Roadie 2005
Commuter 2007
Ti Hardtail 2006
Surly 1×1 2007
Full suss 2009
29er 2010

A few minor bike fixes (for customers) and last minute small purchases this morning. Now wondering which is the lesser evil: staying here bored or packing up and getting wet riding home.

Shoes:

Summer shoes
Winter boots
Inbetween days shoes
Second set of winter boots because the first ones take two days to dry when they get wet

Have you already got all of the above?

Another problem I’ve seen with bikes stored upside down is brake fluid seepage from the breather holes. Beware!

Would it be a problem to drill a hole in the bottom bracket shell?
Maybe a bit of bathroom sealant in the seat clamp slot to stop water getting in in the first place?

A South Devon beach earlier…..

Would that be about ten years earlier, when we last had a proper summer in England? I’ve seen most of the north coast so may investigate a spring weekend for the family in the south. I’ll have to get a dog first. Just for cheez0.

Don’t wash or store your bike upside down and you shouldn’t have problems with crud up there. I’ve seen star nuts rusted to nothing in bikes that have been habitually turned upside down.

My Tomac Flint has loads of clearance and is otherwise very ‘race-whippetty’.

If your redundancy will tide you over for a while then setup on your own. That’ll be far more satisfying than trading one boss and associated hierarchy for another even if you’re doing something you enjoy.
I can’t see it being easy to make money operating a mobile service as there would be a lot of dead time driving.
You could fit out a small shop and stock it for under £10k (I did) and then build a reputation for good service and economical repairs. If you can keep your overheads low then unless your home area if very different to mine, there should be scope for making a living repairing lower end bikes for people who would baulk at the big shops rates.
I think there’s more room in the market for individuals who can fix bikes than there is for another Evans.
we’ve met at Big Bike Bashes so if you get down to Totton call in and say hi.

Oops, should have put this in the ‘For Sale’ section.

It’s a slow process but give it another couple of months and it will have completely dissolved.

Brighton Hilton is on the sea front which is nice. We’ve been there a couple of times and I can advise NOT taking a VW Transporter into the underground car park.

Good to hear that in time for Christmas. Have a good one.

I went singlespeed for the winter four years ago and when the summer came gears just felt wrong so I stuck with it and now own three singlespeeds, four if you count the commuter. Strangely, gears still feel completely instinctive on my road bike.

My son’s had a lot of fun out of his and still does and we use it to watch BBC I player quite often.

140+ on several motorbikes, the CBR600 was he keenest to get there.

On 4 wheels it’s probably 110ish as one of seven crammed into a Jag going up the runway at Bembridge Airport on the Isle Of Wight in the mid eighties. That was at one of the infamous Britten Norman Barbecues. Everyone knew someone who worked there so we’d all blag tickets for the pi55 up of the summer. The guy driving claimed he knew where he could lay his hands on the keys to a plane. We were just sober enough to baulk at that!

It’s not the checking that takes time it’s the rectifying of the faults you find. eg brakes not lined up with the rims, over tight bearings, fittings not properly tightened etc. Those are the sort of things that are not going to happen in the ‘8 minute check’ or a large proportion of home builds.

There are two groups demanding collecting money for music, PRS and PPL. One distributes to writers and the other distributes to performers. The PRS licence is pretty much a flat fee and the PPL fee is determined by a number of factors including floor area. PPL seem quite amenable to haggling.

The two grand you would get for the bike IF YOU’RE LUCKY you could easily put on a credit card as you’re in full time employment and the interest would still be less than you’re going to lose by selling.

A couple of beers. The alcohol thins the blood and restores circulation.

My hands and feet always stay far warmer after the pub stop.

If you’d rather not drink then Ginko Biloba tablets (available from Holland and Barrett etc) do the same but gave me some very strange dreams.

landed right on his back, scraped it up somewhat but no face plant. He also got a decent bruise on his knee

Was he too shy to tell you what the saddle did to him?

Here’s a summary of my brake experiences through the shop:

Avids — PITA to change pads as the pistons don’t like being pushed back and often difficult to get sensible lever travel

Hayes — faff to change pads and push pistons back on older brakes

Hope — horrendous pivot wear on older levers

Shimano — very occasional leak issues but nice to work on, rapid pad wear in sloppy conditions with older brakes

Tektro — levers can be easily accident damaged but no other problems

If I was buying brakes for myself they’d be either Shimano or maybe the lightweight offerings from TRP (the posh wing of Tektro).

I use a track pump every time for the cars and motorbike. I’m not sure how anyone can have worn one out on a car tyre, my shop pump has pumped several bike tyres a day, six days a week for six years now and it isn’t an expensive one. I can’t see how occasional car tyres can cause more wear and tear than that?

I did the same with a 29er. I was on 34:18 and that worked well although I very rarely used 8th on the Alfine. I also seldom used 1st to 4th and 6th and 7th so I built the Alfine into a tourer and sold it. Using lock on grip makes the swap easier. I had it down to 15 minutes.

I had some cherry vodka a while back but haven’t been able to find it in the shops recently.

I’ve just had a look at that Problem Solvers EBB link and I can’t see that it will be torsionally rigid enough or clamp tightly enough not to move in the frame under singlespeeding loads. Down here we’ve seen several On-One Whippet frames killed by press fit BBs moving and wearing away the BB shell.

The boring ones

You’ve just summed it up perfectly. Nothing wrong with them as a means of getting about but nothing to get excited about.

FSA posts are available with up to 30mm layback.

Which ones? There’s been quite a few through the years.
CB250RS classic and cool/dispatch rider fodder
CB250 Superdream wet dream?
I’m quite liking the new (last year) CBR250

Found a better pic of mine.

A little late but here’s my Dean.

If the shifters are under 3 years old get your LBS to send the non-working one back to Madison. There’s a three year warranty on them. If you take them apart yourself they really are a challenge to get back together.

With that amount of glass you’re surely going to see a huge increase in fuel bills, no?

+1 Our conservatory is not a good place to be on a frosty night.

Don’t know if 27 BHP would be enough though!

That depends on where and why you ride. Honda claim 39 BHP for my VTZ250, which is probably close to 27 in the real world and that’s fine for me to go wafting about the countryside at speeds I can wear an open face helmet for. Throw in a few motorways and dual carriageways and rather more patience is required.

I went a week last winter without riding when I went skiing. Apart from that and a couple of other skiing holidays it would have been 1985 when I did my Army basic training that I went any longer in my adult life without riding for pleasure. Wifey understands that a bike is an essential part of any family holiday.

Here’s mine. I’ve had plenty of bigger bikes but this has been the only one for the last seven years. It owes me very little and only does about 500 miles a year but it’s a V-twin and I’m rather fond of it.

SJS Cycles also have mounts that do the same job for a bit less money.

Nothing’s listed in the official Shimano product book. Shame really as I still regard 8 speed as the peak of usefullness vs durability.

I’ve got one of those in my ‘Little Bag Of Common Mech Hangers’ too.

Any good LBS should be able to find a replacement if you take the remains of the old hanger in so it can be matched on a chart.

Unfortunately most bike manufacturers are very bad at documenting which hangers they use on which models and there are over a hundred different hangers available with no universal system of identification.

A brief summary will do. Is it pro or anti cycling? Just another rant about the ‘horrors’ of seeing fat men in lycra?