for throwing 4 cans at the rioters, who were hurling racial abuse his way and who had thrown the four cans at him first.

Judge Linford told him: “You have never been in any trouble in your life and what you should have done was simply rise above their obnoxious racism.”

So actually, f*** judge Linford. That’s outrageous.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2dg32jxzx5o

Not sure you’ll find a gravel bike with boost spacing, just a load of dropbar mountian bikes

This has only just occured to me — is Musk’s own X feed subject to the same algorithms as every other user? If so, does this mean his own algorithms are sending him ever-deeper into this conspiratorial rightwing rabbit hole?

That is quite fascinating if so.

Prison time aside, I’ve no idea why he’s ever allowed to drive again.