Yea, If the guy’s mum finds out she doesn’t have cancer it would basically be a Hollywood ending

Brilliant doc. What i didn’t understand was how it went from the federal case being dropped against him to somehow the anti-doping agency coming out with a 1000 page dossier against him. How did that come about?

Strangely my favourite ever bib shorts were from Edinburgh Bicycle http://www.edinburghbicycle.com/products/revolution-team-ebc-bibshorts?bct=browse%2fclothing

Where about are you?

cheers, just the sort of thing i was after

I know some clubs (like mine) aren’t too happy with people riding TT in the group because you aren’t covering your brakes most of the time. I suppose it’s understandable if you’re riding very fast with your wheel an inch off the guy in front.

Nvm

I was having a look at the vango rapide. Not sure if it’s any good. The mule seemed to be about £70 online.

There are many ways to skin this cat, the best way I have found is to hook a raspberry pi running pi musicbox ( http://www.woutervanwijk.nl/pimusicbox/ )to the hifi. Then you can stream to it from itunes on your pc/mac, from iphone and from your android phone (with a £4 app) or you can stream spotify playlists on it.

It’s also a UPNP server and can stream internet radio from its nice UI which you can access through any browser.

I can safely say it’s one of the few tech things that I use and think “this is so cool” every time.

I think the new Shimano hydraulic ones will be £150 on CRC for levers and callipers. They’re compatible with 105 up.

I love my petrol stove just because finding petrol is so easy and it just means hunting down meths is one less thing to have to think about on tour. You can’t beat the brute-force power of good old gasoline

It just gets better

Yea, if you look through the folders you’ll find one with all your .tcx and i think maaybe the .gpx files are in another (or the same). Just drop em in and Garmin will see them when you reboot.

you could always download the file and manually put it on your Garmin if it’s a big problem

That orange CX bike is sexy as, but I agree the first thing through my mind at a couple of them was ‘they look so generic chinese’

Ordered, thanks guys

Used DigitalRev and camerainthepost both no probs

Yea I agree, I used mine for touring the Balkans when I didn’t have access to electricity much.

I don’t find anything less than a Nomad 7,will work well, especially in the UK. Also if you’re charging a smart/iPhone they really don’t like being charged directly off the 5v output. You really need a small battery pack to act as a buffer otherwise the iPhone will refuse to charge and android devices will cycle screen on/off with the varying current from the sun/shade and will maybe lose power. There’s an app called ‘Solar screen off’ which helps somewhat.

See if you can source an Alpine link too to slacken it a touch.

I’ve looked but they seem to be rare as hen’s teeth. Do you know anyone on STW who does machining?

haha tbh i think he’ll maybe sell it cheaper than that because he’s a really nice guy but it would be rude to be presumptuous

Cool thanks guys, it looks like a complete frame bearing set is £70 if i need it which i suppose isn’t terminally expensive. The Maverick forks have been rebuilt down in England 2 years ago so I think they’ll just need a good service. I somehow took from reading about it online that it was way more proprietary than it actually is so thanks for clearing that up.

Thanks guys I’ll take Mackem up on his offer which sounds like will be all that I need.

One more question (which is not really relevant) I think I’ll have the option of buying the Whyte 46 MK 2(2005) soon for a low price, maybe £450-500. I really loved it (even though it’s the only MTB i’ve tried) and I know it’s been taken really good care of and the Mavericks were rebuilt last year. My only concern is that it seems to built with lots of proprietary parts and quite a unique design so I’m worried about the cost of maintenance, my road bike is just a Spesh Tricross so all super simple super cheap parts.

What do you think about taking on an aging bike like that?

Get some proper arse protection sorted first, if you don’t already have padded undershorts then i’d suggest they be your first purchase

Haha thankfully I’m a ‘road cyclist’ whatever that is, so my arse is well protected!

I have some pads that I never use, you can have them for postage.

Mackem, that’s exceptionally kind of you. Are you sure?

eg don’t brake all the time!

Yea I found that one out pretty quickly, I guess it’s the catch 22 of not enough confidence to go fast meaning you’re just putting yourself in danger by riding too slow. Just about dropped off a couple of jumps 8O

I might see if anyone has any old cheap guards on the classifieds.

sorry cloudnine I seem you have missed your email, hope you got one sorted

Hey Scapegoat, I am genuinely sorry it took so long, I learned a lesson of never saying I’m getting anything until I have the tracking number in the UK :| . I will be selling some separately. Unfortunately because they are higher quality and the shipping had to be all official because they’re hazardous goods they are more expensive than I hoped, for 4 will be 33.60 delivered. Please email me if you want because I don’t have a huge amount,
Cheers, Ollie

Keeppower Panasonic batteries have arrived!! (two changes of suppliers, ‘lost shipments’ and paypal disputes later :D) If I had any idea it would have taken that long…anyway, I knocked up a basic website over the weekend because keeping track of everyone’s emails over hotmail was getting very confusing. (you may also notice I haven’t been to design school) mtblights.co.uk. I was really happy with runtimes. I rigged up a watercooled X2 in the kitchen sink and left it running. On full power it lasts for 3 hours 15mins, the power indicator will flash at about 15-20 mins left of full beam. The light will then continue for 1.5+ hours on a lower beam. It would have kept going for longer but I had to go to bed.

All in all very happy with the result. I’m going to test medium when I get time over the next few days.

Hope the info helps, Ollie

Mine arrived yesterday, a 30 day wait as someone walked from China with it in their pocket.

Gave me a good giggle! :lol:

I agree with MarkLG. Keeppower, Xtar, Efest and Senybor all put together good Panasonic versions with no known fakes (yet).

On a side note does anyone fancy sending me a cr*p battery pack for testing? I’ll happily pay postage and return it if you want it back? I’m kind of curious what the actual capacity and discharge behaviour of these things is like.

Is that a problem with the light or a symptom of a crap battery?

Crap battery, It means that the discharge isn’t nice and linear like you’d find in a Panasonic/Samsung cell, in the knock-offs the voltage will stay relatively stable for a while then suddenly plunge.

I have a battery discharge tester and I think it would be interesting to see a discharge log graph of the cells and their real capacity but I don’t have a knock-off pack. Maybe I’ll get one off ebay out of curiosity.

I don’t live near Yorkshire but the donations:rewards ratio seems very fair

Yea it’s not really worth importing low value items from abroad (especially USA). RM’s brokerage charges are low but still not worth it for a £40 of shorts.

daveatextremistsdotcouk do you still want a pic of the fused one?

I’ve never had a problem with BA and I’ve flown with my bike many times, Turkish Airlines were also pretty chilled. There is a flat fair of €30 for 32kg which you cannot prepay but you get the 32kg on top of your normal luggage allowance which is pretty nice. Give yourself time at the airport to weight your bike at the check-in desk, go to the cash desk and pay then return to check-in to show them your receipt (in Istanbul anyway)although my mate didn’t have to pay, the bastard!

Glad you guys like the battery boxes! :) I’m still getting people after them, so they seem to be popular.

How are you charging with the battery boxes?
Charger for 4×18650 like this one

If you have PROTECTED cells you can just charge them in the box using the charger which came with your lights (but please open your charger up and check for a little glass fuse because another user’s charger plug blew up!)

Ollie

I wouldn’t get too hung up on the groupset, always remember to check which “non-headline” components are being used, I seem to see a lot of bikes with a fair frame and groupset but naff saddle, crap brakes, cheap finishing kit (outers, cables etc) and terrible tyres.

I do agree that a protected cell would be much better for someone who isn’t used to looking after lithium polymer batteries. But for them to be over-discharged enough to become dangerous they would need some serious, repeated abuse at very low voltages.this NASA study shows how many cycles of heavy over-discharge the Lithium cells can take.

If anyone was using unprotected cells they would need to disconnect the light when it started to go dim to preserve the health of the cell.

Off topic but a user with the initials P.D emailed me about the battery box. Just to let you know I can’t reply because your mailbox is full.
Ollie

The “official” UK plugs are made by PD power technology LTD. who are legit. The PCB should be stamped PD-POWER on the bottom.

[/quote]Can anyone link me to some decent high quality protected 18650’s to put in the box?

If you have a decent charger you should be fine with unprotected. http://www.fasttech.com/products/0/10001980/1345500-panasonic-ncr18650b-18650-3-7v-3400mah if you don’t mind the wait these should be good.