When I fitted the tyres, I pumped them up till they seated, which just happened to be 20-22psi. I guessed that was a bit high, but just left them as they were’ I’ll do some experimenting soon to see how I like them at lower pressures.

Rohloff silver rear hub (Anyone got a red one for sale?)
SP dynamo red front hub
Velocity Dually rims anodised red (and Thomson post, Monkeybone and bar ends)
Maxxis Chronicles at 20psi front & 22psi rear
XTR cranks
Superstar red chainring and hoses
Nukeproof yellow bars and stem
ISM Adamo seat
ESI grips
Monkey Cage and 2x Gorilla cage.
Hope Mini Mono 180mm front & 160mm rear
Mostly Alpkit bags.

That is utterly repulsive.

Yeah, I’m thinking now I should have got some red Hope bore caps.

Mine arrived today, minus the rims, so I’ve emailed Sam and hopefully they’ll be here soon.
It comes with single cable guides fitted and some loose triple guides, which I thought would be ideal for the Rohloff…

…except that…

…it’s got weld on single guides on the left hand seat stay. :cry:
Not a serious problem and I’ve obviously had to improvise on other frames, but I can’t be the only person wanting to use a Rohloff, so it would have been nice to be able to run the two cables through proper guides.

I originally got an ISM Adamo for a specific reason, http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/noseless-saddles-anybody-use-one-where-do-i-get-one
I’ve got used to them now and have got them on all my bikes.

Roosterbarb & Custard. :P
I bought the Maxxis tyres as they seemed the best deal. The yellow logo was an unexpected bonus.

If a red Rohloff ever turns up at the right price second hand, I’ll rebuild the rear wheel. I’ll probably splash out on a new red front disc before I put it all together.
I’m planning on getting the rims anodised red as well. 8)

Her we go, my first attempt.

Things what I have learned so far;
I need smaller nozzle. I’ve got the number 5 turned right down as low as I can. I’ll buy a number 3.
I need some new goggles. They’re OK for cutting and heating but a bit scratched for when I need to actually see what I’m doing.

Thanks Ben. Yes, I’ll use a twisted knot wire brush in the grinder to rip it right back to shiny steel.
We’ve got a cutting head on at the moment, but there is a welding head with two nozzles.
The brazing rods were loose in a welding rod tube, so I don’t know what they are exactly.

Thanks, Mick. We’ve got oxy-acetylene burning gear a work which gets used regularly for cutting and heating.
I had a search around and found a tub of flux, some 2.4mm plain rods and a No5 & No10 welding nozzle all hidden away. :D
I don’t know how long they’ve been there, I’ve never seen them used and didn’t even know we had them until I searched.
I’ll have a go with what we’ve got on some scrap metal and see how I get on.
I can always buy a different size nozzle or rods if I need to.

You can have a before picture.

And a what I want it to look like after picture.

Reading about the process, it sounds like any plugs or masking would have to be acid proof.
I’m sure they can advise me on what they can do, but as they say, it’s usually cheaper to anodise an item completely than to mask off areas, so it would be nice to know that someone else has already done it and the pistons still slide in the bores.

NorthCountryBoy, it looks like you copied that from http://www.hard-anodising.co.uk/coating-thickness.asp :wink:
That’s the place I was going to use as I cycle past there on my way to work.
Does 25 microns or 0.025mm matter on a brake cylinder? I’ve seen brake and clutch cylinders on cars and trucks with about 0.5mm wear before they failed, but I don’t know what the undersize limit is before the piston binds.
It’s Hope Mini Mono brakes if that makes a difference.

Well, yes, but, did you ever see a brake cylinder that had been ruined by being anodised? That’s the question.

pointless waste of money?

The ideal topic for STW then.

All Aluminium brake components (on cars) are ‘hard’ anodised during manufacture anyway.

I thought they might be. In which case, does the increased thickness of an extra layer or the die in the colour make any difference?

Weight was not so much a of a problem but weight distribution did bother me.

Seriously?
I have ridden both my 29ers as both Rohloff or single speed. I have also ridden them with & without 1.5kg of water and with & without 450g of lights and GPS.
In each case, there’s a noticeable difference in weight when lifting the bike over gates, but absolutely no difference at all in handling. If I lean left, it turns left, if I lean right, it turns right.
What difference do you notice?

Good point. No doubt price would come down with proper mass production and more competition, but it will always be easier to stamp out sprockets and derailleur cages than to machine gears.

I plan on doing a red & yellow build on my 29+. Rhusterbarb & custard. :D
If I can find a second hand red hub before the frame arrives, I’ll sell my black one.

I’ve got four of them. :P
One on my “main” 29er, one that was on my “spare” 29er when I was doing 12 & 24 hour races, but is now destined for my 29+, one on Mrs MTG’s 29er and one on our tandem.
After tens of thousands of kms riding Rohloff, my opinions on the most common myths are;

Drag. That HPV article is heavy going, so no wonder most people prefer to believe the myth rather than the evidence.
Look at the Shimano 27 speed figures. 95% efficient in 21st, 90% efficient in 24th. Nobody ever claims they can feel that, yet everybody claims they can feel the 2% difference between Rohloff and derailleurs.

Weight distribution. I can start a ride with 1.5kg of water near the centre of my frame and end it with none. I ride either Rohloff or SS. In either case I can notice the overall weight difference, but not any change in handling due to weight distribution.

Backing off to change gear. Do people really shift gear with derailleurs at full power? Even on the tandem, I just briefly resist Mary’s pedalling and shift. She notices the change in cadence, not the shift itself.

Shifting while stationary. This really is a big plus on the tandem where unscheduled stops are more common and lifting and spinning the back wheel to shift while stationary would be a lot harder.

Cost. The second hand price isn’t based on age or mileage, there is no depreciation. Buy one, ride it, if you don’t like it, sell it again for what you paid for it. Think of it as free hire, albeit with a big deposit.

Spoke angle. You may need to “cold set” the rim. It sounds a bit brutal, but find hex key or similar that’s a snug fit in the spoke holes and bend them a bit to line up better.

I always feel there’s resistance to change amongst mountain bikers.
If MTBs had evolved from CX rather than cruisers, then 29 would be normal and 26 would be the new odd size that’s OK for very short people or stunt riding, but no good for “normal” riding.
If hub gears had constantly evolved from the early pre-war versions to become the standard bicycle gear, then derailleurs would be seen as a high maintenance lightweight fragile option that’s OK for weight weenies, but not robust enough for “normal” use.

I just wondered if Sam was doing a deal on tyres for those who have a frame and rims on order.
Failing that, YoKaiser’s suggestion of Chronicles from Alltricks looks the best deal at £53.10 for the 120tpi.

Can anyone confirm that these will definitely run tubeless OK on the Dually rims with Gorilla tape? I’ve tried all sorts of combinations of normal 29 rims and tyres and some have popped off straight away. I don’t want to learn by trial & error at £100+ a time, so it would be nice to know that someone else has done it and it worked.

Any reason why I shouldn’t drill the Duallys out for Schraeder valves? I prefer the bigger valves for ease of adding sealant and being able to inflate them anywhere without an adapter.

Wasn’t there mention of 29×3 tyres as well?
Any news on price and availability of those please?

She broke both femurs about three years ago and has got titanium pins in both legs. This has caused all sorts of other flexibility and fitness problems and as a result, she needs a very upright riding position, she simply can’t stretch out for any length of time.
She spends hours on an old sit up & beg Triumph lady’s bike with a Sturmey Archer three speed, so what I’m trying to do is copy that position on a modern bike with a Rohloff and front suspension.
I would prefer to buy locally from someone I know, mboy, but I’ve already fitted a short stem, I think it’s 50 or 60mm, so I think we’d be best off going for the shortest frame possible, with the option of going back to a longer stem if it turns out to be too short, which is unlikely.
Specialized fate. Thanks Pirahna, that’s another one to look out for and probably a bit more common second hand than the more niche brands mentioned, although niche would be better if course if I can find one. :wink:

I suppose I should have planned ahead a bit better and actually measured the frame she’s got now. :roll:
As soon as she gets home she’s going to measure the seat tube and I’ll work out from this chart what the ETT is.
If it’s an 18″, as I think, then it’s a 597mm ETT, so the Kinesis would be only 14mm shorter

That Pinnacle and the Salsa look good. At least I know of a couple of specific models to look out for second hand now.

Jameso, spot on. Neither of us is in to technical stuff, we’d rather go somewhere, using quiet lanes, tow paths, forestry and farm tracks. I guess what she wants is something between a mountain bike and a cross bike. Flat bars and front suspension with big wheels. In other words, a 29er.

OK thanks. I bought Riddoch’s pledge off him and it looks like Sam hasn’t added me to the email update list, so I wondered if I’d missed anything.

Just wondering if anything’s happened in the past two months and I missed it…

It’s closed for stocktaking this weekend anyway.

Well, I’m Chief Engineer and Captain on a 9ft tandem.

So, that’s a No then, although with no supporting evidence.
There must be a lot of retreads out there, yet it’s not like you see cars and vans at the side of the road with burst tyres all the time. Are they really that bad?
Same with part worn tyres. If you buy a second hand car, you’re buying four part worn tyres, yet no one seems to worry about that.

I don’t mean to dismiss the replies here, but I was hoping for something a bit more evidence based.
There are lots of companies with fleets of vans. I wonder if any of them do long term tests on tyre life and make the results public.

I don’t mind paying for a faster, more reliable server with no adverts.
Any recommendations?

I did have a fault when the mice chewed through the original wiring. That’s why I cut back to just a double socket mounted on the fuseboard itself and extension leads from there.
The earth cable is too small by current standards, but obviously did it’s job at the time.

And gofasterstripes, keep up at the back. :P
The saw is working now.

Thanks Footflaps.
Once I start getting a bit further on with the bungalow, I’ll be doing as much of the wiring as I can myself, so it would be helpful to have all the information.
I’m in Worcestershire, so I don’t suppose it would be cost effective to pay someone to travel from Leicestershire. Thanks for the recommendation anyway.

Going back the earlier warnings, the only thing that I can see that is actually dangerous or a fire risk, is that 1mm earth cable from the grey fuse box, top left, to the black incoming neutral connection, centre right.
It’s probably been there since before I was born and hasn’t melted yet.

Reading up a bit more about wiki hosting, it sounds like some of the wiki farms will virtually hold the wiki name and content to ransom if you want to leave.
I’m starting this as a personal project, but the hope is that if it proves popular, the SVR will take it over and host it on their own servers.
For that reason, I think it would be best to start of entirely independently by using Mediawiki on my own web space.

So, the question now is; what’s the best deal for web hosting and a domain name?
If we take a guess at 500 pages with a picture on each, how much space do I need?

Slogo, why are you pretending you know about electrics when you don’t appear to know any more than I do?
I’ve posted pictures of what I’ve got above, so explain to me which bit is going to catch fire.

Thanks to rwamartin and others for the knowledgeable replies.
To cover some of the points raised;

I know a 63A RCD downstream of a 30A bakelite fuse doesn’t make sense, but I’ve got no way of isolating the bakelite fuse, so that’s what I’m stuck with. I’ve got a 16A MCB downstream of that anyway.

What I’m starting with has probably been there way over 50 years. tacking a modern consumer unit on has got to make it safer.

I’ve got no mains water, so there’s no earth connection there.

The earth connections from the existing fuse boxes to the incoming overhead cables look very thin. I’d guess one is 1mm and the other 6mm.
There’s no main earth to the CU because there’s nothing I could connect it to at the moment.

As far as I can tell, the incoming cables haven’t got armouring. I’m not going to start scraping insulation off to check and the box where the earth cables connect to the incoming cable is sealed.
Without knowing that, I can’t be sure if it’s TN-S or TN-C-S
Is it normal for individual overhead cables to be armoured?

I’m doing some major repairs to the bungalow and the wall that it’s all fixed to will be coming down, that’s why I’m just running temporary sockets on spurs at the moment.
You’ve all convinced me that I should make this a priority now, so I’ll fix a suitable board to the new wall and get the MEB or a qualified contractor to move the meter and get everything to comply with modern standards.

The saw works fine now. Maybe the old 13A plug in RCD was faulty, but it hasn’t tripped the new 16A MCB or 63A 30mA RCD yet.
NVR switch and belt and blade guards are next on my To Do list.

Yeah, I guessed I was something like that. I thought they were all the same, it’s just that when the cheapest dedicated 800 cable was three times the price, I started having doubts.
They’re missing a trick then by not selling an 800 cable for 99p.

OK, thanks. They describe it as “FOR DATA SYNC AND/OR CHARGING”, so that’s alright. I just couldn’t understand why they specified only one model of Garmin.

Ive seen worse consumer units. But I’ve seen better ones burn houses/boats down!

My goodness ! You do make DIY sound so exciting.

Going back to some of the less dramatic replies…

Earth sleeving; I’ll pick some up in Toolstation next time I’m there. It comes in 100m rolls, so I’m trying to think of something creative to do with the 99.5m offcut. Xmas decorations maybe.

“big fat yellow and green earth cable coming from the metal stake hammered into the ground somewhere”. Now you mention it, that is something missing from my system.
This is what I started with.

Power in via two overhead cables coming through the wall, centre right.
Live goes through that grey box, presumably there’s a fuse or isolator inside to isolate the meter if required.
Neutral goes through the smaller black box, which has also got the thin earth wires from the two fuse boxes going in to it.

Now, as far as I can tell, the incoming wires are not armoured, so I take it the earth wires are connected directly to neutral.
From what I’ve read here, I think I’ve got a TN-C-S system, although going by the diagrams here, I should have a separate earth spike.

As for the saw, first step is to order a NVR switch, then fit the bigger blade and make some guards for the belt drive and the underside of the blade.

Well, that’s embarrassing, and thank you WelshFarmer.

Spot the difference.

Before.

After.

I’d got the socket earth connected to the main earth busbar on the left. :oops:
It seems to be working OK now with it connected to the RCD busbar, second from left. :D

I didn’t ride that event myself, but from what I’ve read, most riders were grateful for the frost creating a hard surface.

The RCD is rated at 63A 30mA.
Doesn’t that mean it can handle a total of 63A load, but will trip with a 30mA leakage to earth?
I’m trying to learn about all this as I go along, but it sounds more likely to me that I have got a 30mA earth leakage than a 63A short term load on start up.
It just seems odd that the new 30mA RCD built in to the consumer unit trips straight away, yet the old 30mA plug in adapter would at least let me cut thin sticks.

I think I’d be best off taking the motor in to a local rewinder and getting them to check it.