Looking at this site
http://www.ukpower.co.uk/tools/running_costs_electricity/
it doesn’t list concrete mixer, but if you put in kettle at 3kw, which is the maximum you can run on a 13A plug, it works out at 16.5p per hour.

Well I’ve decided to pull out.
I won’t be representing the UK mountain bike racing team in Delhi this year.

Rusty, you forgot the bar ends.

You do use bar ends, don’t you ? 😉

I’ve had this frequently with Maguras.
Put the bike up the right way.
Rubber band or velcro strap the levers back to the bars.
Wait a few minutes.
Remove the bands or straps.
Wait a few minutes for the air bubbles to work their way up the hose.
The brakes should work OK now.

Not a permanent cure and pushing the pistons back in would probably help too, but it gets you going again as quickly as possible.

I’ve reversed in to hundreds of skips and never tried to make a claim.
But then, I was driving a skip lorry at the time.

It gives me a legitimate reason to wear lycra in public.

Having a weld at the point of highest leverage, the chainstay to BB area, is always going to be a weak point.
Unless, of course, the chainstays are tapered diameter and tapered wall thickness to spread the load along their length. I wonder if the manufacturers have thought of that. 😉

I’m seriously considering getting a CX bike for everything from commuting to time trialling.
I’m intrigued by the disc v rim brake option.
When I ran Magura hydraulic rim brakes on an MTB, I could shred the pads in a couple of weeks, so I’m thinking of discs for a CX.
Are they much heavier ?
They seem to be less common. What bikes should I be looking for second hand with a price range of, say, £500 – £1000 ?

It’s unlikely to be an alternator fault, they either work or they don’t.
You’d hear the belt slipping if that was the problem.
Check the alternator output to be sure if you like, should be around 13.8 to 14.2 volts.

Disconnect one battery lead and put an ammeter in series between the battery and the lead. I don’t know what the standard current draw would be, but I would imagine it’s a fraction of an amp to run the alarm and stereo on standby.

Sounds like you just need a larger capacity battery though.
If you’ve got a trade card, Halfords are pretty reasonable for battery prices, or they were last time I bought one.

Does anyone take these sort of magazine reviews seriously ?
Magazine writers get given the stuff for free and can’t afford to upset their advertisers. Do you really think they’re going to give an impartial review ?.
Better to search on various forums and see what people who paid for the lights with their own money and use them regularly think of them.

I’m sure the guy at the start said it was slightly over 30km per lap, that’s why I was surprised when I got back at the end of my first lap at 27km.
I did make one wrong turn. You can see the double line on my track where I missed the left turn at the top of one hill. I knew there was a left turn somewhere, so I turned left and followed the road until I realised I should have been on the grass about 50m further to the left.
All my laps are about the same distance, so I don’t think I took any unintentional short cuts.
I did see a group of riders joining from the right at one point and guessed they must have got lost somewhere.
I’d be interested to see other people’s tracklogs to see if they got about the same distance as me.

I wouldn’t rely on JB Weld, Milliput or any of the other similar epoxy resins for something like that.

Find someone local to you who can TIG weld aluminium.
It is possible to MIG weld aluminium, but it always looks a mess and isn’t ideal on thin gauge frame tubes.

Take the remains of the old one to an independent garage, they will have the pipe and flaring tool to make a new one to replace it.
If you want a slightly different shape to miss the handbrake cable, make a pattern with a bit of wire or an old spoke and get them to match it.

Overtaking 26ers ridden by kids half my age on my 29er on the singletrack bits at the SPAM Blast.

SPAM Biking on Salisbury Plain for me too.

Rather than riding 160 miles, then turning round to ride back, how about riding an 80 mile diameter circle/wheel ?
Imagine your starting point as a hub, ride up a 40 mile spoke, follow the 240 mile long rim, return via the same spoke, or if there’s any problems, cut it short and return via a different spoke. Avoids the risk of being committed to a 160 mile ride at midnight.

I like the way they keep finding new bits in the woods.
Several times on the first lap I was thinking “Ah, yes, I remember this bit”, only to be followed by “Hang on, where are we going now ?”.
They still had my favourite fast chalk track descent across the field in though. 67km/h down there. 😀

My tracklog for three laps.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/49717711
I can’t match the fast guys for speed, but then I bet they can’t match me for calories used. 5547 Kcal in 5:10:18. 😛

Been for a short test ride and I like them.
Got the lockout threshold set only two clicks from max.
No significant bob when climbing out of the saddle, but they seem to be doing what they should over the bumps.
90km of tarmac, twisty singletrack and 60km/h+ chalk farm tracks on Salisbury Plain tomorrow. Let's see what I think after that.

Lynskey Ridgeline 29 with Rohloff

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Lynskey[/url] by Grizzly Graham[/url], on Flickr

Good point rocketdog.
I've mentioned before on this forum that I broke two frames in two months, but I never mentioned what those frames were. 😉

However, if it's a known problem with Commencal, he'll probably get away with it if they're getting lots of frames returned.

Needing a woman to help you assemble furniture = manhood failure.

…anything wrong with them…

Yes, it's got a bore of 31.8mm.
You'd be better off with one with a 31.8mm OD. 😉

Well the forks are on the bike, the brakes are connected and everything works. 🙂

Things I've learned over the last couple of days…

Hope and Magura make (or made) two different sizes of IS caliper.
The smaller one bolted on directly fits a 160mm front or 140mm rear.
The larger one bolted on directly fits a 180mm front or 160mm rear.

A PM caliper bolted on directly fits a 160mm front or 140mm rear.

Once you've got those measurements and know which calipers you've got, it's fairly straightforward to work out which IS to IS or IS to PM adapter is needed.

In my case I was replacing Magura brakes with Hope at the same time as fitting the forks.
It was only when I started looking deeper in to it all that I realised I had the larger Magura calipers and the smaller Hope ones, so the larger IS Maguara caliper worked with a 180mm disc on my old IS forks with no adapter, but the smaller IS Hope caliper needed a +20mm adapter to work with the new PM forks.

My biggest problem with the op's point was that it implies that there is a lack of ground roots level organisation and contribution

That's not what I was trying to imply. I was more trying to find out what other people do to give me some ideas myself.

I'm not so bothered with trail building, I'd rather ride bridleways and take them as they come. It's good that people who are in to that sort of thing are getting on and doing the work that's needed on their own though.

There's a few events like Hit the North and the Forest of Dean Enduro which are put on by a few individuals or a local club.
I don't think I've got the organisational skills to get something like that off the ground myself, but if there was a club round here doing something similar, I'd join up and be a willing minion.

The big advantage of buying a fame with a lifetime of the original owner warranty from a friend is that when it breaks he can forget that he sold it. 😉

No, you've done it the wrong way round.
Tighten the top cap first to pull everything together (preload it).
Then tighten the stem clamp bolts to hold it all in place.

A silly mistake like this has left me feeling pretty useless and a real numpty…

If it's any consolation, I'm a professional mechanic and I wrecked a £250 wheel bearing recently.

Regarding drilling it out for an M6 bolt or helicoil.
If you've drilled it off centre, it may be hard to get a helicoil to work. depends just how much of a mess you've made of the hole.
Drilling oversize for an M6 bolt may be a better option. If the head of the bolt is recessed into the stem, an M6 bolt head won't fit. Use an M6 button head screw, as it uses a smaller hex key, and grind the outer diameter down.

In either case, I'd say you're going to need it clamped down on the table of a pillar drill, not free hand in a vice.

Yeah, we should have kept in touch. It would have saved me on laundry bills.

Not quite the same thing, but similar…

I bought an army T shirt from a market stall once.
Two other guys at the stall who were obviously very good friends asked if they could have my old shirt.
I explained that I was buying an extra shirt, not a replacement, and I didn't want to give the old one away.
They then offered me the price of a new shirt so I could get two new ones and they could have the old one.
This sounded like a good deal to me, so they gave me the money, I bought two new shirts, put one of them on straight away and gave them my old sweaty one.

I use a gripshift as it's the only option with a Rohloff.
I find 90mm short grips too short, but the bars aren't long enough for 130mm standard grip + brake lever + gripshift + bar end.
If you use a lock on grip that only locks at one end, I'm using DMR on one bike and Cane Creek on another, you can cut it down to 110mm or so as a compromise.

Video's up.

http://www.breconbeast.co.uk/index.cfm?Tab=1

Just a series of still photos, not a video.
That's me in the black & green at 1:30

You could be right, Charlie. If he makes enough predictions and promises of help, by the law of averages, a few of them will come true.

One of these guys has a regular 1/4 page advert in a national daily with a normal land line and mobile number.
Even those premium rate Live Tarot Readings adverts only have a couple of column inches each.
He must be getting a lot of punters and have some good enforcers to make it pay if that's all there is to it.

Less than 80 pre entered so far. 🙁
I hope a few more turn up and enter on the day.
I've never understood why the SPAM Biking events aren't more popular. I'd rate them as a better course than Bristol or Cheddar Bike Fests or HoNC, which get far more entries.

Oh dear. I hope this isn't about to become a meme.

“We believe it will become one of the bike industry’s must-have killer apps,”

Blogosphere Buzzing about New CenterTrack Belt-Drive Technology: Lightest, Strongest, Cleanest Ever

I've got a Renthal which seems to be doing OK so far.
Had a Thorn before that, which also lasted well. Reversible too.

Snaps, if they did a titanium 13t Rohloff sprocket, I'd buy one.
If they outlast £25 steel sprockets by 4:1 then they are not extravagant, they are good value for money.
I thought £80 was a lot for a Hope ceramic BB, but it's outlasted 4 £25 race Face BBs, so it's a better deal.

My most extravagant purchase is Rohloff chains at £45.
Although, having worn a £7 SRAM chain out in 70km, that's 10p per km, or about the same running costs as my Land Rover, I think it's justified.

…bloke who paid £4k + for a Cube full suss…ONLY rides locally to me…(Suffolk)

That's ridiculous. It's like spending £40k+ on a sports car and only driving it on roads with 70mph or less speed limits.
Whoever would do such a thing ? 🙄

Yeah, peanut butter for rats too.

If I leave a jar out while there's mice or rats about, it's got teeth marks around the lid in the morning.
They know what's in there and they want it.

Just over half way down this page. 😉

http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/whats-the-most-random-thing-thats-happened-to-you-when-riding/page/2

I've used the bigger, rat version of the Tom & Jerry style traps and they work.