In fact I could probably get that done in the time it took to replace a square taper BB. Assuming the crank arm didn’t have to be cut off.

Not if the modern bike was built and ridden by the same person who installed and rode the square taper…

I’m old enough to remember seized quill stems and wacking cottar pins out to remove cranks. And chrome rims, and tyres that puncture if you sneeze on them, and a whole load of other dreadful things.

Same. But still have no issues with composites, gears that require a laptop or app to program, integrated headsets (and the internal routing that goes along with them), funny spokes, clutched hubs and all that stuff and it’s not a lot of work to keep up to date, if you’re up to speed with whatever is the outgoing standard is, the new one is (generally) only incremental.

Only thing i avoid is stuff where you need a bespoke interface to service stuff. I’ve got my little cable for Di2, but beyond that, no thanks!

It seems to be that car manufacturers want you to treat an EV like a piece of consumer electronics. They are packed full of tech that the manufacturers have no intention of supporting beyond a few years.

There are legal requirements in most markets to support with service, spares and software for around a decade after end of production (think the shortest is 7 years, longest might be 12. I’d have to double check though.)

Some manufacturers get round this by calling a major facelift or new top hat a completely new model. But the authorities are getting wise to this. Will be an interesting thing to watch for, especially as everyone is moving to much more long lived platforms, with multiple tophats.

The thing you will probably lose sooner is feature upgrades and improvements. That might only be a couple of years after end of production, or you might need to pay for it, if the hardware is still capable of carrying the upgrades. But the update cycle for automotive OS is much longer than most consumer electronics and the backwards compatibility requirements much stronger.

Interesting times.

I suspect the kind of people who object to Musk aren’t the kind of people who’ll key cars :)

We’ve had our Tesla test cars keyed, on site.

with either drilling out ( or cutting off the end of ? ) the stops or using the adapters above you will likely not have the tension over the span as to not need a cable tie or similar in the middle.

I found some plastic bits (sort of like collets) from another brake cable kit that fitted *really* tightly into the brazed on stops once i’d drilled them, pushed them in, and it kept tension for several months at a time (usually until i snagged an outer on something).

All he’s really saying though is that he’s not very good at repairing modern bicycles.

Must be the fourtyeleventh video i’ve seen on the subject of modern being rubbish since youtube was started. Amazed these guys even stay in business.

Edit:- Further digging through his website seems to show he’s pretty poor at repairing/looking after/understanding ancient bicycles too!

Didn’t know there were any Bike Brothers in Oslo, but they are absolutely horrible in the SW of the country, unless you want to buy outdated open mould bikes for maximum penger

:D Good to know! Only popped in as i was passing on my way to an event and sort of needed some bits, they didn’t have them, but then again, virtually nowhere has tub cement or CX sized double chainrings.

So i managed without.

Do NOT knacker them out, knackered bickering siblings is a hell that nobody needs to experience.

Nah, need to time it.

We seem to have a 25-30 minute window between being knackered and ready to relax/go to bed and TOO knackered and absolute little turds. Have the same with my GFs daughter.

But generally, mine aren’t arseholes anymore, had a few melt downs over the years, but only two or three on a weeks holiday. None at all now, or for the last few years, (since they were 6-7 ish)

They also have an induction video for all theses would-be / soon to be MAGA drones. One that seems to suggest that if Trump  applied for one of these jobs he wouldn’t get it :-)

I wouldn’t be hugely surprised if they tried to reframe Trump as a “freedom fighter” and quash all his convictions… Or at least, i reckon that’s what trump thinks (and the Jan 6 nutters!)

My Tesla Model Y has the best sound system of any car I’ve owned.

Didn’t they do a sneaky downgrade on a good number of the sound system options on some Teslas last year?

Lower spec/smaller speakers and a reduction in number? (Even have a vague recollection of a cheaper amp?)

I’ll ask the ski resort to equip every parking place with a 13A socket like they do in Finland. ;)

Hmmmmm, most of the resorts i’ve been to in the Alps have had outside sockets for either block heaters, or just because. Though i’ve not been to an Alpine resort since before the kids were born!

I’ve used bikeshop.no before, they have a physical shop at Karenslyst Allé 36, 0279 Oslo.

Also Bike Brothers are meant to be ok (i’ve popped in there before, but not bought anything).

Maybe a 2WD car with decent tyres and decent traction control would cope OK.

I live on a hillside, accessed by a dirt track in a forest in Scandinavia, i’ve got stuck once in 2 decades. Driving an assortment of 2wd cars.

Including a good number of single motor EVs. A few lowered Volvos (R-Design and Polestar engineered) plus some Porsches, Audi, Tesla, VW (EV and ICE).

Anything modern will do it, no problems.

Drive your car up to a ski resort in January, leave it outside then get back to us with how much range you have and the amount of regen braking on tap. It’s quite handy having a warning about limited regen because when you’re used to one-pedal driving it’s a bit odd having to brake for bends.

The regen issue (changing response to one pedal drive) is 100% a car problem, it’s running old hardware/software. Brake blending is pretty common now. The range issue is just physics, so as expected. Should leave it plugged in, even a 13 Amp socket should have enough grunt to keep the battery charging (albeit slowly) and warm. It does when i bring EVs home and charge on the drive.

Car manufacturers have always represented their car in ultra idealised statistics long before EVs were a thing.

Nah, just following the standards laid down by governments over the years. WLTP (and all the other standards over the years!) can only *really* be used to compare cars in the same sort of class/size/weight/performance.

It used to be MPG at a constant 56mph on a rolling road with no air resistance.

I’ve looked through reports going back to the 1980’s and never seen that!

Agreed – does your car ever not do the regen braking thing though when the battery is at 100% charge? It’s supposedly to prevent overcharging but is rather scary when unexpected.

Shouldn’t ever do that in a Volvo or Polestar unless you’re still on software from the first ~6 months of production.

I don’t think the mechanical brakes have been used on the polestar for months!

Just look, you’ll be able to tell. If they are shiny, they’ve been used and you didn’t notice. They did a good job on the calibration…

Until the cable touches the axle… have seen more than one written off crank thanks to that.

Nokon Slimline

Or buy an extension kit, they used to have 10 or 15 cm of the segmented outers and a bit of liner in a bag to extend the run for big frames/odd routings. Just do the bit that needs the sharp bend with the segmented outer, use double ended ferrules where needed to join with the normal outer.

Nothing wrong with knives in the drawer out of the way.

Well, yeah. If you’re into having self-serrated and/or blunt knives it’s fine.

@tracey …

Youv’e put knives into a tray in a drawer…

I did twitch when i saw that… Couple of weekends after my ex moved out i actually went to buy a magnetic knife board so i could get my decent knives out of the draw.

I then bought a proper whetstone set and, unfortunately, needed to buy a few new knives…

Det finns inget dåligt väder, bara dåliga kläder

It’s been around long enough that my in-laws had it drilled into them by their parents (and grandparents). Probably predates Billy Connolly. Even seen antique shops selling stuff with it carved/painted on.

Funny thing used to be all the newcomers to the country complaining about how their expensive “winter” clothes weren’t keeping them warm. You know, wool coats with effectively zero wind protection, ideal for the mean streets of central London, not ideal for a coastal scandinavian city. Even the winter gear they sell in the local supermarket is more effective!

Our corporate IG account is volvocarse. Or Volvo C. Arse as everyone i’ve pointed it out to now calls it.

Marketing said they won’t change it.

Any of you familiar with Brad Gosse? Worth a look at the titles of his books, and the content if you have a slightly twisted view on life…

That sounds bizarre?

Especially as ford used to use a sort of pick a part catalogue for stuff like filters and oils.

Think there were only two or three new issues of it in the ~15 years I was dealing with ford stuff. (The JV engines sometimes used some bits that weren’t in the catalogue though.)

Anyone I know in the motor trade is saying the viable life of Euro6 emissions cars is 100k miles max, and to sell them before 60/70k ideally.

You mean Euro 6, that’s been around for a decade… I think I’d have heard if they were packing in at 100000 miles. Seeing as a good number of my neighbours are running cars like that to 250000 miles plus.

Maybe your mates have all been running them on veg oil from the chippy?

I ‘did the math.’ The main TV is broadly equivalent to every bulb in the house. We have a lot of bulbs, one of the first things I did when we moved in was replace all the halogens with LEDs. I’ll do a count.

79.  There are 79 ceiling bulbs in this house.

Think i counted about 130, including all the outside ones. And the garage.

They use about as much energy as the 6 halogens that i can’t swap because the LED equivalents don’t fit in the housing.

Most of the LEDs are on timers or smart, so they switch themselves off if no one is in the vicinity as well.

I get told to do the dishes despite being the only one who does the dishes.

Yeah, my ex was the same. I’ve been away for a couple of days, pile of stuff in the sink, starting to smell. “Why haven’t you done the dishes?”

FFS woman, i’ve been 300 km away for the last 72 hours, and i left the sink empty, draining board clear and dishwasher empty.

If you now tell me that your wife, despite being a generally tidy person, leaves the inside of the car like Glastonbury-the-day-after I’ll be proper suspicious.

My girlfriend is meticulously clean, tidy and clutter free, almost a hygiene freak. Yet Glastonbury-the-day-after would be a massive improvement for her car though. First time i went in it, i found some weeds growing in the rear passenger footwell, under a bag of rubbish from a road trip her and daughter took two years ago. The boot has 4 pairs of football boots of decreasing size, at least two still in the plastic bags they went in after the last game they were usable in.

I’m quite glad i’m not married to my ex anymore, and that i don’t have to get in the GFs car very often…

(Recycling is all my fault, usually gets to the point i need to put the back seats of the car down before i finally capitulate and go to the centre.)

I think the manufacturers do it to stop some second hand parts being fitted.

It’s to stop stolen parts being fitted.

The ECUs across the car *should* be re-programmable by the dealer/using the official tool with proper access rights, so no hooky versions of the code and DIY/Ebay cables, you need an account and full access to servers etc. It also means that when parts are re-programmed, the manufacturer can see the old and new parts appearing/disappearing/changing in the system. And flag up stolen/dodgy parts.

It’s actually driven by various bits of legislation that started in early/mid 00’s. Started with transmission and engine in the US (my involvement) and has spread quite significantly since.

And yes, It’s been incredibly badly implemented by some manufacturers.

We had the email thing.

Last thing in the afternoon before a long weekend. Someone in corporate comms forgot to tick a box regarding OOO/autoreplies and in between sending the mail and the first of the OOO/autoreplies getting back to the senders inbox, switched their own OOO on. Which then responded to all the incoming mail.

Not 100% clear on all the details, but there was something like 10 million emails in the system within a couple of hours and a million being added every 15-20 minutes, then the system stopped. Took two or three days for IT to finish zapping everything.

AFAIK there were changes made to autoreply and OOO by microsoft (this was in the mid 90’s, not recently).

Every monday.

“Timesheet”

Our time sheet system sends an automated email every monday between midnight and 4 am telling us we have unapproved time cards, usually from last week.

The system also won’t allow you to approve them before finishing time on friday.

There are around 30000 people receiving these emails. Around 12 000 people don’t even have ready access to their email accounts. And time cards are filled in automatically based on swipe in/swipe out, and approved by shift lead. Another 8000 (including me) don’t have an official start or finish time and time cards simply exist to make sure we get paid…

Because despite their manager knowing about the new hires for three weeks, they chose to notify IT and Facilities at 4:57pm on the Friday ahead of them starting on Monday.

My first employer didn’t even notify them until after i’d started and filled in a massive stack of security stuff. This was even after i’d been on a grad training scheme for 4 months, regularly in discussions with my future manager.

They then took a further 4 months.

In that time I’d actually joined the local cycling club, done a few of their events, befriended some guys in the club, worked out that Glenn worked in IT support for my employer, asked a couple of Q’s of him, so he popped up and connected me, then got a mate to create the correct accounts and get me in the system. Connected me to MoD and DoD servers and so on.

Then the guy who got the actual ticket rolled up and asked why everything seemed to already have been done…

The department was eventually contracted out to a third party and things got worse. (The penalty clauses that were in the contract meant that they were paying my employer over a million quid a week, on a contract worth 90 million a year).

The door/window fixed magnetic ‘the door is open’ alarms, or the vibration ones, are no good because the wind will set them off in winter when the doors rattle.

I have door status detectors connected to my smart home stuff. I can program in a little delay (5-10 seconds maybe) so a rattly door will not trigger anything.

(Also got motion detectors inside the house and cameras, one of each in the bike room!)

he relies on coming up with ideas

mostly stolen ideas

then gets others to actually make something useful out of them.

and shouts them down/sacks/sues them when they point out how what they’re doing is illegal/dangerous/ill-advised.

I’d buy a Tesla made in Berlin, no  qualms.

I’d not buy one at all, ever. I’ve seen what goes into them, both code and hardware. Unlike Musk i actually do know a little bit about automotive engineering. And i know some of the people he’s sacked/shouted down (but no one he’s sued).

Kippers. Never EVER put kippers in the microwave.

One of the kitchens in my old block at work, someone left a fish based dish in for 10 times as long as it needed (knocked the 0 button once too often i guess) the whole office space stank of burnt fish for about a month, and you could still smell it some days, over 6 months later. There are around 300 desks per office space. 300 people had to live with that for months.

We aren’t allowed to put fish in office kitchen microwaves anymore. It still happens.

If you’re running SRAM, can’t you fit a band on axs front mech to pretty much anything with a seat tube?

Maybe.

Chainstay clearance is an issue on some. Profile of the seat tube is an issue on others. Direction of the seat tube can be an issue as well. FS hardware is usually in the way too.

Are there any new mountain bikes that can have a front derailleur mounted? 

You’ll probably have to look at an older model for that, most have now “optimised” the ability to use a front derailleur out of the frame design.

I’ll be hanging on to my current, front derailleured, XC bike for as long as i can!

They even moved from the Midlands to South Wales to be CLOSER to my bro, but have been there twice in over a year! But moan at him that he must have “forgotten where they live” if he doesn’t go see them.

My dad and step mum live about 20 minutes from my brother and his wife. 20 minutes of empty country roads. They’ve been that close (or closer) for the best part of 15 years.

They see each other (planned) about once every two years. They occasionally bump into each other walking their respective mutts about once a quarter… Talk for about two minutes and then make their excuses and leave.

Dad occasionally tries to organise a visit, you know, like you do. Mothers day, Fathers day, Easter, Christmas, New year. Except my brother runs various restaurants, and has done for the last 20+ years… So that never happens.

Mum lives 200 miles from him and sees him every 10-12 weeks.

My in laws (ex laws?) are brilliant, even though i’ve been divorced from their daughter for several years i still get invited to family events, birthdays etc.

The newer optical HR sensors are loads better. Trustworthy now for me

Sitting here now trying one out, pretty much the latest and greatest Samsung (well, not an ultra, i’m not made of money).

It’s about 10-15 under compared to either of the chest straps i use, and lags horrendously.

The Garmin i took back yesterday was worse (Forerunner 255).

The Samsung has however detected my irregular heartbeat, which i’ve had forever and has been missed many times!

I’d get a chest strap that’s compatible with your watch (the fenix will pair with an external HRM, i just checked) and use that when you are training.

nope! I’ve never down that in 20 plus years of tubeless-ness!! Is that even a thing??

Definitely a thing. The mould release agent they use to make some tyres stops the sealant wetting the surface. It just beads up. Giving it a quick scrub gives you a nice surface for the sealant.

Even works to speed up the process on tyres without release agent…

Few cycles of “update all apps” from the Google Play Store and some power cycling. (Only a couple, at most.)

All should be back to normal.

Is only an 18 month old phone, so nothing should be incompatible yet.

I suspect that it gets more inefficient the more power you are putting in. That would make sense to me.

It’s generally the torque that gives the efficiency hit in epicyclic gear trains. Not power.

So anything with high force and low/lower cadence will amplify any inefficiencies in the gears themselves.

All those meshing teeth, deforming slightly, smushing the lubrication out from the load bearing faces…

IIRC some epicyclic hubs have/had a lowest permissable ratio to try and limit the applied torque. Doubt it makes much difference.

Did you clean the inside of the tyre first?

There could be a ban from returning to the EU, but with everything there is a chance to appeal.

With an appeal you get an opportunity to put your side, and maybe roll out some sort of excuse that you hit mechanical problems and there was a delay on getting spare parts and thats why you were held up(obviously depending on how long an overstayer you are.

The EU are pretty pro cycling, so they would have more understanding and perhaps more sympathy for such a situation.

Errrrr, the two most recent cases I know of, both of them appealed based on them having *entire families, jobs/companies and houses* in the EU.

One is still in progress, he had to jump through loads of hoops to just get his travel ban overturned. So he’s on the 90/180 at the moment. And not allowed to work here, while he tries to get some sort of residency sorted.

The other tried to sneak in over a land border and is now having to move his entire family to the UK. Which is another disaster area that I’m glad i know very little about. I suspect that he’ll end up divorced, as the whole thing was stupidity based.

Both of them could have filled in a simple form and applied for residency in the aftermath of Brexit and none of this would have happened.

Fairly. Might need some finessing over shimanos usual fit and forget process!

I know of a few who’ve overstayed in Sweden. It’s a fine (few thousand SEK), repatriation at your own expense and (usually) a 2 or 3 year entry ban.

Try and get in again/get caught again and the fine goes up and the ban gets longer, up to 10 years.