If only Spike Milligan was still alive and could have attended.

If it’s too deeply recessed for the screwdriver trick, punch or drill two holes in the end, then make an improvised peg spanner using a steel bar with two bolts through it to suit.
Just a thought, but some air dryer filters on trucks are left hand thread. I’ve never heard of that on an oil filter, but might be worth checking the new one.

Done.
Although, once again, I’m disappointed with the limited options in the Religion drop down list.

What new rules?
There’s plenty of private sellers on eBay and even a few dealers selling used Land Rover tyres.

Depends what you’re buying and where from.
Builders’ merchants tend to deliver locally with a grab lorry.
I see a lot of turf, topsoil and firewood briquettes going through the Palletline depot on it’s way from one end of the country to the other to be delivered by a curtainsider with a tail lift and pallet truck.

To add to the above, I have done multidrop in the past.
The T&C might say kerbside and level only, but if I’ve got collections to do in the afternoon, I’ll do everything possible to get the deliveries off the lorry in the morning. I really don’t want to phone the office and get them to reschedule things because there’s one pallet left on the lorry in the way.
Is there any level ground within wheelbarrow distance?

A Palletline driver writes…

All our vehicles carry electric pallet trucks now. I drive the night trunk, not deliveries, so I don’t normally use pallet trucks and don’t know how steep an electric one will climb.
As Squirrelking says, the hand powered ones are just about impossible to move up hill with a load.
If you can arrange it so the lorry is facing up hill, it may be possible for the driver to roll it onto the tail lift without losing it off the end, then off the tail lift onto the ground. Depends how daring and cooperative they are feeling.

That’s the 32t version. If you look at the list under Tech Specs it says integrated nuts for the 32t.
It doesn’t really show on the photo, but I think those are tapped holes or ‘integrated nuts’ as they call them. I guess they are made deeper to give more thread engagement into the aluminium.
https://www.superstarcomponents.com/en/raptor-oval-chainring-104bcd-narrow-wide.htm

Edit;
There’s a video here explaining the stand offs and tapped holes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KnCeBjocqk&t=102s&ab_channel=absoluteBLACK.cc

Wyre Forest at dusk.

Ah, I see what you mean now.
Yes, that would work, although aren’t the bolt heads recessed into the ring to give extra support?
I’ve always assumed the bolt head acted like a larger dowel to take some of the load off the smaller threaded part of the bolt, but now that I think about it, there’s no corresponding counterbore in the spider.
On the other hand, the bolts are in single shear, so having a counterbore on one of the mating faces weakens the interface.

I’ll give it a go on the Rohloff first. There’s always the option to change down a gear, so I tend to sit and spin rather than lunge to a standstill like I do on the single speed. What’s the worst that could happen?

You sure? Where did you get that from?

That’s the problem, no one actually says they are for the inner position, but if you look at my photo above, you can see the writing is on the side with the plain holes. The side with the counterbores for the bolt heads has got no writing.
Assuming it’s designed so that the writing is easily visible in use, that means it mounts behind the spider.

Why can’t you just screw it onto the other side of the crank spider?

You can, and it looks like that’s what I did on my single speed because I didn’t know any better at the time and I’ve got away with it so far.
It’s not ideal though. Reading through product descriptions, it looks like they are designed so that the major axis of the ellipse is vertical when the crank is about 10 to 20 degrees past horizontal.
Mounting it backwards means the major axis of the ellipse is vertical when the crank is about 10 to 20 degrees before horizontal.
It works, and who knows, it may still be better than a round ring, but it’s not how they are designed to work.

I just had a look at Rotor and they don’t list 104mm BCD. https://rotorbike.com/chainrings.html

Not sure what cranks and spider you’re running…

despite me posting 2 hours earlier

Shimano XTR triple on the Rohloff and Race Face triple on the single speed. Both 104mm BCD…

Again, no mention of whether it’s for the inner or outer position, but 50mm chainline sounds like the middle of a triple chainset. What makes you think it would fit the outer?

Thanks, but I’m not convinced.
The picture shows it mounted on the inner position.
The tooth profile looks normal, so I could just mount it backwards in the outer position, except…
The major axis is horizontal when the crank at at 116 degrees. Mounting it backwards would put it at 64 degrees if I’ve understood that right.

Thinking about it now, no one offers a choice of inner or outer for narrow/wide oval chainrings. I’m guessing that’s because everyone uses them in the inner position, so there’s no need to describe them as such.
Which means I’ve probably been using mine backwards with the major axis at the wrong angles for years without realising.

The Rohloff sprocket is my one fixed point. I’ll have to see what I can do with swapping single speed spacers and bottom bracket spacers, and sliding the EBB across in the frame if I have to to get them both lined up properly.

Shimano XTR triple on the Rohloff and Race Face triple on the single speed. Both 104mm BCD and both with the ring currently in the outer position.

This sort of search option isn’t unusual for online stores, but it does surprise me from a long established specialist like Wiggle.
Imagine a hypothetical customer looking for a new tyre at https://www.wiggle.com/c/cycle/bike-parts/wheels-and-tyres/tyres

Hypothetical customer: I want a Kenda, between £30 – £50 with a three star rating, for a mountain bike and 2.25″ wide
Diameter? Oh, I’m not fussy, just show me all of them.

From my brief search, there’s nothing to choose between Wiggle or CRC.

https://www.chainreactioncycles.com/p/kenda-small-block-eight-tyre
https://www.wiggle.com/p/kenda-small-block-eight-tyre?color=black&wheelSizeWidth=29%22+%7C+1.9+-+2.35%22

I’m guessing this the 2.1″ folding version, so why don’t either of them say so in the description?
I’ve asked the question on Wiggle and got the “It may take up to two days to answer your question” reply.
Should I just take a chance for £34 and hope it’s the one I want?

A tour of some Worcestershire and Shropshire bridleways. It was dark by the time I crossed the footbridge over the Severn on Sustrans Route 45 at Alveley.

Almost a full house.
A ha-ha, a recently planted hedge, what I think is a bank and ditch, and an old metal post and rail fence.

Midland Trailquests was a mountain bike orienteering club. I thought that using the club name as my user name was a good way of publicising our events.
We eventually became part of the national club, British Mountain Bike Orienteering, and MTQ ceased to exist.

I don’t really understand pledges and oaths.
Is it like that time in 1981 when Charles said

“…forsaking all others
keep thee only unto her
so long as you both shall live…
To love and to cherish
Till death us do part
According to God’s holy law…”

and then just ignored it all when it became inconvenient?
Is that how it this new one works?

Three suggestions, so I’ll go with the first one, dry stone walls, even though some of us are going to be at a regional disadvantage again.

A couple in the Wyre Forest

Summit cairns next week then.
This could be a bit tricky for a lot of us, so no need to be too strict. Any sort of summit or cairn should do, or a Trig Point if there’s nothing else near you.

Oh dear. I thought the rules were simple enough. Looks like some people are struggling to understand them still.

I was just thinking that in the original series, someone posted a photo once taken from his bike because he said there were a bunch of glue sniffers hanging around and he didn’t want to stop any longer than he had to, so yeah, don’t do anything dangerous or risky, but otherwise stick to the rules or else it just becomes a ‘Post a photo of anything taken anywhere at any time’ challenge.

That’s the idea. It’s to get you out and thinking of somewhere different to ride.
Taking the photo this week is the important bit though. If you really can’t get your bike in the shot as well as the bridge, that’s OK.

Leaf mould was the worst. You could see it getting compressed and building in to a hard packed fibrous layer and feel the belt getting tighter.

Don’t worry about offending me. :-)
I always said a big problem with bike components is that they are a one size fits all design.
I’m not particularly fast, but in terms of weight x distance x speed, I’m probably putting more wear on my bike than most people and I think me riding a belt drive is like putting a sports car gearbox in a Land Rover.
Nothing wrong with the product, just the wrong application.

I commute on a fully rigid Lynskey Ridgeline.

I get off and push up a couple of the steepest hills that I used to ride up, but it’s definitely still a thing for me.

I think it may be best to keep this to a ‘who makes a belt-drive’ thread

My frame is a Qoroz. An independent British one man band company who gets his frames built in China.
Very good to deal with for a custom frame. Talked through everything I wanted (belt drive, EBB, Lefty, Rohloff drop out and cable guides). Sent me the drawing for approval before building the frame.
He’s on Facebook (search Qoroz) but doesn’t have a web site.
The frame itself was spot on. The Chinese fabrication and welding is every bit as good as my USA built Lynskey. I’m still using it, just with a chain drive now.

Short answer; probably OK for general use, definitely not OK for a 95 kg rider doing up to 9000 km a year including an off road commute and reasonably good 12 hour race results.

The biggest problem was always anything fibrous, like grass or leaf mould. A rubber belt simply can’t chop through it like a metal chain. It would just build up until it forced the belt off.
The sudden catastrophic failure was a bit of an inconvenience as well. A chain can make strange noises for a week or two, giving you chance to replace it (and the sprockets if needed) in time. A belt just breaks.

when the League Against Cruel Sports wanted to catch foxes for a radio tracking study with Bristol Uni- that’s how they caught them.

This needs a bit more explanation. Why would they want to track foxes that had been injured by snares?

I built a model of GWR 813[/url] to approximately 1/16 scale in Meccano.

I also do a bit of 12″ to the foot modelling on the Severn Valley Railway.

Thanks all.
“be aware that everything reported in a clinical trial has to be reported” yeah, they’re all listed as “May cause…”, but with four of them I think I really am feeling the cumulative effect.

“If you drink caffeine drinks…” The irony is that whatever is recommended for lowering blood pressure, I already do to the extreme anyway. Exercise, no meat, no dairy, no alcohol, no smoking, no added salt*, now working part time to cut down on stress. The only consolation is that if I wasn’t vegan straightedge, I’d probably be dead by now.
*Except for a portion of chips and a bottle of pop once a week on Saturdays.

“It blunted my edge and my interest in cycling waned.” Yeah, I’m getting that as well. I spend all day feeling like I just got back from a long ride, so I don’t want to go out “again”.

No easy solution then. Getting off the drugs would be the best way, but exercise alone as an alternative doesn’t work for me. I’ve had a half-hearted attempt at yoga in the past, so I’m thinking that might be worth taking up properly.

MTB tandems are awesome.
Here’s ours on a canal side picnic stop.
Everything from getting on to changing gear takes practice, you can’t expect it all to go right first time.

Yes, there is that,unless I can convince them that due to the demographic of railway enthusiasts, they’d find it easier to recruit another part time worker.
On the other hand, with two part time staff, one could cover for the other for short term absence. I’d have no problem doing the occasional six day week when the other person was off.

Thanks, I should have mentioned that I currently volunteer in a different department at a different station, so I don’t really know anyone in the carriage department.
A couple of things in favour of my job sharing idea are that if I was working five days a week, I’d be less inclined to volunteer one day every week as I do now, so by only paying me to work three or four days a week, they will still get me for one day for free.
The other is that a high proportion of railway volunteers are at the age where the kids have grown up and the mortgage is paid, so there’s a good chance of finding someone else in that pool who would want to work part time.

I was hoping there might be some sort of established figure like ‘For a 20k job it costs the employer an extra 1k per year to job share’ although I realise it would never be that simple with different training costs for different jobs.

Are those Mary Bars MTQG?

Sorry, I missed this two weeks ago. No, they are Nukeproof. The bars and stem came up on offer somewhere while I was waiting for the frame.
They were yellow, so I bought them. :-)

One upgrade I did that others may be interested in, is replacing the BB grub screws with stainless ones.
These are the ones I used, M8x16mm, pack of 5 for £1.29
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/121258450517

I’ve asked on the Screwfix product page (may take 24 hours to appear).
I just thought I’d get a real world answer here, whereas Screwfix will probably give a non-committal recital of the instructions on the box.

That article mentions overpowered transformers for low voltage lights.
Both those I linked to are GU10 240v with “pegs” not “pins” so should be OK.