I’m Cheltenham based, can get to Oxford/B’ham/Bristol/Gloucester fairly easily.

Got a choice between Crystal and flexiski, leaning towards flexiski (off to St. Anton! Only done a week in Val Thorens before (Easter just gone)).

I had accounted ~£200 for boots, there seem to be a fair few reduced on Snow & Rock at the minute and some bargains out there but obviously I want to get them fitted rather than posted out to me.

Haha will definitely ensure I have idiot strings, a friend lost one of his £70 gloves when we went in Easter and looked a little glum that afternoon after that! What gloves would you recommend personally? Budget wise I’ll be getting kit together over the next few months so it’s flexible, I’ve got a fair amount of cash to play with over that course of time thankfully!

Don’t think they could have fulfilled more cliches

Just moved away from Nottingham after having lived 1 mile from the centre for 3 years. I’d say yes.
It depends what you’re after but IMO; good shopping, boutique and larger stuff, but if you like Paul Smith, Ted Baker, Zara, Diesel, Lacoste etc. there’s plenty, there’s cheaper places, more boutique places (Hockley), and Victoria centre isn’t bad – good John Lewis and House of Fraser.
It’s got something silly like most bars/square mile out of anywhere in the UK, so good for a drink, something fancy – head to Saltwater cocktail bar, a 5 minute walk from the city centre, or try one of the hundred bars, Dogma’s nice for a bite to eat at lunch and a pint.
Eating there’s loads, commercial chains, i.e. gourmet burger kitchen, nandos, pizza express etc. etc. try Le Bistro Pierre for a nice Cafe Rouge -esque experience. HTH.

Fervoured if it’s about still thatd be great. Drop me a message on mthomas_@hotmail.co.uk please!

Oliverd1981 what sort of thing you reckons worth a look?

Thanks for the responses, good points re: processing, will have a google and see how cheaply I can get it done, food for thought at least.

My favourite is a guy from my old gym…
‘H3NCH’ (Hench i.e. large muscular build) on a blacked out Range Rover owned by a brick outhouse sized guy who worked out at the gym.

Not Virgin, their DL/UL/youtube speed is atrocious. We’ve got 30mb and even when it’s only 1 person using it it’s still shocking!

Putting it on, I use a big adjustable spanner spaced out to the size of the race and use a mallet hitting square down on it.
Or if you don’t have an adjustable spanner big enough, use a mallet after greasing the race and whack it down, maybe a screw driver for those last couple of knocks. It’s an easy job, sounds harder than it is :)

If you can’t quite afford the XTs you could shift your juicy5 brakes on the forum for about £25-£35 an end..

I find a thin flat bladed screw driver and a mallet happily get the crown race off, line up the screwdriver with where the bottom of the race meets the fork crown, tap away a few time till it lifts a bit, go round the race till you can lift it off. Easy as pie :)

Fox’s are insanely expensive new IMO.
Although I have some 36Van RC2s for sale I could do for £260 posted ;)

I’m going into my 3rd year, Lenton’s the main student area, I can’t remember off the top of my head but there’s private singles accomodation but blocks of flats for students who haven’t got housemates near Lenton (off Derby road – think it’s manor village IIRC).
Or Beeston’s the other sort of student area, but mainly foreign students and those who don’t want to go out into town and want to get their heads down and work live there.
Whatever happens it’s gonna be a wicked 3 years.
My housemate didn’t like his course after 2 years of it, so is starting again this year ages 21, there’s a fair amount of older students floating about with double gap years before uni and all that kind of stuff.

Climbed it last summer, think it was called the Machame route (4 1/2 days up 1 1/2 days down). Getting major depression this summer thinking back to how good it was.
It was easy on days 1/2, day 3 we went up to 4,600m, down to 4000m, the combination of sun stroke and height gain from 3,600m to 4,600m in an afternoon was a bi*ch. Day 4 was OK. Summit night was GRIM. Woke at 1am after 4 hours sleep, trekked for 8 hours to the top just after sun rise, was AMAZING, one of my best memories ever, then down for 5 hours and kip.
The whole thing was so good, we all said next time we’d take ribena (water was boring and gives you a little bit more sugar) and about 50 mars bars, yes seriously 50.
I brought out some Percy pigs halfway up on summit night and the mood lifted for me and my mates but it was a trudge.
It’s so worth it, a really amazing experience, and 37/37 of us made it up.
Pole Pole was the phrase of the week, ‘slowly, slowly’. There’s no rush, drink absolutely loads of water, eat as much as you can force down even when not hungry, oh and go to Zanzibar afterwards for R & R ;).
Take lots of layers, lots of suncream, we didn’t purify water at all and were fine (above 3000m there’s not much wildlife to pollute the water anyway), a decent sleeping bag, and a couple of good mates, winning formula :)

Regardless of the weight it’s not going to be overly-heavy and I reckon it’s a good build, even if it weighs 28lbs, you could drop it to nearer 26lbs upgrading the forks in a years time or whatever, could try ghetto-tubeless to loose some weight as well.

Don’t know about the seat-tube one but my bb mounted one’s superb, even better that it cost me £9 off ebay :D

That seems great value, basically deore brakes and cranks, slx drivechain bits, a fork that’d do, but with an upgraded fork that’d be a superb bike, you could get some rebas off the forum for £150-£200 and sell the toras for £80-100. (Damn upgrade-itis!)

Steed. It’s a bike, call it a bike, it’s not a bloody horse or anything else, yes Steve Peat says it, but doesn’t mean you have to have a trusty steed too.

Great, enjoy your new bits!

I’ve got another 1 too; F4P1IR55 if you could post up when you’ve used it that’d be nice so people don’t try and re-use it!

walk up the fire road to the top

I like you’re style, I tell myself that my bike’s to gnarrrr to ride up Lecky fire roads, could be my fitness levels letting me down though :roll:

Sektor’s, ProII/Flows, SLX Cranks, 2×10 gears, X9 gearing, Hope Headset, new Shimano SLX Brakes, Thomson post & stem, Easton Havoc Bars, Rubber Queen 2.2″ Front, Nobby Nic 2.35″ rear, tubeless, mmmmm :) Not an expensive top drawer build but top drawer performance!

Just used the same website as you used slugwash, with your hub measurements, just different flange diameters. Can use half the spokes I ordered, time to get onto winstanleys again for the other 16.
Oh and I wish I could make wheels as round as the above ;)

Please don’t use my centre to R/L measurements, i’m a muppit, ordered spokes – they’re too short.
DOH!

Last time I just sawed 2 sides parallel to each other into the bolts so mol-grips could clamp round them and hey presto, easy off!

Cove Stiffee, a love affair I can’t get rid of, just bought my third one after having one nicked and selling one.

You can pick them up on ebay for about £13, not official mid but do the job.

Well they despatched my good today!

Slugwash, C2r/C2l were what I measured using measurements shown here . But yes Same as Rusty Mac, 3x patten I’ve got 16 x 260 for the LH side, 16 x 258 for the RH side.
Glad we’re all working it through, hopefully getting there ;).
And don’t worry I also measured the whole flage diameter initially and got similar measurements so thought you’d done that!

Hi Slugwash,
Likewise done some calculations. I used EDD Spoke Calculator[/url] Came up with right flange diameter; 52 (centre top hole to bottom centre hole), left flange diameter 58mm.
Centre 2 right 15mm, Centre 2 left 40mm, spoke hole diameter 2.6mm.
With a Mavid 721 Rim that gave me a left hand spoke length of 259.3 and a right hand spoke length of 257.6.
I ordered 32 halo PG spokes from Winstaleys for £8, will be building the wheel up on Tuesday.

This was for the 32h, Chrome finish hub. And yes very similar to a spindr but different in that the freehub has no allen key slot amongst a few other things, but essentially a very very similar hub.
Sure it’ll build up nicely into a cheap wheel (will come in at £33 for a new hub, new spokes, used Mavic 721 Rim!)

No Stiffee pics yet!!

My first one which got nicked

My Second one which I sold (doh!)

I’m on the hunt for another one. They’re such good bikes, I took mine round CwmCarn, down the DH there, round Twrch trail, round Afan, down Wharncliffee, spent a few Sundays up at Rehill. They’re incredible!

Oh and my Crush (was OK, nothing on the Stiffee though)

I hope so, just ordered some spokes from them and want to build up my wheel next week.

I just used some wire wool, going progressively finer to remove the ‘lx’ logo from some square taper shimanos. Took all of 5 minutes, I guess the deore’s might be better at resisting removal.

Gave in and bought the pedals. A mate said he’ll have them off me if I regret the choice so it’s all good!

So tempting. Must resist after buying nukeproof protons for more :(

By making it so cheap?? I think it’s a rebranded halo spin doctor (within 10g weight wise)

I had a think about it and bought another, going to build up a light rear wheel and heavy duty one now, it’ll still end up the same price as I was going to spend on just one wheel, considering one of their ‘el gallo’ rims.

I’m trying to get my head round a pretty simple function of the forum.

Ah great, OP thanks for asking this, I’ve never been able to do it, you’re not the only one who didn’t know.

Heckler. Surprised no-one’s said just go second hand with a 5 ;)

Second a Cove Handjob, they’re really great frames, come up for about £150 second hand, couple that with some maxle reba’s or similar and some proIIs on flows/arch’s and a decent solid build kit, you can happily come in under a grand if you don’t mind second hand.

Only smalls on pbs, £880 – checked earlier, but yes, considerably cheaper, £1120 is easily enough for a build kit, but as others have said it depends if you want a full build all new straight away or a more custom build.
Having owned a Reign X I can thoroughly recommend them, by far the best suss frame I’ve owned, and I would urge you to stay away from Commencal Meta 6.6s