No, you don’t have to use a Shimano chain. In fact new Giants with Shimano 10sp drivetrains ship with KMC chains these days.

But, you know you can use a KMC quick link with a Shimano chain – don’t have to muck about with those stupid joining pins…

don’t ust rims and ust tyres combo still need sealant?

Only if you want the puncture protection of goo. Its not needed to seal the tyre walls, bead, or valve. Where I ride there aren’t any thorns, so I’ve been running without goo since I went tubeless 6 months ago, and not had any problems.

If you’ve got UST rims might as well use UST tyres. They’re so much less hassle than tubeless ready – no need for goo, no burping, and I can even seat my UST Maxxis on my Shimano rims with the mini-pump I carry with me riding.

I thought as much when I inspected my XT, though I suspected they’d use some sort of ‘weld’ to stop folk having a prod about.

Thanks for clarifying…

If your XT is the M785 then the caliper is identical to the SLX above (except painted a different colour and with those magic letters ‘XT’). There’s nothing other than two bolts holding the two halves together. The long bolt in the picture goes through the top hole (in the top picture), and the banjo bolt which attaches the hose to the caliper goes through the bottom one. The banjo bolt has the ‘O’ ring pictured to seal the two halves (note the recess for it), but the top one doesn’t even need that as there’s no oil around it.

Very simple to take apart, just make sure you force the pistons out as far as you can while its still attached to the lever, as they’re a bu@@er to get out otherwise (learnt the hard way :oops: ) Re-assembly is even easier, but needs a good bleed to get air out of the small oil passages drilled through the caliper body (see bottom picture – the passage on the left goes to the bleed nipple, and the one on the right to the banjo bolt).

Actually its an SLX, the XTR caliper is a single piece.

Nothing cut, its a two piece caliper, just dis-assembled. In fact its back together now as a spare.

In a similar vein, I took apart an old brake caliper the other day to see what was inside. I was quite surprised how little there was to it…

What d’ya fancy Rich – how about next Sunday at the KC, say 8am?

As you’re south of town I’d also check out the trails around Dwellingup. I was down there on Sunday. Turners Hill is technical, and Marrinup fast & flowy, so combine them both into one morning and then hit the Blue Wren Café in Dwelli town for lunch.

Yes, its a 9 speed crankset, but many people have used 9 speed cranks and/or chainrings on an otherwise 10 speed setup without issues. So, if it has the right ratios for you, and you want the bash, then I guess there’s no harm in going for it, I was just checking you were aware Shimano specify it as 9 speed.

The 10 speed equivalent is the M675, but that doesn’t have the bash, and the smallest it goes to is 38/24.

You know the M665 is a 2×9 – right?

That time of year, and with just a week, I’d head down to Queenstown for some skiing – its a seriously lively place in the ski season…

Agree! Shimano cup ‘n cone get a lot of abuse on here, but its a satisfying experience to adjust a hub to that ‘just right’ point by feel alone.

I’ve got Deore M590 on my commuter, and after 5000kms I thought it about time to check them. Of course they were fine – only just about run it – and a dab of that luminous green Shimano grease and an adjustment was all that was needed.

Personally, I think adjusting bearings is one of those tactile pleasures that makes bike fettling fun, and I’m Shimano cup ‘n cone across all three bikes now – XT, SLX, and Deore.

Sheldon’s website is unfortunately one of a kind, and now a relic of a bygone era. A person who genuinely knew what they were talking about, and was willing to spend an inordinate amount of time sharing it for free with the rest of us, just beacause of his pure love of cycling.

Showing my age here, but in the early days of the web there were lots of sites like that on all sorts of subjects. Now most of the genuine ‘experts’ have given up on the medium as they got drowned out by the idiots, or were driven out by the overt commercialiasation that came in with the first dotcom boom. Content is now mostly written by generalist web-authors simply to drive hits and ad revenue to commercial sites, or is crowdsourced, and it’s near impossible to sort the wheat from the chaff.

How about a 605/705? Not the latest model but has all the functionality you’re after.

+1 If you’re not bothered by the latest touch screen & phone connectability, get a 705.

I picked one up real cheap recently from someone who was upgrading to an 810, and there’s still new ones offered on Ebay at much cheaper prices than the 800/810

Shimano MT65 from Merlin – 150 quid. Proper UST rims too!

linky

Any one used zee brakes? Does anyone know If you can mount them onto the ispec XT shifters?

Call me pedantic, but its the shifters that mount to the brakes, not the other way round. And as the Zee levers are identical to SLX ones just painted a different colour, then I’d say you’d have no problem mounting an I-Spec shifter to them.

The way I looked at it if you’re not doing anything wrong, why wouldn’t you carry ID?

If you’re not doing anything wrong, then why should you be obliged to do anything?

Not trying to trample your rights here, just giving my experiences of living in a country that required people to carry ID. I found there was no downside to it, and occasional upsides – that being on the few occasions when I needed to prove who I was, it was achieved simply, quickly, and without any embarrassment, and I was on my way again.

There is another argument for carring ID of course, and that is that the law abiding majority has their ‘rights’ marginally infringed by having to carry identification, in order that the police and other officials we employ to enforce our rules and keep us safe can do their job more effectively. We make these compromises of personal freedom in the general interests of society more readily in other aspects of life – having number plates on our cars for example, but carrying personal ID seems to generate much more emotion!

For most of my adult life I lived in Hong Kong where you had to carry an ID card – and I had no problem with it.

The way I looked at it if you’re not doing anything wrong, why wouldn’t you carry ID?

I think you’ll find the government has basically implemented ID cards in the UK by stealth, with the change to the photo-card driving licences – its an ID card in everything but name :lol:

Unless you’re being ironic I doubt that muchly – all engines have a sweet spot where they have maximum fuel efficiency.

I’d always understood that because wind resistance increases exponentially with speed rather than linearly, you will always use less fuel for a given distance the slower you go? It’s the same logic for why, when on a bike, and you ride an out and back course with a head wind then a tail wind, you never recover all the speed you lost on the headwind leg, on the tailwind leg.

Sitting at idle or at low revs uses significantly more fuel than driving at 56mph in top gear.

Yes, but in the scenario the OP suggests, he won’t be at idle or low revs, the selection of an appropriate gear will ensure the engine is still running in that ‘sweet spot’ interms of revs/torque, even though the speed is low.

That’s my understanding anyway, but willing to be corrected by someone who understands the fizziks better than me :-)

you should be able to order the part from any bike shop that deals with Madison (ie sells shimano)

Yes, thats what I thought – if there’s a part number, you can get it – right? However, when I asked my usual bike shop (who’ve always been able to track down Shimano bits & bobs in the past) to order me one, they said it wasn’t available. You may have better luck however…

Yes its just chromed plastic. So long as there’s no mineral oil leak I wouldn’t worry, as there’s a rubber diaphragm between it and the actual oil reservoir which does the job of sealing.

I’ve gouged chunks out of mine with regular OTB incidents, and the brake function hasn’t suffered – in fact I wear them with pride as battle scars – if your brakes are still shiny chrome you’re obviously not trying hard enough :-)

But if you do want to replace it, you’re right you can’t get the reservoir cover only (at least I couldn’t), you have to buy the whole lever assembly, which is about 45 bucks from CRC.

Don’t think anyone has suggested it stops chain stretch – have they 8O

But I live near the coast, and the SRAM nickel plated ones certainly don’t develop that ugly surface rust that the plain grey ones do under salty conditions.

I was wondering the same thing just a few days back. Wanted to get some GT-85 but couldn’t find any locally. Everyone seemed to have this instead…

Which looks like the WD40 brand equivalent of GT-85 – is it?

What’s that cross step about on the on one chains?

Its a different riveting process that’s supposed to make the chain stronger. Only available on PC991 IIRC?

I’m like you Yunki – I’m definitely mellowing with age. I’d like to put it down to the wisdom of experience teaching me not to waste effort on things I can’t do anything about, but I fear its more likely just declining testosterone levels :(

I won’t even lend my tools to my mates anymore. Call me a grumpy old git if you like, but I’ve spent a lot of time and money gathering all the specialist tools I need to fix my bike, my mates haven’t bothered, and expect to borrow mine. When I used to lend, they wouldn’t come back, and I’d have to drive for an hour or so to retrieve them next time they were needed.

Instead, I now offer for them to bring their bike (and a couple of beers) over to my place on a Sunday and I’ll help’em fix it. Works bettter for all concerned.

I’m gonna be 50 in five days time, so I guess that makes me a relative youngster in this company :D

Kids you say? Uh oh, you’ve done it now, Perth is paradise for kids! We moved here when my daughter was three specifically so she could have the kind of childhood I always wanted…

Schools aren’t great academically (WA regularly comes out badly on national academic league tables), but are wonderful small, friendly, outdoorsy places that produce well rounded kids.

Here’s me and Perthette on the morning school run (that’s the school behind us)…

Yep – purely by friction, and it seemed to work fine!

Although there were fancy ones with some new fangled ratchet system to help the friction out, and make a satisfying clicky noise…

Woah! Hang on there you whippersnappers, not all us decrepit old 50 somethings are ready to trade in our MTB for a weelchair quite yet! I bet I could give some of you younguns a whuppin at Whilstler…

Got in late on this one, so most of its already been said. All I can add is that you should look at it this way Toys – once your mate’s over here, you’ll be having some great holidays… :D

They’re good wheels, I don’t think you’ll regret it!

By the way, they use Shimano proprietary straight pull spokes, and evey Shimano wheel has a slightly different version of the spoke (length, diameter, colour of nipple), so they can be a pain to get hold of because nobody carries stock.

Not that I’m expecting them to break, but if you’re like me and like to be prepared, might be worth picking up some spares now.

Theoretically, any LBS with a Madison account should be able to order some in for you, but I’ve heard stories of it taking months and charging about ten quid a spoke, so I got mine here when I was ordering some other stuff.

The SLX M665/7 double was specifically designed for a 36T, but its 9 speed. Imagine any of the 10sp double FDs will cope, just won’t quite match the curve of the chainring thats all…

Sorry, I’ve not had enough coffee this morning and my tolerance for people fitting the Urban Dictionary description is running quite low.

No, you carry on – about time some of these kiddies got a taste of their own :D

8O Moderation with attitude. Me likey :D

small bowel of cereal

Sniggers :-)

Things to do and see in Canada between Calgary and Vancouver in summer?

Oooo! I know the anwswer to this one as I did that trip a few years back with the missus…

Its…. get bitten to death by mosquitoes – seriously, go well prepared, there’s only about five days the place isn’t covered by snow so there’s a bit of a feeding frenzy :-)

Asian food seems to set mine off – which is a bit of a problem seeing as my wife (and chef du maison) is Chinese! Think its something to do with all the MSG but can’t be sure…

“err Tubeless ready tyres will require goo, just no rim strips with the UST rims”

Yes, my mistake!