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

Never could quite settle down to watch MSA, it’s just so damn fast, you see these sections and think “yeah that looks like fun” and then they go through it so quick you couldn’t even identify a rock or a stump. Just freaks me out a bit more than most

Well this was nice, decided to downsize a bit (because I’m struggling to get back into playing since a couple of hand injuries and just not enjoying it that much) and in the meantime cleaned out my spares box, found a bunch of bits I don’t need, stuck em on ebay, sold most of em in a day and made about £250. Randomly had stored away a 90s floyd rose original I took out of my mij strat to do a colour swap, and a duncan dimebucker that I don’t think I ever even fitted.

Now the hard part, trying to convince myself to sell an actual guitar :) Anyone want, uh a 1989 Squire Tele MIK (made by Samick) with upgraded electronics, or an Epiphone Genesis Pro from 2013? ie the one when they went “screw everyone else for copying our designs, turnabout’s fair play, we are going to make a Yamaha SG1000”

Think I’m going to keep my mutant MIJ fender HRR, if only because I hacked it about til its configuration makes no sense at all and no bugger’d want it :) Just need to actually work out how to wire it up, I’ve carefully forgotten everything I knew about guitar electronics in the literal decades since I bought all the parts.

madhouse
Full Member

Was defo getting it but the stickers sealed the deal :D

I mean I like stickers but these ones will definitely trigger my “never use the stickers, preserve them at all costs for the future perfect sticker location” instints

The newer collapsible spares are quite interesting too for this. But neither of my cars have spares (one never had room, the other has an lpg tank), tbh flats are just rare now with modern tyres especially if you keep on top of wear etc, so I’m happy to maybe goop it and then otherwise breakdown it.

(or one time, walk home and get another wheel)

Aside; I checked the manufacture dates on my winters thinking they’re getting a bit old now and the pair that I’m about to replace are almost 10 years! That crept up on me, super easy thing to stay on top of but you have to actually do it, “once a year” checks are some of the easiest things to overlook though. Can’t even guess how often I’ve checked tread depth, condition,looked for cracks, checked pressures etc and missed that.

Really interesting stuff this, it seems to me a bit like a resonator in an exhaust pipe- getting it right is going to be damn nearly impossible for most people, but, you probably don’t have to get it exactly right, you only have to get it so that it’s on balance an advantage and that’s got to be much easier. I reckon it might actually wokr really well for us dobbers who’re probably more consistent in speed and what we ride, and also quite possibly we’d benefit from using them to tune for effects that aren’t <really> that big of a deal, like chatter etc that fast guys just ignore but that freak us out. So there could be a lot of divergence between what works for pros and for us, much like suspension setup.

I like stuff like this that my first reaction is to go “well that’s obviously bollocks” and then you dig a bit deeper…

matt_outandabout
Full Member

2. Would it work to strap them to a helmet to stop your head (eyes) wobbling?

Quite possibly but you want your helmet to be as light as possible so as to not snap your neck and to reduce concussive brain injury (heavier = more dwell time at high forces = just as bad as hitting yourself harder.

I like my Teng ones- good shape handle, good fit, and you can stick another screwdriver through the hole in teh handle for extra torque (or while leaning on the driver to keep it placed in the screw). Not good for strikethrough though. The tips last forever unlike some.

trail_rat
Free Member

It’s not all their all seasons neither vector 4s nor quatracs are included which is shit cause they are the only 2 decent ones that are made for my car they don’t do cc or cc2to fit

Works on Vector 4 gen 3 for me? Maybe a size thing? ATS worked out a good bit cheaper though in the same size.

Get one of those depth-adjustable spoke drivers and a little drill/electric screwdrivers. Massively speeds it up, both because it gets the basic assembly done super fast but also it means every spoke starts equally tensioned

I reckon you could build a usable wheel just using one of these doofers. Not a good wheel mind you.

We had similiar with a load of vintage football and speedway books of my dad’s, they were all worthless, until my brother found a sympathetic and enthusiast specialist shop who bought ’em all, some for his own collection.

dyna-ti
Full Member

Occasional squirt with some cheapo lidl level tin of spray oil keeps the insides functioning smoothly

Yah but the nature of the beast is you do it religiously then you think “well it’s working perfectly” and forget about it after a year or two and then it ****s you.

I’ve no idea what the most number of reuses I’ve done is but it’s going to be at least 3 or 4, with no issues.

The limiting factor isn’t really the olive, as long as you can slightly compress it each time to make the seal it’ll work fine, these aren’t high pressure systems. So that means the limiting factor on reuse is really the thread on the lever. The failure mode isn’t really “olive leaks because it’s reused”, it’s either “olive leaks because it’s not tight enough” or “lever body cracks because you had to try and compress an already squished olive”. (which gets more likely depending on how much of a gorilla you are of course, because the more overtightened it was the first time, teh more squished the olive is and the more pressure it needs to squish it more)

BruceWee
Full Member

Yeah, but you’d have to make the coffee while he was doing it ;)

I was not trusted with teh big fancy steam engine :)

IHN
Full Member

Cock-up, not conspiracy.

If she was going to tip him off she’d have just done so and we wouldn’t have know about it, otherwise what’s the point…

The cockup was letting her team know about it, at which point someone leaked it.

The only strange thing about it is that she still has a job, she chose to give up everything except for her “contacts” at tory head office and now that’s pointless. Why is there an interview with Johnson? Why is she doing it? All she has to offer us now is an insider’s view of a disgraced failure.

Almost as if they’ve been eavesdropping, black circles has a 15% off all their allseasons. But they’re not necessarily the cheapest, ATS Euromaster has a good discount on the vectors which looks to be the best price around and runs til the end of the month.

I feel like it’s a 3-way race between the new not-radial Schwalbes, the Highroller 3 in more carcasses, and the supersoft-on-enduro-carcass, to see what becomes available and affordable first. They all look bloody awesome if they can live up to expectations.

Definitely NOT onguard IME, you can keep them going with effort and oiling but they’re not built for weather. Awesome value, they do some very useful locks for peanuts but weather is their one failing.

Ah curses securityforbikes are out of shackles for their excellent d-locks (but not out of locking parts!)

I think it’s reasonable to be wary of Amazon but I have 2 Blinks and they’ve been superb. They both run on USB power or battery, the app is good with its ease of use, remote storage and good pushes. They don’t have local storage but the remote stuff works great. Only complaint is they’re supposed to be outdoors cameras and they suck at rain, no lens protection etc. But that’s OK for you.

squirrelking
Free Member

Why? You want the better tyres on the back, understeer > oversteer.

Well. it’s complicated. Most importantly it’s not just as simple as “understeer > oversteer” because often it actually ends up “just go round the corner without any fuss > understeer or oversteer” if you have more grip on the front, the probability change as well as the outcomes. You get different losses of control but you are probably in more overall control more of the time, especially when you drive accordingly and carefully.

In really low grip conditions especially it can amount to “stop but in a big ugly skid” or “change directions while shitting yourself” > “just hit the thing”. But a big difference is that with the grip on the back and not enough on the front you can’t steer around things, whereas at least with grip on the front but not the back you have a chance.

The standard advice of course is “better on back” and if you have to live by a rule that’s the one to live by. But really it’s not so simple and people and vehicles differ and IME that gets much more extreme in bad conditions. I did a few years with winters front and anti-winters on the back on one of my old cars and it worked great- the front did almost all the braking, all the drive, all the engine braking, all the steering, the rear only had to follow and needed a fraction of the grip to do that. Whereas when I experimented on the same car with the winters on the back according to the advice it was a dart looking for something to go straight into. It could slow down in better control but it took easily twice as far to actually stop, and it couldn’t steer. There’s literally no question that for me, on that particular shitbox, it was the correct option. 4 winters would be better of course but 4 normal tyres would be worse. Over enough miles I reckon you’d have 50 incidents but all pointing forwards, for every 1 or 2 incidents pointing the wrong way. I would rather crash going forwards, but I would rather not crash, I would rather not hit the kid at all rather than have an argument about whether they’d rather be hit with the nose or the boot. Equally to all that, on my current car I reckon that’d suck.

Equally if you’re the sort of idiot that goes “I’ll drive as fast as I can til I lose traction” then it’s a REALLY GOOD RULE. And a lot of people are like that. Or are low awareness, or have never really encountered a skid and will be working it out for the first time ever when they’re trying not to hit someone. So for sure if in any doubt it’s the way to go, but IMO it is not something to be a slave to,it is good general advice.

The way people drive in snow and ice is just… aaagh. Appalling. And no I am not Surf-Mat. But you don’t need to be a driving god, by my observations you just have to not suck. or be incredibly stupid or just ignoring the conditions entirely or be obsessed with trying to get going while giving no thought to stopping and turning, to be probably in the top 10% of drivers in snow or ice.

Sorry that got really big!

martib
Full Member

Crankworx Fort William, come on Crankworx you know you want too.

They do not. They could put on a really good event outside of the worlds and I hope they do but what they definitely don’t want to do is build a load of new stuff. They <allegedly> got pretty much given a Hardline event on condition of building appropriate trails and just went lol no that is not how we roll.

desperatebicycle
Full Member

I’m guessing, but as that fella builds perfect wheels in about 15 minutes, his blue tool saves a fair bit of time with the spoke destressing.

Yep, this is the real difference between amateur and pro wheelbuilding- I can build a boring, regular type wheel that’s probably 95% as good as the best wheel you can buy and tbf that is not very hard, but, it takes me like 2 hours. Whereas the pro guy I used to use could take a laced wheel and make it as good as my best, while having a conversation with someone else and watching the shop and answering a phone, in a few minutes.

Vance had a good night- it’s pretty interesting, because it’s really obvious that his move to trumpworld is entirely cynical and tactical and that it’s not his natural stance, but that’s true of a lot of people and often they seem to forget it themselves and end up basically gaslighting themselves. Whereas clearly with Vance it’s something he’s continuing to decide to do and he can actually still be more reasonable and civil, he just mostly chooses not to. Urgh.

Walz was stodgy but solid enough, he did land some pretty good blows though. It was never likely to be the part of the job that he shone at tbf. But across the entire debate I think it was a pretty clearcut if narrow Vance win. And not just a “Trump win” of “he didn’t just shit his pants and speak in tongues so he exceeded expectations”. Vance was dishonest both in position and in statement while Walz was mostly pretty straight but, that’s the game.

Thing is though, when you look away from the total debate and put it into the 10 second videos and buzzwords and such, it’s a bit different. Walz’s handful of direct attacks like on January 6th end up looking better, and he didn’t really do anything that makes for a 10 second <bad> video. Whereas Vance inevitably had a bunch of lies that will play really well to the Trumpists, but he also had a couple of really bad moments that look bad to everyone- getting caught outright lying, fact checked, then responding with whiny mumbling and “the rules were that you weren’t going to fact check” is a terrible look and was almost perfectly delivered for the internet age.

In the end, it’s almost the definition of the “do no harm” debate but it was more of an opportunity for Walz.

Cougar
Full Member

There was a time I would argue that you don’t scale your systems according to atypical demand. Like, when the mobile network used to melt at 11:55pm every New Year’s Eve – it would be stupid to build infrastructure to cope with that and have 80% of it dormant for the rest of the year.

But that was then. Today, cloud computing enables entities to spin servers up and down based on demand. It’s perfectly plausible to have multiple servers automatically power up to react to load and then shut down again to save money. With Ticketbastard it’s either incompetence or wilful obstinance.

Plus, we’re not even talking here about freak events or absolute maximums – Oasis was unusually big but the Biffy shows I mentioned that caused the site to fall over constantly for an hour are the Barras and Shepherd’s Bush Empire, it’s a total turnout of like 12000 people I think. I mean sure, the demand was higher than that but it’s just not that big an event. P!nk exploded it, Taylor Swift nuked it, Iron Maiden broke it, Springsteen’s going to break it… I don’t go to mega shows so the fact I’ve had like 4 or 5 terrible experiences with their website since the pandemic says a lot.

And when it breaks, it usualy breaks badly. No pre-queueing, no real durability (so if you’re in a multi-screen operation and the website’s flaky but not completely broken you end up having to repeat processes, which of course drives up their traffic…).

But like i say it’s not failure exactly, they just don’t give a shit, there’s no real consequences to them and no real alternative and therefore no motivation to do better.

TBH I think the really impressive thing with the best modern allseasons isn’t really the bad weather performance, it’s the good weather performance. Or rather it’s the “both ends” performance, it’s clearly much harder to do a tyre that does everything well than it is to make compromises somewhere, and have decent snow and decent wet and decent dry compared to, say, terrible snow, good wet good dry, or as with traditional winter tyres great snow, good wet bad dry. Winters have got better at this too. Arguably a lot of “normal tyres” and supersports and supertouring got worse and probably have stayed there. T

(one thing I always think about these tests is they tend to miss the real nasties, refrozen ice, mixed up slush-and-ice, etc. Snow is not that bad in comparison! But those conditions are just really difficult to test for fairly, and I reckon they might really divide some otherwise good performing tyres. But there’s even allseasons that seem to really deal with that well, while not all snow tyres really do.)

There’s still the whole wear thing (ie, winter performance falling off so much faster as you lose sipes and depth, which is hard to manage on a single set of wheels) but that’s just not enough for most people.

Modern tyres are just ace.

I’m doing Orksober, giving up waaaaghing for the month

Something properly thermostatted and controllable, is my main thing. It makes so much difference, and it’s one of those unfair things where it makes it easier for learners while experienced people can usually get good results with any old crap. You don’t have to spend a fortune though, I can’t find teh exact one I have online now (old model I guess) but it was about £50.

Hot air can be really useful too, I probbaly use the air gun on mine more than the iron. “rework station” is a good search term if you want that.

Shitloads :) But also I’ve been on ebay since before there was an ebay.co.uk so it adds up.

I stand on ’em but then I weigh 60kg, that might not be such a good idea if you’re a big un

Yeah I’d print that in petg, it’s good layerwise at least, not too many weak spots and I’m assuming it wouldn’t need perfect dimensionality so you could go a wee bit hot for super strong layers and not worry too much if it were a tiny bit out of shape. Nylon’d probably be better but I suck at nylon :)

Thing with libraries is the machines are cheap but the skills to keep em running and get good prints are not so common. I donated an old one to a student society and it was totally “you cannot have this as a shared resource, you need one specific nerd who is in charge of it and will spend time on it or it will break then gather dust. It’s easy to be negative about all the underused ones but i think a better way to think of it is you really need 3 or 4 machines out there in order to have one find good soil AND a good audience.

alexandersupertramp
Free Member

where is the best place for buying the 3D printer filament from?

buying 10’at a time seems to bring the cost per KG massively.

Amazon’s generally good… Esun are a consistently reliable manufacturer, not the cheapest but very rarely crap. 1kg is the standard size, beware of cheeky sellers with 500g or 800g reels priced as if they’re kgs. Also beware of 3mm filament, 1.75 is the absolute standard now but there’s still some 3mm out there.

But mostly if you’re not printing yourself it’s better for the printer person to get their own- filaments have varying character, you get used to what you use, a new material or even type like a glow or clear filament can take a fair amount of effort to get a good result out of and what thta mostly means is “you get a less good print for your money”

I think it might just be as simple as “we make most of the money off the commercial storefront stuff, but private sellers bring us the visibility and audience that made the commercial side work” sort of thing. I wouldn’t be surprised if we do see some sort of enshittification, “optional” optimisation etc.

But it’s definitely good for me, I’ve paid easily over a grand, probably over 2 in ebay fees over the year, never regretted it as the extra visibility you get’s worth every penny but it’ll be nicer to just not :) Especially since my actual sales have fallen tons in recent years with the cost of living crisis etc, I’ll be putting the fee cut straight into the sale price

arrpee
Free Member

While I’m getting all pipe-and-slippers, another thing that made me nostalgic was the last leg of the climb up to the start of the black: techy, engaging, and just the perfect gradient. I’m sure you can find new examples out there, but it feels like a bit of a lost art in modern trail-building.

It is so good isn’t it. Makes the fireroad parts feel miserable. A good climb is like sorcery, even if it’s harder to ride it still gets you to the top with less psychic effort.

This is partly a demand thing though, it costs about as much to build a climb or a descent and it’s just so obvious that most people don’t dig a techy or even a nontechy wellmade climb. Like, people chose to go up the fireroad to the buzzard’s nest at glentress, some people basically get off and push at laggan and golspie.

I’m still a 2-sets-er, mostly because used wheels are so cheap- I’m going to have to replace my winters this year but I got the wheels and tyres for £200, from someone else who’d bought 2 sets of wheels then sold the car. They live in the garden under a cover, very minor hassle.

But allseasons keep getting better.

Oh yeah smartphone-compatible borescopes are now super cheap and if you own one of these and you don’t put it in your ear <at the very least> for a look there is something wrong with you.

Onzadog
Free Member

I’m not suggesting we kill off the stupid people but maybe we could remove some of the signs and let the problem take care of itself

It made me think of this
https://i.redd.it/t1he6ehjqk061.jpg

Couple of specific things…

Ticketmaster have enough industry share to be while not a monopoly, often an effective one, they have exclusivity with venues and they often have exclusivity with tours/artists. And don’t take it from me that this is problematic, take it from ticketmaster themselves, this is why they have their “totally not ticketmaster” sites like “Gigsinscotland” in order to create the superficial illusion of choice.

As for how great they are at it- let’s be honest, they are straight up bad at it and the reason they are bad at it is that they do not need to be good at it, for the same reason. Big events routinely crash their site- not just that one event but the whole site. There’s absolutely no meaningful queueing or attempt to mitigate that. There’s no sense of protection or fairness, you can be in at 10am, have tickets in your basket and reserved to you then the website crashes and you lose it all. That can happen to you 4 or 5 times. And of course touts miraculously manage to get around it all. It doesn’t even need to be a massive event to be a complete disaster, their handling of the 6 Biffy Clyro shows next month was a total farce, that was only midsized venues but it was constant failures and loops, I finally got my tickets about an hour after they went live just because that was when they finally went through and reset a ton of failed transactions but it was officially “sold out” before that. Just a fiasco. Failure is standard for ticketmaster and like I say they are not motivated to fix that because they’ve rigged the game well enough that they don’t have to be any good.

And the fees, oh yeah, of course an e-ticket is as expensive as posting the ticket was. Oh and also stops you from reselling except through their own service.

Terrorvision last night in Glasgow was a surprise, first time in the venue (Slay) and it’s decent, sound wasn’t brilliant though. Terrorvision I’ve seen a bunch of times way back to the 90s and they’ve always been decent but they seemed really reenergised last night, no sense of by the numbers, and gave us a pretty massive set albeit with some of htem a wee bit slowed down. They’re obviously not spring chickens but they’ve just switched over to marathon not sprint. Obviously got all the singles but a bunch of album cuts too. Just a really good rock and roll show.

(drummer was having a nightmare tbh, every time he tried to do a fill he lost the beat, not sure if that was a monitor problem but tbh the rest of the band could carry it)

I guess this is about positioning the expense as much as anything else? It’s a lot just for an earplug fitting but it’s not a lot for better hearing all of the time, which if you’re blocked up ought to be what you get.

I can never be arsed with olive oil etc, it’s too much hassle and too slow, I can’t be bothered to do it for day after day. Otex express works the same way except much faster and more effective ime (I think the basic otex is literally just olive oil?)

andylc
Free Member

I’m not officially recommending this, but I have a Waterpik dental flosser. I have found it very useful for
1) Dental flossing (obvs)
2) cleaning out the coffee machine internals
3) cleaning out ears (on the low setting!)

Yep likewise I am not recommending it but it seems to be effectively the same as the irregator they used on my at the GP last time. Though only on low power! You can also use a big syringe. WITHOUT a needle, that shouldn’t ought to need saying but I’m considering the audience ;)

Maternity leave is straight out of the US nutter playbook (though at least there it seems to be knowingly tactical and all about positioning to prevent improvements rather than substantially rolling back what already exists)

clubby
Full Member

They’re blue trails and as someone used to riding Tweed valley tech, you’re not really the target audience. I thought they were a perfect stepping stone for less experienced riders to build up to the red.

I mean, sure but I’m trying to avoid falling into that trap and viewing it with my trailbuilder and “would I bring beginners here” eye. We saw kids literally rolling to a stop on one descent, others complaining of being tired, too pedally, etc etc. But at the same time it has parts that you need to be flying for them to really work. Progression either needs a lot of trails or it needs trails that can rise with you- GT’s blues old and new are great examples of that, something you can roll down on a balance bike then ride every month for years on your first pedal bike, your 24 inch apollo, etc etc, and that grow up with you.

(tbh from the descriptions it seems like the blues are supposed to have an internal progression with flapjack the easiest and slabba dabba doo the hardest and a direct step to the new reds, but it just didn’t feel much like that to me, the level felt pretty similiar. Especially as I think there’s a green? The step up to the reds is still quite big)

Gotta say this sounds very critical and that’s only because I’m specifically picking up on what I see as the failings, rather than writing a balanced review! The quality of the build is fantastic and there’s no such thing as a bad new trail, especially at a place that used to be so skewed. But I do think it should have been better than it is. More so with that bloomin blue climb! I mean, we’d already done all the rest of the centre but it damn nearly killed me spinning back up that to complete all the new stuff, I suspect the gradient’s almost the same as the descent, overall.

It’s a ridiculous film but it has some awesome moments. <Thunderstruck intensifies>

My brother used them, there was the inevitable piss-taking and beating down on price and I reckon in the end he probably got about 70% of what you’d expect to sell it for privately, but it was so hassle-free compared to selling privately that it was probably worth it.