It’s quite nice!

Although i’m a bit confused by the 1.5″ headtube – what’s the point? It might tempt me but i’d much prefer a tapered headtube.

I can’t think of any readily available 140mm forks, especially 650b that would be in a 1.5″ steerer, surely they would be far better off tapering the steerer than making the majority of riders run reducers for 1 or both ends of the headtube.

Or am I being stoopid?

It shouldn’t be a problem – your vendors solicitor will do the work required for them, and as long as he’s happy the other vendors shouldn’t have to do much as long as probate has been sorted and its a straight sale with no other charges. It would be more problematic if the vendors at the end of the chain were also in the chain and moving on but as it stands I wouldn’t worry about it.

Issues may arise if searches etc come back with problems which may mean the lack of a solicitor their end could slow things own, but if its a bereavement sale id imagine they’d be keen to move it on quickly. I’d rather be in your situation than a big long chain, it could fall over with a solicitor anyway.

(This is assuming your not on the market as you don’t say your selling). I’d have thought if it did go south your vendor would be the one moving into temporary accommodation as they are the ones who risk to lose the sale.

Ordered a set of the green flash pro pads from wiggle, see how they do first.
Ta for the pointers.

And no, not sure on wet performance the road bike doesn’t come out unless the sun is shining! 8)

Can’t tell what the inner cables are but look decent and feel like they’re a coated decent cable, outers are Jagwire kevlar reinforced with metal ferrules. Alignment seems perfect to me, was built and setup by the LBS, not assembled by my monkey fingers!

Swissstop green seems to be the pad to try – what’s the difference between flash pro and race – all green compound.

Yes MTB brakes are easy – fit xt, bleed and forget! This road stuff isn’t as simple…

Giant contact switch, mines great and if your buying new its the cheapest of the lot! (30.9 only though, mine shimmed to 31.6 ATM)

I run 1×10 on my bikes, purely for simplicity. It’s fine for XC, you can run any groupset just with single ring, and pick a ring size to suit your riding. I run a 34t front and only miss the lower gears if I’m doing sustained climbing over a couple of days then it starts to get to me. For most XC though its fine.

If you want to try it, chuck on an on one steel single ring and superstar device to try it and then you can go back if you don’t like it. The new clutch shimano mechs are supposed to be a lot better for 1×10 but I haven’t tried one. Maybe look at the larger range rear 10spd cassettes to get a bit of a lower gear, I.e. 11-36.

I think so, i’m going to ride up for a peek tomorrow.
My understanding is it’s open to ride but officially opens later in the month – search on here for the facebook page.

I’ve got hope bearings in mine, £4 a pop from wiggle on offer. I’d steer clear of cheapo bearings.
LBS did mine, I couldn’t get the old ones out!

http://superstar.tibolts.co.uk/product_info.php?cPath=36&products_id=509

Superstar tool, mines ace and contrary to some other views ill use the chain tool on it over my couple of proper chain tools every time!

I had something similar with mine, fault was with the pump not the fork though. Try another pump?

I use a set of Edirol by Roland monitors, MA-15 were about £125 and great. Dual controllable inputs and very good reference sound considering their small footprint.

I haven’t got one, but i’m 6’1 and a bit with 32″ inside leg and I tried their sizes out and couldn’t get one I was happy with, took the M/L, L & XL out for test rides and nothing suited. Giant wanted to charge extra for adjusting stem length. Would say the L with a longer stem would have been the best fit.

If you are looking at other brands, I ended up going for a L Focus Culebro, which the shop I bought it from happily fitted to me at n/c, changing bits and adjusting etc.

How come you didn’t realise this when you collected the wheel and the LBS didn’t return the spokes you gave him? I’d have thought it would have been picked up then as an issue.

Could well be a misunderstanding. Benefit of the doubt once? It’s a bit of a jump from that to pretty much naming the shop and saying

“I dont imagine for one second I am the 1st person he has tried to thief off.”

Can’t tell you about the house – but don’t put it in the car. The Danes sell it in fuel stations next to the diesel pumps and they’re both black handled….

Much amusement caused after putting 1/2 a tank of it into the car at 4.30 on a Friday afternoon on the way home when every garage was shut until 9am Monday morning!

Focus estate, the 1.6 tdci is the only decent sized estate that drops under 109g co2 (or was when I changed mine).
Yes the engine is underpowered, and don’t go for the 18 inch wheels cos it makes it worse!

Less relevant if your leasing but the drop to 109g co2 not only drops your tax bill but it means your company can offset the full car cost against corporation tax, so I used that as justification to get the top spec one and tick every option box :-) if I’m going to get everywhere slowly ill do it comfortably, in gadget heaven thank you very much!

Also look at 3 series touring, good on tax and mpg if you get the sensible ones, and residuals keep lease costs low. Hyundai i30 could be worth a look also, very similar to focus – I was sold on the i40 until I realised you couldn’t fold the rear seats flat, not sure if its the same with the i30 but that’s about the stupidest mistake to make with an estate IMO.

You need one of these:

http://www.thelittlegreenbook.co.uk/

Work on the road a lot and it’s my bible!

Love mine, however I’d like a bit more memory for storing tv series, I’d go 32gb would be my only tip for the device, then if you haven’t got one get an Apple TV!

Go play a few, lots of variation. I’ve got an ibanez, ovation, Yamaha and a couple of older ones.

For a full dreadnought at that pice point I’d be looking at Yamaha or ibanez new, or hunting for a solid body Taylor second hand, a decent one would push your budget though.

Sonos?

John Lewis do a wireless sound booster which seems like it would fit your bill, under £100 but i had one that wouldn’t work so couldn’t recommend it. You might get a working one though.

5thElefant, if those are all black chilli versions i’d take them off your hands for £40…. posted? ;-)

Boot buddy, know someone with an insignia tourer and one and reckons its great. Copes with usual crap in boot then extends when the seats are down.

Focus swallows 3+3 easily with room for kit.

2 part epoxy, don’t use araldite use devcon 5 minute.
Mine have lasted longer stuck together than they did before ;-)

I regularly fly long haul with work, and there is a god – Stillnox.

Prescription so you need to go tell Doc you’re suffering with insomnia but it normally gets me 5-6 hours on a plane.

Have a pretty good routine on my 12 hour flights, take off, eat dinner during a movie, whack a tab down after it’s finished, wake up for meal number 2 then normally about 3 hours till landing. Nice and easy!

The other option is to sit at the front ;-)

If you’re talking about shipping, then if it’s all declared properly on invoices it won’t get missed. It’ll all go through properly at the correct rate of duty + vat and you’ll pay a handling fee to the delivery company, usually before delivery.

The only way it’ll get missed is if it comes through un declared (ie samples/no value etc) and it’s not opened in which case you won’t get any bill for it.

Fedex have delivered a couple of personal things to me and sent a bill for duty a few weeks later, but i’m not sure if this is commonplace, and it may well have been because I also have an account with them at the same address.

I’ve got one of the VOX mini amplugs, they’re ace. Nice and small. Amplitude is good but the vox is better if you just want to chuck something in your pocket and play with no faff.

I’ve never been up but don’t live far – is there anything up there at the moment to ride or is it all in progress?

Would be cool to be able to go for a ride without the car! Looking good btw.

I’ve got the montane featherlite – £30 on CRC if you’re one of the weird sizes left!

Yeah, I got sidelined a bit as i’m looking at stuff like this at the moment. Missed the point ;-)

Using the savings account and paying one lump off the mortgage at the end would leave you better off to the tune of £16.38 over the year if you paid in £150 a month.

Yeah, the 6% isn’t a true interest figure as it’s calculated monthly on the balance.
If you pay the same amount in each month you can basically say the average amount in the account is 1/2 the final balance, in this case £1800, so it’s actually 3% overall interest. ((£1800/2) x 6%)

Given that overpaying the mortgage will bring your term down and reduce the overall interest amount to be paid i’d say it’s far better to do that.

If you look at an overpayment calculator online, a 125K mortgage over 25 years at 4% would be approx £660 a month. If you overpaid £150 a month for the life of the mortgage you’d save 22K in interest, cutting short the repayments by 7 years. Someone show me a savings account as good as that and i’ll bite your arm off!

Also, a hidden benefit of overpaying is that 3% savings rate is now virtually inflation, so you’re losing money on your savings after tax. If we see interest rate hikes which are very likely then those few years off the end of the mortgage could be a few years at a much higher interest rate, that £150 a month overpayment now could save you a lot of money. I’d overpay.

Paisley Freight.

As above, press fit great for headset, happy enough with threaded bb’s but press fit would be OK. My current frame came with one bb thread threaded backwards….

On the same lines, and speaking of carbon frame design, why do carbon frames have one piece bb shells but bonded in headset cups? Why not just a one piece tube bonded inside the headset? Going to be a nightmare changing the bottom cup on the C456.

Yeah, just set her up a new account and enable cloud sync on the iphone, ensure contacts etc are all set with cloud sync turned on.

Do the same thing on the ipad afterwards and it’ll just download everything.

EDIT: missed your last post as I typed, it won’t work if you don’t have icloud on the old iphone as you mention. Best bet might be to create a new user account on your mac for her, then there will be a seperate instance of itunes available for her phone & ipad. Then as long as it’s 3gs or newer you can update the phone to have icloud. I don’t know if you can directly back the contacts up to itunes and then re-import them to an ipad.

Handbrake

I’ve got Superstar switch hubs inside a pair of mavic xm717 rims and they’ve been great. Just replaced the rear bearings after 18 months. Cost £220.

If you want to drop the 2 teeth on the front on the cheap, I run the 34t on-one stainless jobby, only £15 if memory serves.

Never struggled using 1×10 and 34f/11-34r here. I’m a moderate pie eater as well!

You watch porn and think that the bed looks so comfy…

I was concerned when I built my first carbon frame after a couple of problems assembling it and what looked like some cracks inside the headtube, I built it and said i’d take it easy the first few outings and keep checking it.

Taking it easy lasted all of 10m of descent and I haven’t slowed down since… i’m still here ;-) New material paranoia. Does worry me every time a rock hits it though and the sound reminds you your firing down the side of a mountain clipped to a bit of plastic… 8O

If you have carbon paranoia you can watch this antidote:

Get the iPad Mini. No-one knows when the new one will appear, and as soon as that comes out there will be a new one on the horizon.

I’ve just got one, it’s great. I wouldn’t wait for the high res option, it’s going to be thicker and heavier, and it’s a nice size now and has a more than good enough screen. Easy to use and apps for everything.