When I looked on CRC they had bearings from Hope, Cane Creek and FSA, none of whom make bearings. I’d prefer to get them from the place that those companies get them from rather than pay their mark up and CRC’s markup too. They’re £20 a pop some of them.

I had the same conversation regarding bearings for my old SC Bullit (on here maybe?) a few people told me I needed to spend £10 a bearing or they’d fail in seconds, I bought a pack of 10 for about £12 and never needed to replace the first two of those. In some some applications the bearings aren’t subjected to much abuse.

Similarly, these are for a suspension system where they are fully enclosed and well sealed, they’re easy to swap, won’t be ridden a lot, so there’s really no need for me to buy ones that’ll last 10 years instead of 5.

They are definitely ACBs btw.

Having taken the bearings completely to pieces it looks like I’ll be able to rebuild these and they’ll be fine for ages yet anyway, but it would be nice to have a couple of cheap spares just in case.

I looked on CRC, there wasn’t anything conclusive on there and what they had was pretty pricey so I didn’t bother pursuing it further. The bearings I have aren’t in bad shape, so I’m not going to replace them now if they’re £20 a pop, but if I can get them from somewhere a bit more generic at a reasonable price I probably will.

Cheers

It won’t break anything, but it’s a fairly straightforward job to swap them over.

Undo bottom nut, undo allen bolt at travel adjust knob, remove adjuster mechanism. Big spanner on the top and unscrew the spring assembly and lower spring mount. Swap lower spring mount to new spring and reverse what you’ve already done. Half an hour tops.

As good as it may be, I can’t imagine I’ll be spending £200 on a jacket and then subjecting it to all the abuse that my £20 Nike Dryfit jackets get!

No one take the rear end off and fit the whole lot in a large suitcase?

My brother is in Stockholm and does a bit of riding out in some woods near where he lives, pretty flat but loads of very short sharp climbs and quite technical singletrack type stuff. Really good fun, but not much use to you I guess.

Stockholm?

Is it not easier to just keep them separate and swap them over when one runs out? You could run the cables into a switch to avoid having to faff about in the cold/rain. You would be able to use two chargers then to maintain the same charging speed.

I’m struggling to see what the benefit chopping them about is going to give you?

Ok, so the axle arrived and doesn’t fit!

I’d estimate that there are between two and three times as many threads per unit length on the axle that I’ve bought compared with the Maxle. Is the Maxle definitely an M12 thread? It looks like if either is an M12 thread it’s the other axle to me, but I’m not 100% on thread numbers.

The new axle is a thing of beauty, so I’m going to try to get the correct thread put on it as a first solution.

Cheers

Do you reckon that axle is M12 as well? If it is I can use spacers on the non-threaded size so that the axle tightens up without needing to cut longer threads.

I managed to crack one of the older style maxles, trying to tighten it than had a fit when I saw HOW MUCH they are to replace, so bought that normal bolt axle, and just realised it might not work……

I did manage to get the maxle back in the frame, but I can’t work out if the crack affects the operation or not.

Nightmare!

I have my tension/compression the wrong way around. (I ahd the braking force in the other direction for some reason!) They fail under compression because there’s nothing to stop the compression causing the spoke to bend sideways. I think they have to be very light and hot for it to be a major worry, but better to have them on right in the first place.

It won’t make any difference on the bike, but the wrong way puts the spokes of the rotor under some tension rather than compression, so they’re more likely to fail.

Top work!

I sold an 18″ with some chainsuck damage on eBay for £260 at the weekend, with headset.

RandomJerry, did you see a couple of them were using Totems? 180mm for riding around the woods? Madness I tell you, madness!

I’ve asked the same question as the OP quite a few times, been riding for about 15 years now and hadn’t ever done a mech until this year. I think I naturally make sure if it’s a tight gap I er on the side of smashing the other side of the frame rather than the mech and am generally more cautious of that side of the bike.

The one I did break was at Fort William, only damage was a snapped return spring, the internal pivot spring, not the one you can see. No idea how it happened as there was no noise, or feeling through the pedals, just went out of gear and the chain went slack. Wonder if the spring just snapped rather than it getting caught on anytihng. Was quite odd, but 1 in 15 years is ok.

Nice one, thanks. That’s what I thought. So I’ll need longer chainring bolts then. Do you have the Saint bashring and chainring attached and if so, how long are your chainring bolts?

Thinking about it, I probably can’t sort the bolts out until I know whether I’ve got a saint bashguard coming or not – one of those ambiguous ebay auctions where the pictures show no bash, but the description does. If I have to use a different bash I might need different length bolts. Such a pain!

I’ve got a Blackspire Inner Guard (£20 CRC).

I can’t see why it wouldn’t stop it, but most people don’t use them, so I’m suspicious. I’ve mentioned it a few times here and on other forums and no one has told me it won’t work. I’m just going to see how I get on and take it from there. The alternatives are very expensive and prone to getting smashed on rocks.

No one?

I purposely haven’t entered because I specifically wanted all my entry fee to go to charity. Please bear that in mind if I neglect to remember to enter and the event is full. 🙂

Yeah, I’d like the white to be replaced with Silver and then some sort of graphic as it is now, but with green and black rather than red and black. I’m not overly fussed on the exact Bomber logo so long as it leaves the forks identifyable if that makes sense.

My setup isn’t a very good example though because I really need to re-spray the lowers silver rather than trying to cover as much white as possible with a sticker. If the forks were black, you could do some silver and green graphics really easily that would look amazing, but I think I’ll leave them alone until I have time to respray the lowers.

I was really suggesting your mate went down the fork avenue rather than the wheels as the design shape is easier, it’s easier for people to apply the stickers and I reckon the market is bigger. There are loads of people running forks with graphics that clash with their frames where the base colour is a good fit, eg Rebas on a blue 5-2pot etc. You can either re-colour the original graphics, or copy the frame graphics to the forks, or do something completely custom.

Cheers

How are you getting on with my forks? 🙂

If you could get your mate to design some sticker for fork lowers that match up with a the frame that would be brilliant. If he could then have them made out of a rub-resistant material that would be even better. Eg, if he could match this frame:

With these fork lowers:

We could be onto a winner.

Thanks Paul, that could be a useful suggestion, it gets used in places where there are long climbs followed by long descents so I wouldn’t be swapping it too much, so I reckon that’s the best bet so far. It won’t be used all that often so I don’t mind popping the cranks off to swap the inner bash guard for a granny. The only problem with that idea is that it would be better with a mech to hold the chain in the middle ring.

I’ve actually done similar before, but I cut a cube of wood the right size so that it could be jammed between the seat tube and the mech to select gears. That was because I couldn’t find a mech with the right pull for the frame in a hurry.

I wonder if there’s something I could do with an e-type mech to jam it in the right position as required. Do the limit screws allow enough limit to be set to hold the mech in the middle ring?

I don’t know what a Kirk is, it’s not one of those. I just googled them, they’re…..erm……interesting.

Unfortunately I do mind drilling a hole in the BB shell, not confident it wouldn’t cause problems and a very expensive mistake to fix. I’m not that desperate to keep the granny ring.

Thinking about it, E-Type would make fitting cranks a bit tricky wouldn’t it as it’s got an 83mm BB shell and they don’t run spacers do they? I’ve fitted a few to frames not designed for E-Type without problems, what is special about the BB shell?

The frame is a new downhill frame. I usually keep my granny on my DH bikes as I don’t mind pedaling them about the Lakes/Peaks. but this is my first that’s making that difficult. It’s a GT Fury.

Steve – Sounds good, let me have your PayPal address and I can wire it across.

nbt – There’s nothing to clamp a stop onto on this frame. Best not to ask. Would just quite like to be able to granny winch it up the Lakes/Peaks.

Do I need to run that innerguard with a wheel keeper thing, or is it ok on it’s own?

Nice work people, that Black Spire thing looks handy. How much would you like for your spare Stevelol?

Next question – Anyone do a front mech for frames that don’t have cable stops?

Cheers!

What is it though, it doesn’t look like total junk?

What are your five bikes?

My 872 ran for 2hrs and 15 minutes last night on full whack, ran out with about 50m of trail left to negotiate. I had a spare battery with me so decided to go all out on the lumens and was surprised at how it lasted. Awesome.

Can’t believe Whinlatter got a mention on here! Seriously?

Grizedale always gets slammed, partly because people think it’s not very good and partly because of all the natural stuff that’s around there. I’d never bothered with it because of it’s reputation. However, I was passing about 6 months ago and needed a quick ride, so I stopped on the road near Iron Keld and biked over to Hawkshead, then up into the forest. Didn’t really know where I was going, so hopped on the NF trail and it was great. It’s perfect if you’re on an xc bike and want to hammer it for training, though I can see how it would be boring if you were going slow on your mince-rig.

Same with Llandegla too, good if you blast it, but can’t work out why you would take something big and then ride it slow there as it only really comes alive when you attack it properly.

There’s a large group out from Keswick every Tuesday night if you like mountains and you don’t mind the drive.

The force required to shift is determined by the spring in the mech, nothing to do with the shifter. So no, not worth going to XTR at the shifter. I expect the XTR mech has the same spring anyway, so no gain there.

I did my thumb a couple of years ago, I used the palm of my hand to operate the shifter, bit of a pain, but worked no problem. Can’t work out what you are doing with your thumb and forefinger, but try taking your hand off the bar and using the palm of your hand.

I found it drops through the colours very quickly and is soon on red, but then lasts quite a while. If I turn it down to a lower level the blue light comes back on again, so I don’t think it’s all that useful.

My plan is to construct a mini wet room in the garage, when I have a garage. Nothing fancy, basically a shower that’s big enough for me and the bike to get in straight from a muddy ride, shower the bike, shower me, take clothes off and put in the washing machine (also in garage), wash me again. Missus need never know…..

Something for you to aim for when your soak away thing is full of mud!

Am I alone in not really being arsed about descents when I’m on my road bike? I enjoy them a bit, don’t get me wrong, but nothing like I enjoy even a mediocre descent on my mountain bike. Anything that I’m not able to work hard on I just find dull. If I go out for a 3 hour ride, I’d happily spend the entire time climbing if that was physically possible.

Best descent I’ve done was the Col du Joux Plane into Morzine BTW.

binners – I believe he called out the fire brigade and used their hydraulic cutters. (or used a grinder)

Imagine coming home to find the tubes from your beloved Grifter sat in a neat pile next to the bin!

Sure I hadn’t ridden it for a while due to having a real life mountain bike, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t want it for my bedroom wall!

I still don’t dare break the news to the previous owner some 15 years later.

The one I bought recently was labelled, “Made in Vietnam”. Sorry the rest of STW are so obtuse, but there is your answer.