In mountain biking calipers are gone and forgotten,

Are they? Plenty around with V-brakes and they work fine for those on a budget. I still ride one bike with them.

Road bikes? I think calipers will be around for a while yet, they work fine in all normal roads conditions, are lightweight and simple to fit and adjust  I reckon if road gear and brake levers were separate like on most MTBs they would have taken off a bit faster  and also road bikes are still very much looks driven – discs just don’t look as good

I’d still be happy riding and buying a road bike with calipers

Michelin Cross Climates are amazing and I’ve heard people struggle to get hold of them as they’ve been so popular.

Ive got some on my Volvo 940 – rear wheel drive, automatic and turbocharged. I went out in slush once with the intention of getting the back end out and try some drifting and really struggle – i had to properly boot the throttle to lose grip.

If you have Netflix worth watching Beyond the lighted stage for you Rush fans.

Will do, thanks.

I’m sure you get the odd dead one from all manufacturers no matter what the cost. Sometimes with how far they travel from where they are made and all the different modes of transport on that journey I think it’s pretty amazing they still look new when you unbox them.

I think I mentioned recently how I grew up with an awareness of Rush, and was constantly asked about them when I first moved to the UK. In fact, though, I never really paid attention to them.

In the last number of months, all of that has changed.

The band blows me away, and I can’t enough of them.

I know! I heard Spirit of Radio a few weeks back and I’m astonished I never heard any of their stuff before

Currently trying to buy their albums to get a bigger Rush fix!

I’ve driven around there. Its smooth as a babys bottom on the roads compared to West Yorkshire. Mind you most places are.

Rather than get a daft SUV, buy a car with decent suspension. Your BMW has the M-sport pack which basically stiffens the suspension for no good reason, all it does it make your bog standard diesel repmobile less comfortable. And no, no amount of suspension gimmicks or M-sportery stick on badges makes your car an M3…..

The best upgrade for most people nowadays is smaller wheels and bigger tyres. I remember having a fast Astra SRI as a hire car once and while it was fast in a straight line the bumps made my back hurt and it skipped all over the shop in corners so you had to slow down loads. I then drove a lesser spec one with 2″ smaller wheels and it handled a LOT better in the corners…. (and yes I understand there is a limit with an Astra!).

I’ve seen more people swapping wheels for smaller ones recently as bonkers big wheels and hard suspension just isn’t fun for 99% of the driving we all do.

Why not a normal car? They can also go over bumps. In my area the roads are pretty much the worst in the country but my Focus works fine. That’s unless you are going properly off-road

My experience of the big SUV/4×4 cars is they don’t feel much different over bumpy roads.

You’d get a lot more choose with normal cars if you want a hybrid.

Without a doubt the Civic – but I’d find a petrol version instead, They just go on forever and a friend who has decades in the motor trade always says choose the Honda petrol.

RIP Kaesae, the bearing king. :(

You’ll get a lot of people saying why bother…. but get past them for a minute. ;)

Bodykits aren’t normally that expensive. The main cost is the fitting and painting. And that has to be done very well or it’ll look like crap. Factor in a few days labour at a body shop then paint on top and it’ll soon be many times more than the initial cost of the kit. Bear in mind that if fitted poorly it can accelerate rust problem as water might get in where it wasn’t meant to and water can be trapped in pockets too.

Oh and a body kit without matching wheels and lowering to suit the kit just isn’t worth the bother, it’ll just look cack

I reckon if you want it to look nicer then do small and subtle stuff. Maybe a slight window tint, nicer wheels (think of ones no one uses – I have Citroen C6 spare 17” steel wheels on my Volvo!) and a subtle drop. Oh and get it polished properly to make it look a lot younger.

I am always for improved safety in F1, I have never had a problem with it. Sometimes the results can be a touch weird but that’s mainly because its a change you have to get used to e.g. the higher cockpit sides.

However I just can’t get on with that halo, it looks wrong, ugly and I hate it. Rather than getting used to it I dislike it the more I see it. I can’t help thinking it signifies the end of open cockpit racing. Really hoping they redesign or come up with a new solution.

So there won’t be any free to watch F1 soon then? Thats really sad, it could mean the end of pretty much 35 years of watching F1 for me.

Did you get many offers/invitations from your ~200 letters?

We ended up seeing 5 houses before they were put on the market that way. As we couldn’t see inside them we arranged a viewing with them and went round for a cuppa and a chat. None of them worked out in the end but I reckon it was worth it.

The leaflet I made was quite personal, I didn’t just say “thinking of selling your house, call us” etc, instead I said we had always wanted to live in the area but were struggling to find somewhere to buy, said that I wasn’t a developer or a builder and we just wanted a family home to live in for a long time – which was all true. I thought that would mean more people might read it and see that we were genuine and not out to make a quick buck.

When did you buy your home and how did you find it?

Summer 2016. Rightmove. After looking at 45 houses before we bought one (we had a large search area and were open to anything!) I came to the conclusion that the high street EA’s are actively trying to stop people buying houses from them, as was there complete ineptitude.

Did you view a similar property and the agent put you on to it?

Quite a few, no because EAs were useless in my area in almost all regards.

Did the agent have you on their books and call you about a new one?

I was on books of several and all the calls I got was to ask if I wanted to stay on their books. In 1 year I think I got 1 or 2 calls about houses, never got to see them early, got thousands of emails telling me about houses which didn’t fit the needs I told them about.

Walk past the shop?

No. Who does that? The only time I went into EA’s was to sign up, many said “don’t bother picking up a details sheet, there’s more on RightMove”

Walk past the house?

We leafleted 200 houses we likes and got more of a result from that than from the EA’s.

RightMove?

Every time, apart from the places who contacted us when we leafleted them.

I can’t wait for the day what high street EA’s die, they don’t deserve to stay in business, if the standard of service they provide was present in any other sort of retail they would have all shut down 30 years ago.

So is buying a used 6 year old (2012) diesel still a wise idea? Need to change my car this year. Currently looking at VW Passat 2lt CR diesel estate

I would say buying a VW isn’t a wise idea, never mind the diesel issue. I still have no idea why people flock to VAG group cars.

DEFRA have stopped ordering diesel cars of any kind.

Suspension forks. Allow extra speed and control with the same component.

The cantilevers on the Kona would be ok in the dry, you could still drop your saddle at the top of the descent, gears would be ok too.

Sounds pretty cheap to me. I’ve fitted both of those sorts of taps multiple times and if I could have afforded it I would have paid that. It’s basically a days labour plus the safety check certificate costs.

Aaaah Gore cable sets. I remember when they came out I had SRT500 gripshifts and XT rear mech, stronger spring in the mech and shifter. I put the gore cables on and I used that bike 2/3 times a week off-road for 18months without lubing the cables with no problems at all. Never used them again as I got into BMX and forgot about them when I came back to MTB.

Pretty much any MTB nowadays has miniscuoe gears on it. BITD I had a 50t Pace ring on my bike with a 11t on the back and it was used regularly – 50mph off road was my fastest! I do miss triples for those monster gears sometimes.

You’d be better off with a £100 which is set up by someone who knows what they are doing than a £500 one out of the box.

A friend of mine is a professional sound engineer and lifetime guitarist, the first thing he does with any guitar is take it to a local guitar tech/luthier to set it up for him, even though he could do the mechanics of it himself he knows the value of getting someone who knows what they are doing to get it done right.

Just buy a fancy light set of road wheels for it with nice tyres. Big chunk of rotating weight lost will make it feel much better and more sprightly. All other stuff is marginal in how it will feel. Calculate grams lost per £ on the rest of the stuff and go for the best value wins from there on.

Tilt – Till It Kills

One of my favourites albums.

House Network have been going a lot longer than Purple Bricks who are jumping on the bandwagon with lots of advertising. I sold my house with HN and they were brilliant and saved me £1.5k. Only downside was showing people round myself and sorting keys out at point of sale but everything else was miles better than a high street agent. I have since recommended them to 2 friends who also had the same excellent experience.

I would check that the kitchen ring isn’t completely run as a spur off the socket you are changing. It might just be the one socket in the kitchen that is on the spur but some numpty could have been lazy and made the whole kitchen a spur which would not be very safe.

rGo flat bars. There’s a thing in this country about touring bikes – everyone seems to think they have to have drop bars but in Europe it’s almost the opposite.

Ive got short arms and my Genesis TDF was a drop bar bike I converted to flats – I’ve got some 17 degree salsa bars on it and it’s ridiculously comfy.

Done! That’s a generous offer! I’ve donated enough for 2 lines – I’d pay that for the bottle cage!

I would have thought any decent ebike with disc brakes would be ok. You could always fit some bigger rotors to help with the increased weight.

Rob…. I’m going to go out on a limb here but do you have a subscription to Mens Health Magazine by any chance?

If you saw me you’d know that I don’t!!

Oh oh,rob’s been outed my his bro

I honestly can’t remember buying him a bag, but it wouldn’t have been a man-bag. It would have just been a normal bag, as per my description above. :-)

This is a man-bag 

This is a man carrying a bag

Hang on a chuffin SECOND there!

Not that long ago you BOUGHT ME A MANBAG for Christmas! And you told me to give it a try as it was a good idea or something along those lines!

I probably just bought you a bag? A man-bag isn’t just a bag carried by a man (which would include gym bags/courier bags/laptop bags etc), its those tiny things which are basically a handbag for men. Which no-one needs.

I hope you’ll be able to take the family for an awesome holiday with the money too – I don’t think anyone who has donated would begrudge it.

When I was a little lad (25 years ago) my dad bought a bike holder like that Yakima Forkchop for our Montego estate and it worked brilliantly – not as fancy as the Yakima one but so simple and effective. I’ve been looking for one similar for years and I think that’s it!

what roof bars are people using with them?

The quote text is a bit pale but overall I love the look of it.

I bet he’s not even looked back at this or the GoFundMe page today. I’d love to be in the same room as him when he does!

Also, if you don’t get the full £15,000 this time

Not much chance of that now. 😃😃

I have both and I used my combi drill with tongue tite screws when I did my oak floor. I needed fine control so I didn’t screw them too far in and split the tongue of the flooring.

When I screwed them in slowly I didn’t need to drill pilot holes either.

S’up sweetie, cat pissed on your cornflakes this morning?
Really, do you actually take notice of this sort of Daily Mail-type click-bait bollocks and take it seriously?
Really? Shirley you’ve got better things to do with your time.

i was just having a laugh, you’re taking it too seriously. But you wouldn’t sound like an internet hard man if you didn’t have a nasty dig at someone every so often would you? . 🙄

I don’t think a bag like the inner tube one above is a man bag. It’s just a bag. Man bags are those little things about 15cm square things. If you need to carry folders and a laptop around or baby things you have a bag like a courier bag or briefcase. Man bags aren’t any use for useful stuff, they’re just there to carry the stuff normal blokes have in their pockets.