More or less done. After first freezing ride on Tuesday I’m pretty happy.

Need to swap seat post for in-line post. I’ll tinker with the lever position maybe, but all works pretty well.

(Getting the chainline OK required ditching of a drive side BB spacer – since it’s a 2x crankset – but with Wolftooth chainring and GRX clutch rear mech all ran smoothly on a fairly choppy 50Km ride with techy sections in the frozen wastes of Black Rocks and Cromford).

I will pass on comments for garden repair/upkeep/renovations to the relevant authority in the household.

Timba & Bigginge:

Great. Thanks.

What does it say about a poster when they put their whole thread title in brackets? 🙂

That they are familiar with the volatility and aggression that seem to meet even the most anodyne enquiries on internet forums…🙄

Currently building Gen 3 Soul as a drop-bar bike (will post pics when complete!).

Spec:

• GRX 1x 11 shifters & rear mech.
• XT 11-42 Cassette
• Existing (i.e., OLD) XT crankset – 38 tooth chainring
• Existing (i.e., OLD) XT callipers (side rant: why can’t Shimano use threaded barbs on their hoses the clamp block & hammer is a massive faff… or I’m uniquely incompetent in this task)
• Existing Stans/Hope wheels with Conti X-Kings set up tubeless
• Old Fox 32 fork – this may get swapped out for something rigid eventually
• Old Thomson post & 60mm stem

This would be the dream, obviously:

I went over to Discovery+ when (more or less) compelled to do so when Eurosport stopped being an entity in the UK.

The UI isn’t great – but the real problem is how insultingly glitchy the Discovery+ app is on Amazon Firestick: it is utter dogshit. In my experience it will open correctly after crashing the on first attempt. Give yourself 2 minutes swearing time ahead of planning to watch anything.

The web (i.e. browser) offering works without problem (in my experience – YMMD) on Safari/Chrome/Firefox on Mac OS. I can’t speak for other platforms.

Given how much of the market the Amazon platform has (and given how no other app on that platform performs as reliably miserably) they need to up their game.

The actual content is essentially the same Eurosport offering – generally very good,

My ’95 Kona Lavadome – this was its final iteration as a mountain bike – now a rigid commuter (with P2 fork) – must have done more miles than any other bike I’ve ever owned. Currently enjoying my 18 month old Soul. At some point I’ll probably get on this new fangled full-sus bandwagon… only been riding mountain bikes for 28 years….

[/url]Kona Lavadome by drjbscott[/url], on Flickr[/img]

[/url]Kona Lavadome by drjbscott[/url], on Flickr[/img]

Start with a good book such as this

Make sure you set aside enough time.

Make sure you have the right tool.

The web has some great stuff; this is a good intro and if you’re competent enough to service a car you’ll be fine.

120mm is probably pushing it a bit for that frame… Lovely bike, but not designed to have a front end as high as that. Stick with 100mm Rebas and you’ll be fine.

My Soul is tapered (now there’s a sentence that probably doesn’t get written much outside of bad 5th form poetry).

I’ll pop down to my local purveyor of Bike Finery and see what they can do on a Revelation. Do RS make a 9mm QR version – or will I need a new hub?

Bikebox Alan – excellent customer service. They will be able to advise on size/fitting.

Expensive but you get what you pay for.

(I rented one, I don’t own one – but if I was in the market for one I wouldn’t look anywhere else).

A point I finally realised, after lots of faff with Mavic XC717s & Conti X Kings, was that if you’ve not used about half a bottle of fairy liquid, your soap isn’t slippery enough. And a CO2 cartridge or two makes life much simpler.

How old are your brakes… Essentially if the brake clamp looks like the one in this picture you’ll probably be able to fit the shifters – I think more or less everything is B spec now. For what it’s worth I managed it (albeit the other way round – new XT brakes, and I then bought these from CRC – very simple once you’ve identified that you have the right parts….. It does make things look neater up front.

All the best Jenn. Really, very best.

I have XTR Vs on my ’94 Kona. But beware, you’ll have to settle for a slightly ugly cable route with Vs that you don’t with Cantis – because of the full length outer V brakes tend to use. Unless you want to go bonkers and get different cable guides braised on…

As I approached my 40th last year I looked at all sorts of exotica – in the end I went for the simplicity of a Soul – new XT 2×10 transmission, transplanted my old Avid Juicys and Reba Race. Thomson stem and post and XC 717/XT wheels.

I’ve been thinking about “upgrading” the fork for a while, but had an absolute hoot around Cannock Chase today and honestly, there is no need to change anything. It just works. Really well. For what it’s worth, if I had found a spare £8 grand down the back of the sofa, I seriously doubt I would be appreciably happier with a Santa Cruz 50LO Carbon. The Soul is the bollocks.

(Although I was jealous of the guys with a van with custom made internal bike-rack as I fiddled with the strap-on rack on my Polo).

Anyway, today, in Cannock:

Trouble is I’m using a Stans Rim Strip – so I can’t blow the tire into place using a tube. I seriously doubt this sis going to be worth the aggro….

OK. Thanks

100,000 signatures! Awesome.Please forward this link to friends & family.

Anyone interested should follow @cpeedell @bengoldacre and (for comedy value) @Lala_Lansley on Twitter.

I’ll stop going on about this for a bit and get back to building my retro steel Kona commuter.

Cheers

Yup.

I learnt definitively that:

1. It’s time to change to the Trailrakers
2. If you cack-handedly fail to charge the battery, and your main light dies, the woods are surprisingly scary even if you think you’re a rational 6′ grown-up who doesn’t believe in supernatural crap and you know that statistically, the chance of being randomly attacked by a deranged feral maniac is many orders of magnitude lower than slipping the front wheel on a root and sustaining a fatal C1 and/or basal skull fracture.

What other sport allows you to get this range of emotion?