My non biking friends think that my Mountain Biking is a lot more sensible than my other hobby which involves carring 100kg of equipment down 100m of cold water to spend about 20 minutes looking for bits of brass off of old shipwrecks, and then spending about 3 hours coming back up again….

Nice photos Si!

I also had a great day, my first ride on the moors too, and my first ride with STW folks. Definitely up for some more in the near future – need some more practice on slippery granite!

Cool. Maybe see you there – I'll be the one on the retro HT Stumpy!

Back in the late-80's / early-90's me and a mate rode down the Calvario steps from the chapel in Pollenca, Majorca. 365 steps, apparently you're supposed do a pilgrimage up the steps and say a prayer for every day of the year.

http://www.tripadvisor.com/LocationPhotos-g187462-d190653-Calvario-Majorca_Balearic_Islands.html

Was on a rigid Marin Bear Valley back then.

What sort of ride (distance) do you have planned? I was planning on going to Woodbury Common tomorrow, but I've just found out that the Commando Challenge is on this weekend so the place is gonna be crawling with people, so was looking for somewhere else to go. As a recent STW member, would be nice to meet a few more people.

Where abouts is the station?

I stand corrected! Thanks for the clarification.

It's the same as wine – although the REALLY expensive stuff is better than cheaper stuff, it's not really any better than quite expensive stuff. You're paying for exclusivity and availability, if there were hundreds of thousands of bottles of that particular scotch, then they wouldn't be £6K a pop.

Personally for wine, I'll pay around £10-12 a bottle as it's noticeably better than the stuff that costs £3 a bottle, but it's not much better (to my palate) than the stuff that costs £30 a bottle.

If you were comparing a standard BB with no chainrings, to a G-Boxx with the input drive at the same point (BB) then yes, the G-Boxx would reduce your ground clearance (between ground and "BB" shell) because it's taking the drive that goes to the hub upwards meaning that the drive sprocket (however big it is) shouldn't protrude below the BB shell.

But I was looking at it from the point of having something like a Alfine or Rolhoff where the input and output shafts are on the same axis, where the drive gears surround the input shaft (BB) and drive a chainring around the same rotational point. In that instance, for a given chainring that becomes your clearance limitation over a hub mounted gearing.

The lumen ratings for LEDs only include the light actually coming out of the die, so not considering that which gets lost backwards

Yep, no argument there, the LED Lumen rating is based on forward emitted light, but as a technology if there was a way to allow an LED emmitter to emmit in all directions then potentially you could emmit almost twice the light without any further current draw of heat generation (however heat dissipation would become a bit of an issue)

Another consideration is the wavelengths emmitted by a particular technology and ho the manufacturers measure the Lumens pumped out – are they always visible Lumens? HIDs chuck out quite a lot of non-visible light (at the UV end of the scale) some manufacturers could quote these Lumens as part of the total lumen output when in actual fact its useless to us.

Not arguing the case for HIDs – I prefer LEDs myself, just raising some other points of view.

You can get more lumens out of a single point source using a HID than LEDs, and a single point source is easier to focus. Also the point source is able to effectively be "suspended" above the reflector meaning that you are able to capture more of the light that is emmitted backwards and reflect is forward. LEDs sitting on a die are only emmitting their light in one direction, the other half is being emitted back into the die and lost.

Modern multi-die LEDs may be chucking out more Lumens than a single HID, but it's not really comparing apples with apples, however the use of multiple dies allows the use of multiple reflector optics giving perhaps a greater control of the the beam pattern.

I do a lot of Technical Diving and the LED/HID discussion is similarly active with both technologies offering advantages and disadvantages. Diving lights are a lot more expensive than biking ones – we have pressure and waterproofing to contend with. Personally I prefer LEDs because of the robustness and redundancy of multiple emitters and will take any compromises in beam pattern over the focussing advantages or colour temperature of a single HID.

The ground clearance argument about a BB based gearbox is boloney – your BB clearance is not defined by the diameter of the BB shell, it's the diameter of your largest chainring. So long as the BB shell is no larger than whatever chainring you'd chose to drive a hub mounted g-box then it makes no difference, and more significantly makes the weight of the drivetrain unsprung (assuming a the BB shell isn't rigidly attached to the stays)

With a constant chainline you have more ability to control the suspension behaviour under load as the point of force will always be the same and therefore could be compensated for.

Not sure I like the idea of including the freewheel mechanism into the BB shell, as that would mean that when freewheeling down hill it'd be like straddling a chainsaw!

My sets arrived this morning – 2 sets, one 5mm, one 4mm, just fitted the 5mm set into my brake lines, they're a snug fit WITHOUT needing any cable ends (Clarkes cables). Once fitted I opened up the o-ring poked in the GT85 tube and squirted. A little bit of lube leaks out around the insert hole, but plenty of lube also jets out of the cable ends, so it's lubing the entire lengths nicely. Initial feel is lovely and smooth brakes again.

Will fit the 4mm set into my gear line this afternoon. I'm hoping that they'll improve the shifting a bit.

I'm expecting some delivered in the next day or so, I'll fit them, see how I get on, and post my results.

No worries Buzz, sometimes things get "lost in translation" on t'interweb!

Iodious, if the Boardman bikes get discounted in the next few months then I think it'll be even harder to chose something different and could even increase my chance of committing before taking a spin, however, I don't think they'll be discounting them like other manufacturers are with the introduction of new models as I think the Boardman range isn't planned to be reviewed/changed until 2011.

The BikeRadar review does seem to praise the Pro/FS very highly – some talk about a bit of flex at the read which does concern me a little as I like a nice stiff rear, but otherwise there's nothing in the review to offer any significant concern. I also like the fact that they're able to use a genuine Horst setup due to the patent limitations not applying if the market is solely outside the US – if everyone (not literally) else is making linkages to be "as-close-to-a-horst-without-straying-into-patent-territory" then it must say something about that particular suspension design…

At the moment I think my biggest hurdle is not being able to test it before stumping up the cash – Seen a few "last year" (09) model bikes coming up for sale quite discounted – something like a Trek Fuel EX7 for similar (less in fact) money, at least I'd be able to find one of them to test.

Maybe not quite such a good spec, but perhaps a more-thoroughly researched frame and suspension geometry that I could get better (consumable) parts on as the originals expire.

Well obviously I was oversimplifying things when I said that!

My fundamental point was that although most of the items you mentioned have an impact on strength, weight and build options (and of course the costs of manufacture), they have very little to do with the handling characteristics of the bike. Yes, of course you can manufacture flex/give into a frame by manipulating the tube diameters/butting/x-section, but that has a much lesser impact on the handling than the geometry. For a steel HT then the parameters you mention are more important as you can make a frame feel different, but with an aluminium FS frame, you're (generally) just making the structures stiff so that you can isolate any movement to that which you design in with your linkage.

HT frames are still mostly built to the standard double-triangle design that I started riding back in the mid 80's, yeah the technology's evolved but the general design hasn't changed much. FS frames seem to change year on year with new linkages/pivot locations or fine tunings being released very frequently.

Interesting to know that CB had no input in the FS design – I agree that there's a lot less to designing a HT frame, just chose your angles and lengths and away you go. The linkage they've chosen seems to be pretty commonplace, but I can imagine that small changes to the design and dimensions could have a dramatic effect on the way it behaves.

The difficult thing about taking one for a test-ride is finding one! There's none anywhere close to me in Halfrauds that I can try, it seems that they're only available to order.

I've got friends with Spesh, Trek, Turner, Ellsworth full bouncers but none with a Boardman. Unless there's anyone in the South-West who's got one and would be kind enough for me to have a spin?

I knew that I had to pay, so I hung around at the reception desk until they told me what to pay. I guess I could have just walked out at that point!

I'm sure that if you'd walked off without paying they'd be sending you an invoice. I certainly don't know of any totally free dentistry, except perhaps if you're a child or pregnant!?

I went to the dentist a couple of weeks ago after an absence of about 15 years (yes years!) I managed to find a fee-paying NHS dentist meaning that one on their books your appointments/checkups/work fall into one of the 3 bands (£15.60, £45.60, £more)

I needed 2 fillings, which thy did there and then within the 15 mins of my appointment. Both fillings in the back, both amalgum – total cost for me: £45.60. I was really impressed with the efficiency of the service, and rather surprised that they did them both without anaesthetic as they weren't that deep – I still reckon that that was a cost-saving method due to me being a "fixed-budget" NHS customer!

The Wife also needed a single filling on the back of a front tooth – this one was done as a composite, white one due to the fact that it would have been visible from the front if it had been amalgum. Again, total cost £45.60.

Didn't mean to start a ruck here.

I'm not particularly worried about the "service" I get from the vendor, I tend to buy things based on my own research rather than the advice offered by the "experts" in the shop, so the vendor being Halfords doesn't put me off so that's a moot point. If Halfords don't grease the pedals, I really don't care, I can do that myself if necessary. I'm not prepared to pay £500 extra just to have the bike built up by an enthusiast in the LBS if that's the only tangible difference that I'll see between this and say a Trek, Giant or another Spesh.

Components are components, and can be compared like for like so I can directly compare the Boardman with a custom build or a major-brand using the same/similar components, the frame is a different matter however, and to me should be the only difference between this model and another more expensive (but similarly equipped) option. I've not heard anything that makes me think that a more expensive bike is gonna offer more?

At the end of the day, if I bought the Boardman and REALLY didn't get on with it, or cos it's from Halfrauds and therefore so badly made or badly put together it should break, I've still got a load of good mid-range components that I could transfer over to another "better" frame in the future.