Good news!

Brant, you didn’t answer my question regarding this headset. If there isn’t a gap between the internal lip and the aluminium insert inside the headset, then I can’t see how you could easily remove the new headset because there’s nothing to get a vice to grip.

Having to put the existing one in a vice isn’t exactly easy, especially if you don’t want to trash the finish of the headset.

Maybe you could take that one out of the bike in the picture and tell me how easy a job it was?

Thanks.

8AVDIQ4Q

I’m sat wondering whether I need to slacken out my 456C, which I love and will ride tonight BTW……… I remember that to remove the existing On-One headset I have to put it in a vice and use the frame as a lever to twist it off because there isn’t any clearance between the aluminium insert in the frame and the internal edge of the headset, so you can’t drift it out.

I can’t help thinking if I were to fit that internal headset, I’d never get it out again?

LOL, ditto!

Wheels are the exception to my point really, you’re gaining time every time you accelerate the wheels if they’re lighter. That doesn’t apply to the rest of the bike, apart from the cranks.

There’s potentially some aero gains on the wheels if you’re talking about Time Trials too, but I don’t know what wheels you’re comparing, so you’ll have to fill in the blanks on that one.

Does your bike feel slow compared with your hard tail? I reckon the cause is geometry rather than weight. Your 13 stones, plus 30lb bike + water and kit + clothes and shoes, means that 2lbs you’re looking to loose isn’t even 1% difference.

Once you’ve spent the money, you’ll find the bike doesn’t feel any different and you’re not really any quicker.

Too true PP, it’s all frame this, frame that, but the biggest absorber of trail buzz/vibration/comfort is the tyres. By a mile.

I’ve got a steel HT, because it looked nice and was cheap. I’ve got a Carbon HT because it looks nice and was cheap. The only reason I don’t have two Carbon HTs is that it would be weird to have two bikes the same, one SS, one geared. The steel one rides a bit different, due to TT length and geometry, but is 3lbs heavier FFS!

Love both though.

I ran one on my Bullit with lyriks and 888s for the same reason as you. Had no problems with it at all over the course of 18 months or so. Mind you, when I removed it it did come out a bit too easy for my liking, two taps and out! That was the DH one that looks like it’s exactly the same as the XC and Freeride ones. Get the deep insertion one if you’re getting one perhaps.

Connect.Garmin.com then click explore, type Perth, apply filters and you’ll getlenty of options.

On the grease thing, the instructions tell you to assemble with grease and to keep the grease topped up with the grease ports. The axles are machined with grease channels, so there’s no question that there was supposed to be grease in there from the factory.

I will email Winstanleys with respect to this:

http://www.winstanleysbikes.co.uk/product/24696/Kinesis_Carbon_Training_Fork_Bung

Which three did you buy?

richc, I think that’s a bit cheeky really, what you meant to say was, “You’re asking all the right questions, these are the answers……… carry on.” I asked the questions to get confirmation of where I think the pitfalls are, based on vague recollections of internet threads past. I admit to not retaining a lot of info from those threads as I didn’t think I’d ever have to fit one, but my mechanicing skills are pretty decent.

The forks are Kinesis CX forks, wasn’t expecting them to have the carbon steerer, but they do, so want to check I’m fitting the right before I do anything with them. They didn’t come with a bung or any instructions! Any recommendations?

They delivered the forks I ordered on Wednesday yesterday, no problems.

It’s regularly arsed up for me, it’s hit and miss whether I can get on it and the map thing is incredibly slow because rather than defaulting to nothing it defaults to a random place in Mexico, so has to pull up loads of tracks that no one has any interest in.

They changed the site, it looked better, but now there’s a notice saying it was rubbish so they’ve reverted back, except nothing works now!

I bought one, it’s brilliant.

But my bushes destroyed themselves after a few rides, when I dismantled the rear end I found that it had largely been assembled without grease, that the main pivot axle hadn’t been drilled for the grease port and that the axle has worn as a result.

I have regreased and rebuilt it and it seems ok, but I haven’t ridden it since and I’ve not got a resolution on the axle issue from Freeborn yet, mainly due to not having a chance to give them another call.

Is there an equivalent rear light available? Would be good to have something pretty bright to go on the back of my bike, run off the same battery.

Sorry, what I meant was, I’m going to get some cheap road wheels that I’ll use specifically for cyclo cross.

However on my ride tonight I wondered whether if I only use CX tyres for racing I might as well just stick with what I’ve got and change the tyres over to begin with. Depends if I’m going to do some lanes riding with it over the winter nights, could be a good option as I can ride it from home.

I’m planning to ride every day in the two weeks before hand, but mostly just flat 10 mile rides on my road bike at tick-over. I think it’s really important to keep the legs turning over so they don’t feel flat come race day.

But then I’ve not done much MTB racing and nothing like this, so I’m just applying running principles to the situation really, so would appreciate some input from those better qualified.

Sure, but I can live with looking plop in the short-term.

Anyway, I’m fully committed to the drop bars and the cantilever brakes now as I went for the bling carbon fork that doesn’t have disc mounts because it looks better and is a lb lighter and matches the frame better. Going to run my dual-pivots until I get some CX specific wheels next month, unless I can find some things to ebay in the mean time.

Agree with kudos, the main issue with that Trek is that if you turn up on that you basically *have* to win don’t you! Can you live with that pressure?

Anyone know about tapers? Thinking I’ve got three hard weeks training before a gradual taper over a fortnight.

What are other people going to do?

Good stuff, how have you tublessed them? Are they tubeless rims or have you ghetto’d them?

I will get some new road wheels at some point and see how things go, I’m pretty light on wheels generally, so if you don’t think I’ll break them, I’m pretty sure I’ll be fine.

Thanks, are those CX wheels or just standard road wheels? That’s what I really need to know.

I’m coming at this from a background of riding 1000s of miles on a set of bent wheels that were no better than those I’ve linked to when new, so I’m not really looking at anything flash or spending a lot of money. But I don’t want to buy some wheels that will get trashed as soon as I take them off road.

Do I want wider rims? Probably not if it can be helped as I’ll want to be able to swap a set of wheels with road tyres on without messing with the brakes.

Cheers

Ok, pulled the trigger on the Kinesis with their carbon fork, next question…………… wheels?

Do I want CX specific or will any road wheel do? not looking to spend loads of cash, so was looking at cheaps on merlin like these:

http://www.merlincycles.co.uk/Bike+Shop/Wheels/Road+Wheels/Factory+Road+Wheels/Shimano+RS10+Wheels+-+Pair_1458.htm

Will I break them?

No I’m just a chap with a knackered road bike that’s too big for him that’s looking to kill two birds with one stone by getting a CX frame instead of a road one. Dont know anything about CX other than I want to do it over the winter, hence the questions! CX with two sets of wheels should be decent winter bike before getting a new road bike in the spring.

I’m not rally sure which replies are directed at me, but I haven’t bought anything yet, i’m just asking questions. I’ve not raced cross before so I don’t know what theyre like exactly, hence the questions about the bars. I really asked out of curiosity as I’ll want drops for riding on the road anyway. I don’t know whether people use drops on CX as they’re all roadies or because they’re better. It seems to depend on the course and either could be a viable option. I’m sure I can ride drops if others can.

I’m going to give some cantilevers a chance, when I buy some CX wheels and tyres I’ll decide whether to fit a cable disc then. Let’s be honest, discs are cool, so I probably should. What size rotors? 160mm?

I definitely don’t want a hybrid!

Does anyone race CX on a road bike, or does that just not work at all? Again, just curious!

Didn’t they have a carbon 29er on their website a while ago, or did I imagine that?

Slowly that’s how! Is it wrong to want better? Sure it’s possible, I’ve done it myself, but it’s not as good. Which is entirely my point.

I’ve used cantis on a friends cross bike, I’ve even set them up perfectly on the bike so they worked as well as they could. They weren’t anywhere near as good as the brakes on my road bike. Let’s not try to pretend they’re something they’re not eh? They didn’t invent twin pivot road brakes for fun did they!

By ‘people’ do you mean me? I want to be able to do Cyclo Cross races on it and use it on the road in the winter, hence wanting decent brakes on it. I’m not bothered about having decent brakes for racing as if everyone else can do it without dieing, I’m sure I can too. However, decent brakes on the road is an important consideration.

What about this:

http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Models.aspx?ModelID=53014

Yeah, ok. Like I say, I’m not really bothered about racing, I just don’t want crappy brakes when i’m riding it on the roads when it’s greasy etc. There’s some big hills around here where a chap can get himself into trouble if he isn’t careful.

Think I’ll get the disc forks, then run CX brakes and eventually put a cable disc on the front.

So is there anything betterer for similar money than the Kinesis I linked to above?

What are these adaptors of which you speak?

If drops are better for descending, why don’t mountain bikes have drops? Sorry, I’ll need to be convinced as to why a cyclocross bike would descend better on drops?

I guess my concern is really whether CX brakes will scare me to death descending off Windgather in the wet as I’ll be using the bike as a winter road bike too. If so I’d rather have discs, but that limits me to spending a fortune, running cable discs. Mind you, I’ll only be able to run a front disc, so I’m probably looking at keeping the drops and running CX brakes before swapping to cable disc at the front if I can’t slow down on long wet descents.

I ride more road than MTB, though over the course of my life I’ve ridden a lot more MTB if that makes sense.

I have a junk road bike that’s coming to the end of it’s useful life, it’s had a bonded joint fail and be welded and been crashed so has a bent mech hanger that I can’t get any straighter, it’s heavy and looks horific and is a size too big. But it does the job. Plan is to get something flash next spring to replace it with and keep it as a winter hack.

But I figured that I might as well pick up a cheap frame on ebay so at least my winter hack has gears that work and is the right size. Then I noticed that there’s lots of cyclocross races around here and I’d probably want to do them over the winter, so wondered about running a cyclo-cross bike as my winter bike.

Then I looked at these:

http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Models.aspx?ModelID=43322

http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Models.aspx?ModelID=18196

I don’t want to spend a lot of money on it. I can swap everything over apart from the brakes and I could keep the front brake if I kept the forks I’ve got on it, so it would be fairly adaptable. I think I’d prefer to run disk brakes than cyclo-cross type brakes and I’m not sure cable discs are any good? They certainly weren’t last time I encountered some! Would cable discs work with my Ultegra STIs?

So if I ran hydraulics I’d need flat bars, then I wondered why people don’t run flat bars as I’d imagine I’d prefer that. But then I thought I was probably wrong, but couldn’t work out why.

So there’s my thought process! Please feel free to advise or go off at wild tangents.

The route is on connect.garmin.com so long as they haven’t changed it.

I actually did it on Saturday, it’s a very nice route, there are no massive hills, mostly flat, with a few small climbs around Delamere Forest and towards the Welsh border.

Had a head wind on the way out and was taking it easy, but was much quicker on the way back. Was supposed to be with some others but they bailed because of the weather. Ironically I got sunburned over near Wales and it appeared only to be raining over Manchester, so I was fine until I got back to Wilmslow.

100ft per mile of climbing is an undulating ride, 200ft per mile is hilly, 300ft per mile pretty demanding terrain. Roughly speaking.

Think the best descent I’ve done was from the top of the Old Man of Coniston, down to Coniston village, absolutely brilliant!