I had to do exactly this job at the weekend. Annoyingly I had just taken and old B&D workmate to the tip the weekend before…

Needless to say, the door handle spindles still aren’t cut down.

I run XC717 rims and 2.1″ tyre on my Orange 5. It’s also QR front and rear and uses inner tubes. I haven’t died yet, or had a puncture since 2005.

jwt – Member
When I get home I’ll see if I can find the link for the Irish fella who rebuilt an E30 M3, it’s worth the huge read for his humor alone……

I followed that thread at the time. Now THAT is how you rebuild a car! Even the alternator rebuild lasts about three pages! Beautiful attention to detail.

alcol70 – Member
Looks good and I’m looking forward to it…. but it will be just a 90minute episode of Alan Partridge you pay to go and see at the cinema.

I have no problem with that!

tazzymtb – Member
Would be ace…just find all the pretty lady zombies, take them to an island and let one have a nibble and then spend eternity as ultra zombie stud muffin…boffing the laydeez until it drops offf.

I reckon you have 2-3 thrusts at best.

Sorry to hijack,… but on a similar note, I run a full 8spd Campag set up on my old road bike, but the shifters are knackered and replacements hard to find. Will the Shimano equivalents work, or is the amount of cable pull per shift different? Or are there any alternatives I can try without changing the shifters, rear mech and cassette together?

Thanks

Been thinking about this question too as I’d like to join the dark side sometime soon. The Vitus stuff through CRC looks gorgeous and superb value for money too.

I didn’t see it advertised, but then I haven’t been getting the tube recently; cycling instead. Equally, I very rarely use King’s Cross station – perhaps every 3-4 months. Was it anywhere else?

Having had our last two properties rewired, it’s something I never want to have to do again. It basically wrecks the whole place so that even if it didn’t need plastering or redecorating before, it certainly will afterwards.

Being a tightarse, I insist on doing the plastering and decorating myself, so the scene of devastation normally lasts 2 or 3 yrs before I’ve finished putting it right.

7/10. Usage fine, but I’d never heard of most of the terminology.

9-5 officially, which is the shortest I’ve ever had in a proper job (previously 9-5.30 or 9-6), but I pretty much always work through lunch and often leave anywhere between 5.15 and 7pm

*UPDATE*

Guess what?! Just had a call from a guy who has my bike! He tracked me down through the Cyclesurgery sticker and serial number on the bike and they gave him my details ( Data protection act? Never mind…).

He got off the next train, saw it on the platform being eyed up by to young ‘scallywags’, walked up to it, they walked off. No one else around so he took it into safe keeping and has spent the last two days tracking me down.

It’s what I would do, and what I hoped someone had done; but you always fear the worst don’t you? The post title now seems a little extreme in hindsight….

To say I’m chuffed is an understatement :D

I’m meeting him tomorrow to get it back and will certainly be giving him a reward for being such a top bloke.

dannybgoode – Member
My sound daft and you may have done this already but have you asked the station staff if someone moved it somewhere safe for you?

Long shot I know but may just have happened.

Cheers

Danny B

Not daft at all. Tried calling station straight away, but it was unmanned at the time. Reported loss to South West Trains.

Now registered as stolen with Brompton too. Thanks all.

Thanks for the replies and keeping a lookout. The photo is from a site that lets you view colour combinations as I don’t have have a photo of my actual bike… I’m aware it’s not an S2L.

I have the frame number ( Which I’ll let Brompton know, Bencooper – will that help?) and the frame and all main parts have the Alphadot microdot security tags. The most annoying thing is that it’s never out of my sight. It lives in the kitchen at home, under my desk at work and I always sit next to it on the train. I lost it due to my own stupidity in the most frustrating way. I’ll let you know the story so you can have a laugh….

I got off the train with my bike. Realising I had left my helmet on the luggage rack, I jumped back on to retrieve it ( without my bike!) and as soon as I got on, the doors closed and locked and the train pulled away. …I then had to watch in slow motion as I waved goodbye to my bike. What a total dick. Obviously by the time I got to the next station and back on the next train (20 mins), it was long gone. £900 bike lost for the sake of a £35 helmet!

Top tip: I’ve registered a search on Findthatbike, which trawls eBay, Gumtree etc. and emails you when matching bike descriptions are listed – a great idea. Also registered it with South West Trains, Surrey Police and British Transport police. Hoping the CCTV at the station will show something, but I’m aware my chances are slim. If you see any one riding it, you have my permission to poke a large stick through their front wheel ( as long as it’s not nickb….!)

cloudnine – Member
Ideally i want something which i can pick up and take an opportunistic photo (usually of children) fairly quickly. Also something which will take good photos for my wifes website (and is quite easy for her to use). So really.. the best moon on a stick camera that can be up and running for about £300 (dont mind buying a few extra lenses in the future)… Confusingly most of the cameras i seem to looking at have quite good reviews so the more i look the harder it seems to pick

5thElefant – Member
You’ve pretty much described the design brief for the Nikon v1.

As 5thElefant said, this is the V1’s speciality. The Nikon V1 does have a small sensor compared to other cameras of it’s type, so there are others that are better if you are particularly looking at something for taking pictures in low light – like the Sonys, which squeeze in a sensor as big as a DSLR ( I think?!). Having said that, its low light performance is way better than you’d expect. I have no complaints. It’s in a different league to a compact. Like you, I was looking for something mainly for taking photos of my kids, so a quick start up , quick reaction time and quick autofocus were most important. In this respect, the V1 is superb amongst the CSC and M4/3rds type cameras as it has phase detection as well as the contrast detection autofocus the others rely on. The processor is very fast, and in burst mode you can take 10 frames per second in autofocus mode or a staggering 60 fps if you lock the focus from the first frame. You shouldn’t miss the moment anymore!
I’ve been extremely pleased with my choice and it was an absolute bargain.

A DSLR is obviously the best at pretty much everything, but their hugeness means they are just not handy to have around and grab that opportunistic shot.

The lukewarm reviews for the Nikons at launch were based on it being approx £800 when it came out. It was very expensive for what it was, the small sensor put people off as they didn’t believe it could be that good; though not a bad camera at all, just overpriced. The higher spec V1 has/had an electronic viewfinder, which I find really useful, feels lovely to handle, superb build quality, looks great, is super fast at focusing and reaction time and image quality is vastly better than our previous Lumix compact. My choice was between the Lumix GF1/GX1, the Sony NEX5/5N etc. Once the Nikons came down to nearly £200, it was a no brainer. If you can still find them, I would really really recommend one.

Was £830, now £260!

See my thread on a similar conundrum here:

I went for a Nikon V1 in the end at a bargain £230 with kit lens on Amazon as they were about to be superceded. Everyone will tell you the sensor is too small and they can’t possibly take as good photos compared to the equivalent Sony etc, but in reality the autofocus is blindingly quick and image quality has been absolutely superb.

I think the last couple of years which include the larger diameter seat tube for a dropper post, ISCG mounts and the tapered head tube/ maxle are all pretty similar, around 2011 onwards?

Having said that, I bought mine in 09 which has none of these, and will be keeping it for a good couple of years yet. I may add a hardtail 29er to the fleet though.

The new themed sets really annoy me. Too many specially formed pieces. You may as well just buy an Airfix model.

The challenge used to be making something look half decent despite the fact it was cobbled together from a collection of random coloured bricks. I liked the fact you had to use your imagination and squint a bit to make it look good.

Have they really stopped just doing general ‘space’ Lego?

oldgit – Member
By some rough calculations, property in real terms is around double what it should be according to what normal people earn. That’d be a really serious bit of negative equity if the market readjusts..
Is that including dingy one bed flats?
First time buyers do seem to want to go as near to the top of the ladder as possible, rather than climb it from the bottom.
Some do seem to want the whole lot without making any sacrifices, nice home, good car and all the trimmings.
I guess folk aren’t prepared to sit on a deck chair until they can ‘afford’ better these days I was an oldgit even when I was young.

I think the cheaper prices regionally mean this generally a Northern trait. In London, we were very happy to buy a one bed ex-council flat overlooking the railway line, which hadn’t been decorated since 1961.

The 3 Bed terrace house we have now is the stuff of dreams!

phil.w – Member
In some respects, even with no plan to pay off the capitol it’s not stupid, it’s almost no different to renting. Unless the value of the house goes up, then it’s like renting with a bonus payout when you sell.

And also, who takes out a mortgage and expects to be on the same terms for it’s life? An interest only can be an effective tool to make getting on the housing ladder affordable.

This. We bought our first property, a one bedroom flat, in 2005 on an interest only mortgage. Renting a similar flat was costing us £1250 a month, yet the interest only mortgage was £610. We were able to renovate the property ourselves, sell it once we started a family, and with the increased equity, buy a small house instead on a sensible repayment mortgage.

The plan was only ever to be on interest-only in the very short term to get on the ladder and put the money saved each month into the property. Clearly we knew that we would need to go onto a repayment mortgage soon, but as Phil-W says, you could just treat it as cheap rent with the option to do what you want to the property and maybe make a little on it at the same time. After 25 years, you have no property, as with renting, but you may have a nice chunk of cash.

Sorted.

I’ve looked into this myself recently as I’d like to save some energy from our mains GU10 50w downlighters in the kitchen.

The general consensus is that while you can indeed buy replacement GU10 LED bulbs of varying brightnesses and colour temperatures, they struggle to give off as much light due to the lack of space for an effective heatsink. As a result their lifespan seems to be quite short.

Advice I’ve been given is that if you want to go LED, you should source a full LED fitting made for the purpose, rather than replacement bulbs in existing GU10 fittings designed for Halogens..

Have a look at:

ECOLED

EDIT: Bikebouy – Great minds etc…

Can’t remember, did the tapered headtube come in at the same time as the current geometry (which is mint) or was there a straight steerer the same shape?

Mine’s an ’09 – It has the straight headtube and a qr rear, takes a 27.2mm seat post, but (I think?) has the same geometry as current. I think it changed after the ’08 version…I could be wrong…

I did Surbiton to Mayfair ( About 12-13 miles each way) for a bit, but it was pretty miserable in the Winter, quite nice in the summer. The current answer to my travel woes is my Brompton which lets me cycle a bit from Epsom into Zone 4, get on a train, get off in Zone 2 and cycle the last bit. Has cut my monthly train fare from £230 to approx £80, so easily paid for itself.

@ bencooper: Can we see more of that Brompton please? I’m intrigued….

Apparently 1 1/8″ forks snap if you so much as look at them. I’m going to be taking my 09 Five straight down to the tip, as clearly to allow anyone else to buy and ride such a deathtrap with a straight headtube, no dropper guides and no ISCG05 mounts secondhand would be irresponsible. Or I could just keep riding it as i’ve never missed any of those things…

They weigh several tons.

Even in the highest gear of the three, you will be spinning the pedals like a madman.

if you don’t have the app, you will spend more time looking for somewhere to dock the bike at your destination than you did reaching your destination.

I still think they are great ( Though obviously the Brompton is the King…).

hora – Member
I lived through the 70s, and Britain was in serious trouble before she came to power.
I don’t agree with all her policies, but she’ll go down in history as a great leader. R.I.P.
I think this sums it up for me. History is always a harsh judge too.

Me too. Sad. I remember being terrified of Labour getting back in in the ’80s. I can’t say I agree with all her policies in hindsight, but I do think she had the nation’s best interest at heart and was brave enough to make tough choices for the greater good.

In any case, if the Royals add such value to industry and this is immediately obvious to anyone with the slightest understanding of economics, then captains of industry across the UK will be falling over themselves to pay them to show up at their trade missions, receptions and other functions,

I think you’ll find they do fall over themselves to gain a Royal Warrant, which is hugely respected, especially in the Asian markets.

The whole republican movement just seems to smack of nothing more than misguided jealousy to me. Ridiculous statements like: ‘She’s never done a day’s work in her life’ simply couldn’t be further from the truth. How many people would like to have no choice in their future career and also have to do it from early childhood until the day they die, while having your every move scrutinised?

Would anyone rather the Prime Minister was Head of State? Why? The Prime Minister is the elected figurehead with the political power anyway, and it has been so since the end of the Civil War. What’s the other alternative? An elected President? That would just be another person being driven around in limousines under heavy security and holding lavish banquets at the nation’s cost – but without the merit or respect that a thousand years of history can bestow upon them.

Without the Monarchy, we’re just even more of a washed-up has been nation that we already are. It is what makes us unique and respected. Why anyone would want to get rid this is beyond me. Just so we can all be about a tenner better off? Big deal.

10.8kw Mira with pump

9kw Mira with pump

As above, the more powerful the better. Because it can heat the water faster, the flow rate doesn’t need to be slowed so much to do so. You can now get them with built-in pumps too. We fitted a Mira one with pump when we lived at the top of a block of flats (so low water pressure) and had no gas supply for a conventional boiler. It was pretty good.

andytherocketeer – Member
beefy, grarse, barth, glarse, but scon.

This.

I just bought an iMac with a bigger screen than my TV instead!

Also have Apple TV which gives you Youtube, Netflix (with subscription) and iTunes, plus any content on your mac (including photos and iTunes library) if you turn on home sharing. No access to iplayer etc though, so I do that through Virgin instead, or watch on the mac. All a bit piecemeal though. Some kind of all in one solution would be good.

The North starts at Islington.

Despite what many may think – The Ivy is exactly this. Dishes like Shepherd’s Pie – but the best you will ever eat and impeccable service. Not too hard to get a table if you can book ahead and are willing to take an slightly earlier or later time than usual.

Likewise J. Sheekey’s for superb Seafood.

Another name for a turbo wastegate? (This is a guess).