Now wait til an event’s cancelled…

Like ChrisL was at the Go! Team the other night, I reckon best I’ve ever seen them- I caught them once right back when thunder lightning strike was still new and that was great too but the band wasn’t as good as the current one. And yeah sure the encore wasn’t as good but when you’ve got a main set this good, that’s just fine. Bristol tonight and Dublin tomorrow, if you’re even slightly go team curious you should definitely go.

Terrorvision tomorrow! One of these days I will see a band thta hasn’t been around for 20+ years. BUT IT IS NOT THIS DAY! Got a wee break after that then off to London to see Biffy Clyro play their first album Blackened Sky, one of my favourite albums ever and hopefully a proper full-on throwback to 2005.

I have one of the gravel ones, fits great on both my mtbs. (I have to have it at a slightly odd looking angle on the full suss but it ended up working really well, probably better than if I could have put it exactly where I wanted it. Fantastic product, if it fits, I love it. Looks daft but every rear mudguard ever made looks daft. Whoever realised “we can just make it super light instead of making it heavy and stiff then trying to stop 300g of mudguiard from moving” is a genius. It doesn’t quite have the coverage of a mudhugger but on both mine it has all of the really important arse coverage, so it’s like 90% as effective maybe. And it’s so quick to fit/remove.

But the challenge for a truly mtb compatible one is pretty obvious, we have a wild range of seatstay heights and some bikes with none at all so trying to offer a one-size-fits-all with this design is always going to be really difficult, and more so with this sort of design. In the meantime, I reckon most bikes with reasonably symetrical, not-too-fat, reasonably high chainstays can take one and probably pretty much all hardtails?

Those elastomers for the Flexstem 2 there look like they’ve been harvested from the dead bodies of the cast of Trapdoor. You can almost see the thumb prints.

comet
Full Member

Good to see Bontrager reviving the old XR mud tread pattern.

Don’t look anything like the xr mud to me? They’re pretty much just the same as everyone else’s “cut spike” tyres, hillbillies etc.

Grease to stick the washer to the nipple, easy. I fit em into the rim using a cocktail stick because I am sophisticated.

I sacked off the squorx nipples though. IMO they were obviously designed for the benefit of wheel building machines not for us. Luckily Sapim nipples are pretty much exactly the same shape and work perfectly well in the DT washers. Careless of DT, they should have made them a funky shape that was incompatible with anything, that’s the proper way to do a new standard. So I can carry on using all my existing tools rather than paying for super expensive DT ones that just do the same job.

(this is slightly less of a thing now that you can get a depth-adjustable nipple driver for squorx, I cannot live without depth-adjustable drivers. But they are £60, whereas my current one was £15)

Read a couple of things about this the other night- apparently it’s fairly easy to transfer jurisdictions/take the bar/do the UBE for about 2/3ds of states if you’re at least halfway competent, but there’s a definite unofficial downwards order. So you go “well I am too corrupt/stupid for California, but I can always move to Missouri” and then once you fail in Missouri you can always go “well kids we’re moving to Minnesota where they’ll let any huckster practice law.” But it’s also really easy to get disbarred from a second place once it happens in one, and some jurisdictions simply say “if you’ve been disbarred elsewhere you can’t register here”. And again that has a similiar unofficial pecking order, everyone knows who they look up to and down on.

But DC is more significant because it’s essentially “bottom-most respectable step”, getting disbarred from there is almost a symbolic thing, for a normal non-celebrity lawyer it’s the absolute end of your respectable career. Even in the lower jurisdictions you’ll always be recognised as a schmuck.

Unless there’s been a recent change the more concentrated block of “brown” near the fort which is also the easiest to find was untouched by the felling, but the hill to the left as you face the brown from the trail centre was logged out and that’s affected some trails and access. Never actually been into that bit! I get hopelessly lost up on the castle stuff but it’s all good, and easy to lap, so I don’t mind.

The trail centre’s as superb as ever, the old stuff’s had some tweaking and tidying which has made the black just a little bit less awkward but hasn’t affected the overall feel off the thing, I think mostly it’s stuff that’d worn rather than how it was supposed to be (though I’m pretty sure the devil’s chessboard has been rebuilt, it used to feel like basically just a heap of rocks, now it feels basically like an actual manmade bike trail? Easier, or perhaps I have just become a riding god?)

I was a bit underwhelmed by the new stuff, I found it a bit flat to feel really flowy, speed was quite hard to find. Except ironically the climb is quite nasty!

I could be wrong but I <think> that since the new trails open the uplift only runs up to teh top of the new blue. Haven’t seen it any higher up than that. The website still says it uplifts to spooky bench and to the skills area turning circle but that’s at least half wrong. I’d check with adrenaline though.

GT’s a pretty easy place to get yourself around even with the obstruction of the building site in the middle, I’d say it doesn’t benefit as much from uplift as, say, innerleithen which is a pretty harsh climb to do multiple runs.

Yeah, I remember feeling that way with the 4.0 JJs, weirdly the 4.8 turned out to be massively better at most mud, not to mention less orrible when it gives up. I wonder how many people get put off by crap OEM tyres? Especially back when good ones cost a million quid.

dyna-ti
Full Member

I’ve got the Stihl version. smaller batteries(10.8v) though you do get two and spares are pretty inexpensive. I was wondering about getting the mini chainsaw they do, which uses the same batteries, and would probably be ideal for trail clearing.

MC has one of the tiny chainsaws, I got to have a play with it… It is great but, I was kind of always aware of the size of accident you could have with one, being so small and easy to use it’s easy to forget it’s still a bloody chainsaw. Just fantastic for brashing, you can do stretchy-armed stuff, cut close as you like for safety, work really quickly through deadfalls… Massive time saver. In the end I didn’t do anything I couldn’t do with my £7 saw, but I did it in like 10% of the time and ended up with an untired arm. I doubt it’s any use for the sort of thing OP mentioned?

Similiarly I have a cheapo reciprocating saw with a long blade on that’s quite useful. It’s not as good as the chainsaw for a lot of stuff, but, it does have some big advantages, not least it’s safer. Also you can screw up and destroy a blade and they cost like £3. (I got one completely stuck in a tree, just unclipped it and came back with another blade and cut it out). You can do surprisingly thick logs with it, but it’s quite bad at doing loose branches as it tends to just whip them around instead of cutting. And it does tire you more. Also super useful for root grubbing, just stick in a short worn blade and you don’t care if it gets mangled on rocks.

I see them coming more and more into stock but still bloody expensive… R2 don’t have the trail version in yet but once they do might e worth a group buy, they’re 54 euro (plus postage and brexit tax) but it’ll still work out cheaper, it’s just that the minimum order size means you’ve got to order at least 3…

raleighimpact
Full Member

plus the boot is flat to the door, not sunk like the skoda.

IMO if the boot isn’t flat, it’s not really an estate, it’s just a funny shaped hatchback ;) It makes such a difference to usability. We had the bright idea of putting an old fridge into my brother’s octavia, went in brilliant, coming out,not so brilliant. And if nothing else sitting on the back is so much better.

It’s annoying, it’s not brain surgery and it makes such a difference. I assume there’s some engineering downsides since a flush edged hole will be less strong but it’s obviously not insurmountaible.

Likewise, **** you car manufacturers, don’t box in those unsightly spaces around wheel arches, that might be exactly where the bars want to go. Make the boot as big as possible, make the carpet touch the skin, being nice and regular shaped isn’t a real benefit.

thols2
Full Member

AFAIK, Shimano 2-pots use 22 mm pistons, the 4-pots use a 16 mm and an 18 mm piston each side. That gives about 20% more piston area, so 20% more braking power for the same clamping force at the lever. The different sized pistons allow better control of the pressure across the pad. However, they will also be more prone to a spongy lever feel if they aren’t properly bled. 4-pots use a longer pad with more surface area

So this is exactly my point, these aren’t 2 pot vs 4 pot issues. To replicate the 16/18 piston setup you just need a 26mm piston, that’s big but within scope for 2-pots. It’s just that Shimano have chosen a smaller than maximum sized piston for the 2 pots, it’s not a restriction but a choice. Presumably they think there are benefits to that smaller piston- but a skeptic might think that a key benefit is being able to say “these 4 pots are more powerful” in your marketing fluff. (I reckon you can <probably> replicate the 16/18 duals with a 22mm piston and the correct changes at the lever end,but that’s getting complicated)

And likewise the longer pad is a design choice- their 2 pot pad could easily be longer, many are. Especially with a larger piston. So if long pads are an advantage, rather than a side effect of the piston layout, you’ve got to ask why it’s not always maximised.

(quite a common thing, this- i’m always skeptical when a new thing is supposed to bring with it specific advantages, but when that same thing wasn’t maximised in the old. See also: boost hubs)

In this example the different size piston thing is the only bit that might actually be an unreplicatable benefit but like I mentioned Formula went with equal size and it seems to work just as well. Magura too. It does make sense on paper though. (my own suspicion is that it basically goes out the window once you’re actually applying braking force, and the whole thing just functions as a unit, but I could be wrong)

Waterproof riding trousers for me. There’s some that are <almost> perfect but as far as I can find none that are really built for a proper sized kneepad, and across the board they’re short.

Kneepads really doesn’t need much change, a tiny bit more room. But the length, honestly I don’t get it at all, mtb trousers work best if they’re long so they drape over your shoes and help keep water out and don’t pull up when pedalling. Too short by a mm is as bad as too short by two inches but too long by 20, 30mm is imo no problem at all.

I like square-ish, it’s not so much better or worse, I just find it tons more confidence inspiring and tbf that’s the msot important thing a tyre can do at my sort of level, no use in grip that you don’t use because you don’t trust it. Not super square mind you, just the square side of the middle.

In the end I think the individual tyre is more important though.

The best place in the country for uplift imo is south wales and adjacent. BPW obviously but also Dirt Farm and forest of dean, flyup 417 for a more trailcentry uplift. For me it’s harder to figure out non-uplift around there (there’s lots of great riding but it’s become increasingly secret) but that’s OK,we end up on full on uplift holidays anyway.

tweed valley’s an obvious alternative- only the one uplift (*) but all the pedalled riding you can eat. Can be downright overwhelming with choice. TBH innerleithen dh is a bit of weird, oldschool experience at this point, little useful waymarking and it’s super confusing to ride until you’ve spent a bunch of time there. But as long as you’re going “I will ride a random trail” and not stressing out if you’re on the exact right line that’s fine. It’s definitely possible to accidentally end up on something much harder than you expected though.

(*well there is the glentress uplift but it’s not for you)

TBH most of this stuff has nothing to do with the number of pistons. You need to get up to really big pistons in a 4-pot, stuff like Maven, before you’re doing something that can’t be duplicated with 4-pot. Hope X4 takes you to the edge of that limit. But basically very few 4 pots are actually exceeding the design limits of 2 pots because most manufacturers don’t want to, they design the brake they want and it’s within 2 pot limits. And that’s even before you ask if it’s actually a good idea- Maven has massive piston area but it needs a massive lever piston to match, is that really something that couldn’t be duplicated with the right combo of lever and caliper piston, lever and leverage? Maybe, maybe not.

(I’m discounting ovals here because **** ovals, ovals suck)

The other trick of course is having different size pistons, but tbf the jury’s out on how useful that is, Formula’s excellent cura 4 has equal size pistons and nobody seems to be able to see any downside. Everyone else I think does it but does it help? The logic of different engagement speed is sound but it seems to work out trivial in the real world, especially once the brake gets a bit older.

It also doesn’t dictate pad size, again unless we’re getting really enormous which hardly anything does- pads can be a lot longer than their piston. It doesn’t dictate feel or power or heat resistance or any of that.These are ratio and size things not number of piston things

Oh and of course it’s not all one way. A 4 pot piston of equal piston area and strength is heavier and more expensive, it has twice as many parts to go wrong and is also more demanding of everything working right.

Mostly, if you want the latest brake it’s going to be 4 pot so that could be an important consideration, just because of marketing purposes, I wouldn’t want to try and sell a top end 2 pot today. TBF I’m surprised we’ve not done what motorbikes did and gone directly onto pointless 6 pots. But half the time, is getting the latest brake even smart? With most manufacturers I want to see if the damn things actually work.

This is where I go away from maths and get into orneryness. Because **** me, making good brakes is a completely solved problem. I am using Formula The Ones from 2010, they have great power, great feel, they’re incredibly reliable (obviously, because all mine are 14 bloody years old. Now that’s not to say everyone would like them, they have a specific feel that divides opinion- but in 2024 we’re still getting new brakes with wandering bite points, difficult bleeds, sticky pins, all sorts of temperamentalness, leaky pistons. Brakes you can’t take the pads out the top of are back ffs! I mean who in the name of god thought “Oh yeah what i want from Shimano is twice as many shit piston seals to leak”? All solved problems that we’ve elected to unsolve in the name of new and shiny. Bloody icewave and pads with fins on to solve overheating problems that other better brakes just don’t have. Bloody cnc’d from billet instead of forgings.

If we put half as much time and money into making really good 2 pot brakes and iterating on last year’s design and fixing them and not putting out new stuff that basically isn’t fit for purpose then on average most bikes would have better brakes and we’d have spent less money. But that’s none of my business ;)

Ooooooooh. Frank Turner Lost Evenings coming to Edinburgh a year from now, that’s a nice birthday present for future me!

Tragically not, no friday fails this time.

I fitted my argotal dh supersoft for an uplift trip, got 1 and a half runs in and had a massive crash, knocked myself out and broke my shoulder and both hands. Clearly the tyre’s fault :)

I had a mk3 mondeo, it wasn’t perfect but it was honestly absolutely brilliant at being a mondeo. When I wanted a replacement, nothing else ticked all the boxes quite the same way- lots had less good boots, lots weren’t as nice to drive, lots were way more expensive to buy or run. Other than maybe the mazda 6 I didn’t think anything really could fight it on its own ground. Even the mk4! They just did a really bloody good job of that mk3.

So in the end I went from seeing it as compromising, to seeking out unmondeo things that other things did well that mondeos don’t do so well. Otherwise I’d have definitely bought another mondeo. And tbf a bunch of cars still didn’t compare well,

In the end I went for a subaru legacy which is a wee bit smaller but still big, a bit more expensive (much more expensive to run), but much more fun to drive, and I love it. Like, I’d have never taken the mondeo on track frinstance. But if there is still such a thing as an unrusty mk3 2.2 I could have another of those and be very happy.

@sefton, I got a few punctures early days but it was always pinches- pressure and tubes related. I think especially if you use them for a wide range of riding it takes a few frustrating fails to get the tyre pressures right, I’d think it was finally sorted then do something different and psssshhh. New lessons to learn that you don’t need to worry about with normalbikes, like some tyres are very self-steery. And you’ve kind of got to go low, or what’s the point?

I went tubeless, ime the advantage even compared to a lightweight tube is pretty noticable in terms of drag and (touch wood) I don’t even remember the last time I had a flat. I suspect the low surface pressure has a lot to do with that. But also I don’t ride into rock gardens at top speed on the fatbike, that definitely helps :) I’m a tubeless fan generally but more so for the fatbike, that said I am a fatbike trail rider not a proper fatbiker and maybe the logic is different if you do mostly beach or snow riding. And it was a total arse to set up.

Still love my Dune, it’s parked up just now cos I broke my hands and it’s going to be a while before I want to ride a rigid again, big tyres or no… But it still makes me smile every time I ride it no matter how inappropriate the ride.

I love how different it makes trails- like, I’ve ridden five year plan at glentress a ton, I even helped build it, I know it as well as I can know a trail and that’s awesome… But take the fatbike down it and it’s completely different. Different lines work, roots that you can usually ignore or use as a drop are deadly, taking fast bits slow feels really fun and problem-solvey instead of just slow. It’s not like the difference between a hardtail and full suss, it’s a reallydifferent ride.

citizenlee
Free Member

Still need to find some decent gloves that stop the old Raynauds setting in.

I have low circulation- been diabetic for 40 years- so it’s not exactly like raynauds in terms of mechanics but probably quite similiar in terms of effect…

Anway, first answer is pogies, they are phenomenal, but do have downsides. I’ve never been happy with them for more full on riding, they tend to shift and bump around and irritate and just generally feel like trouble. But I have them on the fatbike for any less extreme riding and I love ’em. Like, literally any gloves I’ve worn are about keeping me functional, the very best keep me more or less comfortable but cold, but the pogies + thin normal gloves keep me <warm>

I keep messing with them to try and find a #enduropogie approach but I’m not convinced it’s possible.

So for that reason, Glacier Gloves Perfect Curves. These are drysuit neoprene, made for windowcleaners. They’re precurved, and that’s the end of the good new. They’re sqidgy- you’re way less connected to the bike, it’s like wearing foam grips on your fingers, they don’t just squidge, they sort of shear- so it’s like having a flexstem for hands, you are not as connected. I can barely feel the brake levers. Also they are utterly unbreathable so you just can’t wear them if it’s not cold enough, they fill completely with sweat like a water bomb. And on that note, no matter what you do, they’re hard to dry out and they end up smelling like something’s died in them. Oh and if you get them muddy they can be pretty slippy on grips.

But they are the warmest gloves i’ve ever worn. Warmer than the winter motorbike gloves I used to wear, warmer by far than any of the bike specific efforts that bike tests keep saying are “incredibly warm”, that are probably fine for normal people but useless for us. Literally nothing except heated gloves or pogies has ever come close for me. And so all those downsides? Sod em, trivial, below your notice when it’s properly cold and you want to get out in the snow and do proper rides up mountains for hours. These keep my hands warm, they keep me riding properly, they mean my fingers work and I’m in control and safe for as long as I want . I love ’em. They’re also 100%, perfectly waterproof so you can do stuff like dunk your hands in ice-melt river to clean them, or make snowballs.

They’re only for if you need them, for anything else they’re utterly terrible, but when you do they’re the best bike kit in the world. Every cold fingered person should try pogies and they should try these and they should probably think about heated gloves too but to this day I’ve not found a heated glove I want to ride a pushbike in (oh but my gerbings on the motorbike, joy…)

I’ve settled on Odi F1s. There’s a couple of models but they’re barely any different i think, I’ve got them both on various bikes and like ’em both. They’re not as nice as the esi racer’s edge I used before but they’re about a million times more durable, you can destroy an ESI in a single crash or uplift day.

(nothing fancy needed to keep em in place, just a clean bar. Kind of a pain in teh arse to install, I usually use the cable tie trick but a compressor works, ime isoprpopyl just doesn’t cut it with these)

You can get cheap presta valve lockrings with similiar shapes, not quite as big as the p-nut I think but they’re usefully easier to tighten and remvoe than a standard one.

Mine came with a teeny tiny anodised wrench to tighten them up, which I thought was adorable but of course I lost it 2 seconds later.

It’s a while since I used em but I loved racematrix in the UK, lovely feel and feedback, not just good power but easy to use- that’s how I want brakes to feel, I don’t want BOOM wall hitting power, I want the amount of power I asked for delivered easily. But then we went out to the alps and both sets completely shat the bed on day one and got thrown in the bin before they killed me. A shame though.

Galfer are really good, and also very consistent. But so damn expensive, I just didn’t feel like it was worth it, you just don’t need to spent that much to have great brakes (some brakes really do benefit from superior pads, but the answer to that is that the brakes suck imo… decent braking is a completely solved problem, has been for over a decade, but companies still keep finding new ways to make brakes that suck. But for me by definition a good brake will do a good job with any decent pads)

These days I’m using Bikein ceramics from aliexpress, they cost a bit less than £1 an end and tbf they just work really well. Not especially longlived or super powered, and they can be a bit noisy but I’ve used them through a few scottish winters now and also uplift weeks, the megavalanche, plus endless trailcentre laps and tweed valley offpistes in all weathers. I’ve stuck with them not because they’re cheap but because they work, all the time. Honestly I’d be surprised if you can’t spend £10 an end for the exact same pad with a faux-UK brand on it.

Hmmm so Me First And The Gimme Gimmes? Could be great, could of course be absolute ****. Anyone seen them live before? I love the albums but also I’ve seen Fat Mike’s approach to live performance with a 50 minute set that had about 6 3 minute songs in :)

As others have said it’s definitely a balance. Like, why a shorty in maxxgrip shines over the same tyre in maxxterra is when you’re doing mud with hard stuff in. Pretty common in the tweed valley frinstance, you can have a pretty sloppy trail with an occasional decent sized rock (not a big rock feature, just like a head-sized rock or little step or whatever) and suddenly you’re testing 2 different aspects of the tyre and if either one falls short you’re in trouble. Most trails aren’t really homogenous outside of full on armoured trails so while a tyre can be good at one thing or the other sooner or later at the pointiest end you’re going to want it to be both, and I don’t care if it’s 10% slower if it saves me crashing even once…

But there’s other stuff that’s less tangible. Like, for me softness gives tyres confidence beyond the actual real grip. A harder tyre can be still gripping but feel fidgety and scrabbly, so it gets the job done in a way that makes you think “what if it doesn’t”. Whereas a softer one might actually not do anything better but it will often feel nicer and that lets you use the grip it has.

But then that can flip over, a really soft spiky tyre like, say, the ancient slow reazy maxxi could feel absolutely horrible because they were bending and walking all over the place.

And that’s also got to be a really personal thing, much like tyre pressures, so takes us away from good vs bad.

mboy
Free Member

I do think your issue with the Super Trail casings is quite an isolated one…

Happened the same with both the tyres I had and also the only other person I know who tried them flatted the first ride out we did, then ripped it a few weeks later. Local stockist stopped selling them completely which says a lot, they still sell superground for xc people and supergravity for everyone else. So nah definitely not isolated. And sure we have quite <hard> trails here but they’re not generally puncturey. Just the fact that I can jsut about get away with an exo which is frankly a dated and pretty flimsy carcass says a lot to me.

Maybe you can confirm though if the schwalbe info is correct and if the ST is still just the same construction in the middle as the superground? I know they’ve evolved some of these designs over time, maybe newer models are improved?

TBH I’d assumed the superground magic mary was entirely for OEM purposes so brands can lighten their enduro bikes! It’s just such a weird thing to even exist.

It’s a thing that can happen but it’s not normal. FWIW I had it happen with IIRC a Galfer one and partially with a Disco one but also with a stupidly expensive Carbon Lorraine motorbike pad and that was properly bum twitching. Even really good stuff can have failures.

(I’m discounting corrosion failures, that’s a different thing from debonding)

mboy
Free Member

Some context as to your criticism might help, especially as it’s not like significantly better riders than either of us win on these tyres win World Cup level events week in and week out…

We’ve talked about this before… are you on the clock just now? :)

“Super” switchover was imo botched. Not necessarily as individual tyres but as a range. Superground is pretty weak, for some tyres and some people it’ll be an excellent option just like old snakeskin was, but what on earth is a superground magic mary even for? Enduro-country?

Supertrail of course is “intense all-mountain and trail rides to enduro use” which sounded good to me. And it’s a reasonably tough trailbike sidewall but with a weaker middle, and everything’s only as tough as its weakest spot. I don’t know if it’s 100% true but Schwalbe’s own fluff said that the Superground and Supertrail have the same construction in the centre and the Supertrail just adds sidewall protection, tbh that seems plausible based on my riding experience and is completely stupid. Like using a heavy chain on a weak fencepost.

And it’s not even especially light. For contect it’s the only 1100g+ carcass I’ve ever had repeated front punctures with. I’m a light person and a reasonably tidy rider, and not super fast- I usually use an exo on the front, I can almost but not quite get away with it on the back. I can use conti’s trail carcass on the back. These are both tyres that are equivalent to or lighter than supertrail in general as well as tougher. I mean, they’re still not tough, they’re just tougher.

OK so I’ll go Supergravity? And SG is tough but it’s also very heavy. Now the old supergravity was excellent for me, and well balanced, one of the best carcasses I’ve used (though weight still varied wildly). I wore out at least 2, probably 3 old SG Rockrazors and I don’t think I ever had a flat, and they were actually quite light. A great tyre, I’ve stockpiled those ;)

The new SG may well be more protective, it’s noticably slower but is way heavier. I mean ffs a 29 x 2.4 big betty or mary’s real world weight is over 1400g. That’s a downhill tyre, simple as that.. And that’s literally the lightest schwalbe carcass I can do my normal everyday riding on. A doubledown dhr2 weighs 150g less, and that’s the tyre I keep in the shed and fit for france or fort william or a week of uplifts. FFS a DH dhr2 or shorty is under 1300g (all measured weights from R2 btw, obviously everyone’s claimed weights are bollocks)

Basically they forgot to do this sort of tyre, or just couldn’t do it. They did an xc tyre, a trail tyre, and 2 dh tyres. Now sure as you say there are people that this works for, having a super tough tyre for your one world cup run makes sense and maybe a 1400g dh tyre makes sense for an enduro pro, especially in these days of inserts. But that makes literally no difference to us. Meanwhile with Schwalbe I, a 10 stone, competent but not aggressive rider, need a tyre that’s heavier than any tyre Maxxis even make in that size so that I can ride glentress without flatting regularly.

So even if you think each of these tyres is individually good, and obviously I don’t, that’s a bad range. There’s a huge gap between ST and SG, because ST is too weak and SG is too heavy and it’s a really key gap that competitors pretty much all have a tyre in and Maxxis literally have 3. And it bugs me that it’s a gap they’ve filled before and decided not to any more.

So anyway the Trail Pro just might fill that gap up a bit, if it delivers on promise, which is why I’m keen to try it.

Tickets for Mogwai bought, I hope they play the one that goes really quiet then really loud.

Go Team next week, should be good!

binman
Full Member

Was wondering whether an old Bahco Laplander blade could be repurposed by grinding the teeth off and give it a sharp edge ?

Too short and light I reckon. But a bigger folder could work really well. I mean, that said, they can work pretty well just as they are.

pk13
Full Member

He is having a bit of a dingdong with his first born apparently.

I wouldn’t put it past him but his firstborn died at 10 weeks. Famously he invented a story about holding him while he died and feeling his last heartbeat, which was all very humanising and sad and turned out to be bollocks, his mother actually did but he just liked the story so he nicked it when it was convenient.

It’s usually Vivian that he embarasses himself over now- having literally declared her to be dead and then done a load of tweets in which it became completely obvious he didn’t know how four year old children behave because he’s never spent any time with any of his ~12 kids, and then got her confused with her twin.

Honestly when he said “I’ll give Taylor Swift a child” lots of people assumed he meant “I will make you pregnant”. But it seems way more likely he meant “I have if I remember correctly about dozen neglected kids who I have no interest in and can’t even tell apart just taking up space, I’ll send you one in the post. Child number 7, whatsyourname, you won’t remember me because I’ve barely seen you for the last 4 years but I am legally at least your father, now get in this bag”

Republicans’ new talking point (moving on quickly from eating cats) is that the democrats should stop telling people completely true things about Trump because it’s likely to cause people to want to kill him.

(also, brilliantly, that they should “stick to policy”, much like their leader who is sticking to important policy announcements like, uh, “I hate Taylor Swift”. And also “stick to the facts” which I just can’t even…

I had a similiarly “theoretically fixable but not cost effective” focus to get rid of and put it on ebay with a start price of the weigh-in value + the cost of the fuel in the tank, it ended up selling for damn nearly what I was hoping to sell it for when it was a runner, because ebay is full of maniacs. Doing it through ebay saved a lot of the hassle of facebook etc.

Equally I just could not be arsed with the last one because it was worth so little so I stuck it up on facebook with a fixed low price, said “don’t offer me less, you won’t get it”, dude turned up with a flatbed and dragged it away. Got barely more than the scrappy value but without having to deal with either of the lunatics that run the local scrapyards.

I’ve got one of those little hedgecutter things, dead useful for, well, hedgecutting but I didn’t find it that good for undergrowth. I’ve never really got any use out of the grass scissors mode.

It’s the same as the XD freehub for the old 240, which might make it easier to track one down (but NOT the same as the newer DT240EXP)

Incidentally if you don’t get the right endcap- used freehubs often won’t come with it- you can easily modify your current one, it’s just the “brim” of the hat is a little too large. Seconds in a lathe but easy enough with a file.

If I could live anywhere in Wales, absolutely anywhere, I’d live in the forest of dean and sometimes drive to wales.