Maybe the question is, why are Ineos sponsoring bikes? Ratcliffe’s a psychopath who likes to buy control over people then make them dance, is he not getting erect enough from this deal?

Oh god yeah, I’m a tyre addict. I mean, it’s just a part of the hobby I enjoy, always thinking about those little differences and trying to get it <just right>. Even when I hit one that I think stands out- like, the shorty and dhr2 maxxgrips, the conti argotal, the rockrazor- I still always think “OK so let’s go one better”.

My tesco has pigs in blankets and mince pies that are best before mid december. This is the problem I was put on this earth to help with

Didn’t really like the T9 tbh. Thought they bottled it on rubber compound, tbh, it’s like they tried to make a tyre that can go on either end and just made a middle instead, not for the first time. Maxxgrip Shorty is just plain better when it’s really orrible. And whatever sorcerty it is conti put in their soft rubber makes the argotal work better all the rest of the time. TBH I’ve felt the same about the Mary, but I’m dead curious about this casing, I’m a low pressure person and I hate pinginess so I reckon they might work well for me.

I mean, fair enough, Specialized are like 70% as expensive. But I don’t begrudge that £30 or whatever on a 2 grand bike, especially for this sort of pointiest end of riding where being just a little bit better keeps your blood on the inside :)

There’s also the Tough/highgrip without the SG1 cap which is 1295g claimed but seems to be the same tread and rubber. (and weirdly the Tough/Fast is claimed 1427, what’s that all about?).

IME the Tough carcasses are already pretty damn tough, and let’s be honest, even the Light carcasses mostly aren’t very light. I’m honestly not sure who the market is for the Tough + SG1 but damn sure it’s not me. But a super-dhr2? Yeah maybe.

**** it, ordered a trail pro mary in ultrasoft to try. Not waiting for the argotal and the HRIII is expensive! Dead curious to see how it works

bgreenback
Free Member

Are all Schwalbe tyres going to be radial, or will you still be able to buy the non radial versions?

I reckon it’ll only ever be their more full-on tyres, anything that slows a tyre down is a hard sell for most people but at least everyone understands “ultrasoft” or “moar knobbly”.

Thanks Ben. Yeah I have zero issues with the sidewalls on any of the schwalbes I’ve used too, not since the old days anyway.

Aaaagh. I am just so conflicted, I want to try these AND the highroller III DD AND I really want that enduro/ultrasoft argotal that’s coming Any Time Now but I can’t afford ’em all to try! Especially with the HRIII at £80. Tredz has the trail pro MM at £69 now, that’s tempting. It’s a good thing, to have such awesome seeming choice but it’s still frustrating, especially as we’re just tipping into “soft argotal isn’t quite cutting it” season.

On that note, all credit to Schwalbe for giving it a good clear name to google! And on the same note, **** you Maxxis :)

I always say the same thing, if you want a rule to live by, it’s “grip on the back”, that is the good advice that will work out OK for the most people most of the time and is therefore smart. Every tyre manufacturer says the same.

But that doesn’t mean it’s always best. I did several years in a Focus with winter tyres on the front, normal tyres on the back. Tried it both ways, there’s literally zero doubt in my mind that winters on the front was better and safer in most circumstances, ie overall better and safer. The front did all the work, on that car, the rear brakes were vestigal tbf and the rear could follow the front in corners easily despite less grip. On another car, it could be different. And no doubt it also depends on your “normal” tyres, some handle low temps or front or ice or snow better than others.

People rightly say “understeer is better than oversteer” but what’s better than either is “steer”. It’s not as simple as swapping one for the other, because it just doesn’t follow that they happen with the same frequency. Is, say, 10 incidents of understeer or straightlining better than one of oversteer or turning the front but sliding the rear? Not just in the outcome of those incidents, but in the 9 that nothing bad happened at all and you just went round the corner. THAT’s where it gets complicated. You could easily have “turned but slid” or “braked but slid” that means you don’t hit the thing or hit it slower. Stopping with poor control but quicker can be better than stopping in a perfectly straight line but a longer distance. Or it can be worse.

And the fronts do so much of the work on many cars- most of the steering, all the power, most of the braking, all of the engine braking. The rears may well be able to do their easier job with less grip.

Which means that a huge part of it is really down to the driver, and not skill but attitude. Are you the sort of person to try and drive carefully well within the limits of all four tyres? Or are you the sort of person that is likely to overwhelm the grip? The two have very different results, because the latter driver is way more likely to think “I have not slid therefore i can go faster” and therefore way more likely to let confidence in the front overwhelm the rear. And tbh i think the latter is probably the default, most people drive until something unsettling happens and that’s absolutely fine.

No, not a driving god.

kimbers
Full Member

I did think him stranding all his fans in the desert he cause he hadn’t paid his coach bill was quite amusing

What’s not so funny is that everyone of them will still vote for him, without once wondering if he can’t run a small gathering of people on a farm, why he’d be able to run a country

Even while it was still happening they were hatching conspiracy theories, it was all Harris’s fault, she’d personally cancelled all teh buses, that sort of thing.

This despite the fact that Trump did <literally the same thing> at at least one rally in 2020.

And it seems like it’s not even “hadn’t paid the bill”, both times it looks like they literally just booked the buses one way. The audience only matters until they turn up, afterwards they might as well die.

Just finished Voyage by Stephen Baxter. Was recommended it after falling in love with teh alt-history space race of For All Mankind, I’ve read a ton of sf but I wanted something 60s/70s, all tobacco stains and bakelite, like Lady Astronaut. This absolultely delivered, it’s an alternative history if Kennedy had survived and an alternative space race where they cut back on the moon, binned the shuttle but went to Mars instead using super-Saturns. Too many characters, and the pacing’s odd but the basic thrust of it was fantastic. I’ve read some Baxter before and never really engaged with it fully but this one got me. Not entirely sure if it would have if not for me having that specific request, but, still enjoyed it a lot.

SSRIs mess with the computer your software runs on, the side effects can be damn nearly anything, especially in the buildup phase.

I’ve brought tons of tweed valley soil back to my garden abd washing machine over the years

Veeeery specific but a long time ago I went and saw a band, Terris, play my local venue. I think they’d just signed a minor deal but they were still nobodies, I came out completely convinced that they were going to be massive, we might see them headlining festivals etc in a few years. I’ve never been so certain. The album bombed completely and they sank without trace, I assume they’re all teachers now.

Meanwhile the coheadliners were obviously never going to amount to anything. Literally days later they had their first top 40 hit, about 3 months later they released a single called Yellow, then put their debut album straight in at number one, it was bloody Coldplay.

Might be worth mentioning that sapim now (quietly) specifically do not recommend the Laser for mountain bike builds. Myself, i think this is bollocks, it’s comparable to a revolution (the Laser is literally the same spoke as the cx-ray with less forging, every Laser could have been squished flat and become fancy). I think they changed teh advice to stop people using them as cheap light spokes, personally.

In an odd twist Sapim’s nipples are almost exactly the same shape as PHR nipples, I use them in all my DT builds just because special tools can **** right off, especially special tools that were designed for wheel building machines not for us.

last comment- building a whole wheel is way easier than straightening a bent wheel. It’s more intimidating because you’re starting from nothing but actually it’s better to start from nothing than to start from bollocksed. good luck!

FunkyDunc
Free Member

I wonder what the environmental consequences are?

I mean, not great, they burn a load of hydrocarbons and occasionally blow one up. And the local damage around boca chica has been pretty bad (it is barking mad that they were allowed to build there tbf). In particular some of the emissions are high atmosphere which is believed to have a more significant and lasting effect.

But in the grand scheme of things, the commercial aviation industry emits more in a few hours than all our space launches do in a year. I hereby donate my reduced air travel emissions since 2019 to cool rockets.

(stuff like this test should actively reduce the environmental impact, we can reuse more stuff rather than burning it up or throwing it in the sea… On the other hand of course is there’s a cost saving too so we’ll probably fly more launches. Starship if it realises even half its potential basically makes it possible to launch stuff that we just wouldn’t today so that’ll be impactful. On the other, third hand, it will also enable us to launch more stuff in a single launch. Complicated. Without a doubt our space emissions are going up but there’s tweaking in there)

It is a damn shame but tbh which tracks get a visit every year? Leogang, les gets, msa and fort william including champs, if I’m right? (nothing in the rules obviously, I’m just fairly sure they’re the only venues that have been every year for the last 5).

I’m curious if they’ll have the desire and the ability to put on a big show anyway. You can’t beat the worlds but,something like the first time Tweedlove “lost” ie could not be ****ed dealing with the EWS and just did the Our Own Event With Hookers And Blackjack thing. Fort William Invitational. Maybe a bit late to bring back kill the bill eh. **** it, run the endurance race again with the big noise again, do something to keep the place in the eye. Big weekend/bookended week of stuff. WHo knows maybe they could even…

squirrelking
Free Member

It’s had a bloody good run, I remember the double header 4x years. I don’t think Nevis have put a shovel near that track since Phil Saxena walked off of it.

Yeah but that’s pretty much inevitable, the economics just don’t make any sense. They do just enough to keep it basically fit for purpose, but of course 4X tracks are so expensive to build/rebuild. They hosted a protour in, what, 2022 but even the uk series can’t be bothered and no wonder, it’s a bloody long way to ride the same old track but also the series is about the only southern dominated bike racing there is- not a single event north of Bedford last season.

Meanwhile they’re basically guaranteed 2 big dh races a year plus the everyday income, plus they’ve still got a blue to un****. Nothing to be done about it unless you’ve got a golden goose.

I was expecting a near-failure, and tbh thought that was what we were getting right up til the last moments, really impressed. I love how <unconvincing> it is. Like, it’s real but it looks fake as ****, just like the falcon landings (and especialyl the twinned ones)

With the exception of sandbags, nothing they’re doing will be noticable in 20 years, the only bits of the older stuff that are recognisibly “altered” or “vandalised” or whatever are the bits that still get ridden. Apparently there’s a commitment to remove all sandbags and structures when the “zone” gets retired but inevitably some’ll be missed or impractical to remove. There’s a lot more digging and “damage” than there used to be but it’s still an absolute flyspec.

So I think it more or less comes down to whether you think there’s something sacred about the exact shape it was before, but the whole landscape is a product of constant erosion, so equally if you don’t build trails then come back in 20 years it’ll also not be the same as it was before.

(as an interesting side effect, the old Rampage site, which is state owned, was put up for sale and had oil and gas drilling licences granted. Both the sale and the licences were subsequently cancelled and mountain bikers were given a large part of the credit for that- they were both the largest body of protests, and also helped raise awareness and funds to support the local communities in their own actions)

BoardinBob
Full Member

Never mind that, the real issue is the fact there’s you, Northwind, and some other 3rd rate tribute act, TheNorthwind on here

And I hope they take the bullet that I so richly deserve

MadBillMcMad
Full Member

Just realised. This event was October 10th and the previous major event was May 10th

I was in the highlands for the last one, staying in a wee hut thing in the middle of nowhere with perfect dark skies. Slept through it all. And it’s very unkind of you to bring it up.

Last year some time… But it was pure neglect, the chain was shagged and I knew it.

Every other time I’ve used it for at least 5 years has been on someone else’s bike. But I’ve got a topeak hexus that has a decent chaintool built in so there’s no reason not to have it.

I seem to be the only person in the world whose photos make it look less good than it was! I was so lucky, only noticed the fb updates, alerts etc late on and so ended up going out about 11pm which was bang on the peak here. Ended up in an ideal spot by mistake- the place I went to is a bit blocked out for northern views but has low light pollution, but in the end the display was actually more in the south and just incredible directly overhead, I didn’t plan for that in the slightest. Froze my baws off but again by luck bailed pretty much just as it dropped off.

I’ve seen the lights from here a bunch of times but usually just vague greenness. This wasn’t hugely bright but it was everywhere. Incredible.

https://imgur.com/a/vWjK0c1

mudfish
Full Member

How are the Columbia’s for size. Do they come up small or large?
is a uk 10 like a normal UK 10?

I think just pretty normal? They’re definitely wider/more relaxed then the five ten gtx,but I think a bit narrower than a normal freerider, if that’s any use.

This sounds possibly like what happened to me- I got a penalty, pleaded guilty and paid up, but there was an issue with my licence (not my fault, but in fairness something I was aware of and had never got round to fixing- a category problem where the DVLA records and my physical licence were out of shape due to a historic error on their part). So the licence was rejected, and that meant it timed out and went to the next step. Basically it was enough to bump it out of the automatic processes that probably handle 99% of these.

(I ended up in court and it all ended up laughably because I got sent to the wrong waiting room, missed being called, and then they dismissed it in my absence so I ended up getting no fine, no points. But I think equally I might have ended up in deeper shit :) )

I’d absolutely, massively recommend against the Five Ten EPS. It seems to be for “american winter”, brilliant in a really cold, dry day, snow and ice. But barely even water resistant never mind waterproof. You can have wet feet after literally one fast puddle, it’s really noticable that they describe it as “weather resistant”. I plastered mine with waterproofing stuff and that raised them up to “nearly good enough” but they’re still not great. And as a bonus, the insulation doesn’t work well when wet either so once you’re wet you get cold too. Oh and to cap it off they are slow to dry. They are IMO utter shit for the UK frankly.

Ironically the Freerider DLX is more waterproof (but only comes in a low fit), if they’d used the same upper on the EPS it’d be a much better shoe. DLX + long trousers can work really surprisingly well, but they need to be properly long trousers so they always hang over the shoe.

I quite like the Five Ten GTX but found them clumpy and lacking in feel, plus like others I find actually getting them on and off a battle. Sizing is very important with these I think and I’m just not quite the right shape for them, maybe. But having a proper bootie is a huge bonus in really wet conditions, especially when the water’s coming down not up. Ironically my main beef is that they’re too warm- I’d love to wear them more for pissing wet spring/autumn/failed summer days but they’re just too hot for me in anything but cold weather. And in cold weather I prefer my Columbias. So they’re a near miss in a lot of ways but a million times better than the EPS, and just occasionally on a cold AND really wet day they shine.

nixie
Full Member

The Columbia boots are not waterproof, not grippy and the sole is too flexible for MTB IMO. I have a set and they are great for dog walks and watching kids sport when it’s cold but rubbish as an MTB shoe.

Are they the Fairbanks Omnis you have? Because I have 2 pairs of those and love them, absolutely love them. IME they’re ironically terrible for walking, the mud grip is inadequate. But they are decently waterproof, maybe one step short of goretex but better than most, and they stay warmer when wet becasue of the barrier layer. The grip is IMO fine, better than a lot of mtb shoes I’ve had. The tread pattern is all wrong but the rubber has decent grip on pins (I’m on Nukeproof Horizons mostly, obvioously grip can be quite pedal dependent)

I can definitely see they’d be too flexible for some people though. For myself I hate stiff clumpy soles and even more so in bad weather, I like the amount of feel and feedback these give when everything’s orrible. I suspect a fair amount of the grip comes from the softness?

I have a set of the Five Ten GTX as I mentioned but I far prefer the Columbias except when it’s really wet. For a dry/dryish day with a lot of water on the ground, they’re by far my favourite shoes. Again, too hot for anything but cold weather but it feels like less of a drawback than the Five Ten GTX. I’ll be pretty much living in these again for the next few months of tweed valley slop.

I had the previous version of the Rab Cirrus, was a bit disappointed that they didn’t last, warm and cozy but I think they’re just basically designed for relatively infrequent use and I wore em too much? They didn’t fall apart or anything, they just got compressed and tired and baggy and lost a bunch of their warmth.

Nearly got another pair even so as they were lovely while they lasted but I ended up with the same amazon specials as Johndoh, had em a year now and they’re good as new and still very warm and comfy. Not quite as warm as the Rabs and they don’t have the same super soft sleeping bag feel, they’re a wee bit more shoe-ey.

(I know you said “not popping to the bin” but honestly being able to pop to the bin in your slippers is really good)

Rich_s
Full Member

it’s about the “fastest growing economy” line and provides the background.

Gaaaahhhhhhhhh. God I hate this shit. everyone else has a recovery, we essentially don’t, and then when they inevitably slow we celebrate because for one week we outrun them. It’s like the obsession with recessions, .000001% reduction for 2 quarters is a disaster, 1% reduction followed by .000001% improvement is a recovery. It’s jsut an absolute nightmare that the easiest to understand version of events is also really false.

I used to do a job where we had a limited number of places to fill. Most years we’d fill most of them, it’d vary a little bit, but tbf it had very little to do with anythign we did that year, it was mostly about demographics. But then one year we filled them all, and oh my god, the howls of derision when we said “next year we will definitely not fill more places”. Surrounded by intelligent people but nobody could grasp reversions to the mean, or “we did as well as we possibly could this year, please stop asking us to do better”.

Course, we did treat every .0000001% increase as proof of our absolute genius and hard work, and every 1% decrease as being just unavoidable market stuff, we’re only human.

mattyfez
Full Member

anecdotally (from reddit) I’m reading that republican politocos repeatedly voted against supplying funding for hurricane aid, because that would be communist or something, and are now attacking the democrats for not giving aid, even though they (republicans) blocked the bill in the fist place..

The logic is sound, it’s just also evil- if a win for america is a win for the ruling party then a disaster for america is a disaster for the democrats. These people are praying for the biggest storm, the most deaths, the most damage. Treason but with extra words.

Plus, it’s doubly confusing to talk about these long timescales because we’re also far more exposed to storms than we were, what with the sheer level of development and population distribution and whatnot and the complexity of modern infrastructure. Equally we do have better storm protection but some stuff, you can’t protect against. So “severity of storm” can be quite uncoupled from “extent of damage”. Same as “we ****ed up all the rivers and built right beside them and drained off all the uplands and now everything floods” but on a much grander scale.

If I had a pound for everyone that calls me Northwood I’d have at least three pounds. Which isn’t a lot but it’s still surprising that it’s more than one.

smatkins1
Free Member

Put your finger on the valve quick to keep the air in while you grab the core to screw it in?

Yeah honestly I think this is the correct answer. I mean, health and safety 30psi limit aside, Northwind accepts no responsibility for any hideous deaths caused by embolisms.

Rubber_Buccaneer
Full Member

^ Agree with all that but the profile of these rims made your green method a right pain with a tape similar to Tessa as it wanted to wrinkle and the offset spoke holes meant I wouldn’t trust the blue method as the edge of the tape would be too close to the spoke holes.

They look like this

Ah yeah, I had chinese rims shaped like that (tbf I think Reserve were “inspired” by them much as Specialized admit they were inspired by Lightbicycle and Enve blatantly were) and they’re great in how they lock up the bead, but there was definitely a tradeoff in the taping. Can’t actually remember what I ended up doing with those but I had more failures on tyre changing than anything else I can think of. Bike got nicked, possibly I never got a complrtely happy result on the tape.

FunkyDunc Free Member

But you have bought the wrong tyres for the driving you do. They need a bit of heat in them to work well, and are designed for ‘pressing on’.

If you mean the Eagles it depends exactly which one, I reckon they’ve changed focus a bit, I had the old Asym 3 and it was just a very good everyday sport/touring tyre, didn’t need to be driven hard and tbh ran out of steam a bit quick if you did. The 6 is definitely a more sporty tyre and gives up a little bit of those everyday manners for sure.

The thing about “get a rain tyre” is, well, what is that? Most allseasons are designed with rain in mind and most allrounders too but there’s not a raindrop icon for sidewalls to go beside M&S or a wee mountain. Premiumcontact’s supposed to be great in the wet,but so is a vector, what’s the better “rain tyre”? It feels to me like that’s just something that’s hard to ID, as a punter. Especially as grouptests uqite sensibly tend to compare “to the winner” not to an overall score, just cos conditions vary. (I am also discounting the Rainsport, because ime they’re just not much good)

I’m just getting some Vectors on mine to replace some older gen winters and tbh they’re all seasons and it’ll be snow and ice where they really earn their keep and keep things safe, and they’ll see a lot of sub-7, but I also expect them to absolutely kick ass in the rain. AND be good in the dry for that matter. I’m not sure there’s much wet weather or everyday sacrifice here in order to get the winter performance, or at least that is my hope! Feels like we’re getting past that.

Does anyone know what SRAM use on their wheels? It’s absolutely brilliant ime. Just seems to stick to the rims better than anything else, while not sticking to the tyres so it’s less likely to get damaged by tyre changes. But it’s unrealistically expensive, I think you can only get it in the kits not by the roll.

Also, friends don’t let friends use gorilla tape for tubeless.

Unusual opinion I think but… If the rim is wide enough and also welded/sealed, the best tape is electric tape, but ONLY doing the middle of the rim. Unless your tape just sucks or was fitted wrong, most tubeless failures are caused when you remove a tyre and it takes the tape with it, whether by pushing into it or being stuck to it. This way, the tape isn’t in contact with the tyre, or in its way as you remove it. You avoid the adhesion/strength issues entirely and all it’s doing is sealing the holes, and you let the rim do all the handling of the tyre. Like the blue example in this:

View post on imgur.com

2 wraps of electric tape is good for up to at least 40psi, probably higher but that’s as high as I’ve gone. 1 wrap will hold 30psi but it feels a bit marginal, I didn’t trust it to last- lots of stretch around the holes.

You can pretty much always find cheap Oko Hi Fibre somewhere, that link looks good though.

It’s the exact same thing as the Halo Fibre-Tech in bikesandboots’ link that got 4.5 stars. IME it seals about as well as Stans (who really knows? Punctures are a bit random) but it lasts better- it’s water based and also water soluble so as long as you don’t let it dry up completely you can re-dilute it with more water. (once it’s dry, it’s dry, though- like water based paint) It’s fairly thick so some people recommend diluting it straight from the bottle, not sure it’s necessary myself.

So it’s cheap to buy and it lasts and it works, can’t see past it. Only downside is you can’t guarantee finding it in a random bike shop and you can’t mix it with stans, which you pretty much CAN guarantee finding.

Kirroughtree is worth the drive from Dumfries and seems like the best match for what you describe. It’s quite a big ride and arguably is a little bit low return for hte effort- there’s a fair amount of flat pedalling to make the loop work- but I still love it. Unique features, lovely forest to ride in, the endless (if high effort) talnotry hill descent… Lovely.

Dalbeattie I think has some closures, it also has some really good standout signature features though.

Ae trail centre, imo, just kinda sucks. It lacks the really standout character of those other two, and it’s a lot of effort for what you get (the actual decent bits are kind of on 4 corners of a box, and you have to commute between them). But its offpiste is absolutely superb- not the easiest to navigate but absolutely worth the effort if you’re into that kind of riding. I’ll never go to Ae for the trail centre again to be brutally honest but I’ll definitely return there for the other stuff that’s grown around it. Much like innerleithen only more so, the official trails were basically a seed for something better.

Mabie I really like, it’s another lovely forest to ride in, it has a lot of character, very definitely oldschool but as long as you’re expecting that it’s a lovely ride. And again some really good offpiste options though they’re a little fiddly to build into a ride.

thepurist
Full Member

How does the price difference of DT vs unofficial ratchet compare to the potential faff of a (likely wet and cold) ride home with a slipping freehub?

TBH the smart thing to do at least for a while is just stick the DT ratchets in your bag. I’ve not placed with the new EXP hubs yet but swapping ratchets is easily trailsidable- though if there’s any debris that’s not ideal of course.

Yeah, it’s just one of a bunch of factors- the tyres actually seem fine, no cracking at all and they were working fine as of last winter. But luckily they’re also getting low on tread for winters, so I don’t need to find out :)

I bought a super cheap chinese one just to try but so far I’ve been too scared :P

@Pjay, the ratchet just falls out when you take the freehub off, no special tools, no need to change the freehub.

I don’t know that car, but, the first question is if it’s before or after the air filter. Before, it’ll be basically just a cold air duct, not really doing anything too much. After, it can be a bit more critical because obviously a hole could let dirt or water in after the filter straight to the engine, but also the engine is basically an air pump so it wants to suck things in through the holes (and also wants to squeeze the tube in a bit), plus any leaks can mess with the MAF.

But on a naturally aspirated car you can generally just wrap the hell out of it and call it good. really needs to come out of the car and be completely clean for this but anything will do teh job as long as there’s a lot of it. I like stretched on electric tape for this sort of bodge, some people swear by self amalgamating tape, main thing is lots of overlap so the tape is a seal in itself and just uses the pipe as a skeleton.

bodgy of course but effective. The car doesn’t care why the pipe’s airtight