That is not the face of enjoyment!

I think a lot of grips come from the same factory, e.g. ODI/Lizard Skins.

Hmm, I can definitely feel the pad contact but it still feels a little spongy compared to V’s for example. I guess I could have introduced air to the system, plus I don’t know how carefully they were set up by Wiggle in the first place.

Next question… where can I get a little bit of plastic tube for bleeding, without buying Shimano’s bizarrely expensive bleed kit?

Large frame that is, not wife.

Errr, I have had a complete about turn and, after chatting to the guy on the other end of the phone, ordered one of these in small:

http://www.dirtyjobikes.co.uk/Frames/Dirty_Jo_Semi_Creme_

They look pretty good built up. Thanks to all for the advice, will let you know how I get on…

That other Merlin 1 looks good, but I need V-bosses unfortunately. And no, I would never swap my wife for a medium frame. If it was a large, perhaps.

Thanks for the info – it’s a hard question to definitively answer I know. At the moment I am tending toward the 15″ – I would hope to be able to be able to fine-tune the reach etc with stem length, seatpost layback and so forth. The only thing I really want to get right is the standover height.

I am interested in this topic. I think what we really need is a thread on which is best, full sus or hardtail.

FSA tend to do good value for money stuff. Not sure why, but they are often the cheapest £/gram, e.g. compared to Raceface for example.

Yumeya somewhere?

Deja vu

You’ve prob seen it but:

http://www.bikeradar.com/gear/category/components/forks-suspension/product/32-talas-rlc-qr-15-09-31266

Cool, cheers for that.

Yeah it does… *sigh* more things to worry about… Why don’t the fork manufacturers face them then, lazy tykes.

If you spin you should minimise bob significantly. Try using a higher cadence?

Hope i’m not opening a can of worms here, but do you need to get fork disk mounts faced then? I have an IS fork, and an IS to 185 Post adapter. I’m new to this disc brake malarkey…

🙄

Panaracer website says 700g, and two wire Fire XC Pro’s on Weight Weenies: 670g and 710g.

Kenda Website says SB8’s are 518g

Where are you getting your figures from?

Whether or not you get new wheels, new tyres would probably be worth it – Panaracer Fire XC Pro with wire bead are 700g according to Panaracer website (2.1″). Depending on the tyres you could easily reduce that to as little as 520g (e.g. Kenda Small Block 8) for the same size. Thats a big weight saving and at the most important location, the rim. Also, it would cost ~£50. I reckon this is a much better £/gram saving than you can achieve with a wheel change.

FWIW, In my opinion if you don’t race then I would think it’s not essential to have super duper light wheels, just my opinion mind.

Hmm Conti website says that the 2.4’s are made with an extra sticky Black Chilli compound. It says that the 2.2’s are made with a faster compound, but does not explicitly state whether it is Black Chilli or not.

Fair enough, I’m probably over sensitive – seems like there’s a lot of bad ‘tudes on here these days! I’m sure someone who gave more of a sh1t could provide a convincing counter argument to that statement tho, but not me…

Ok, I getcha, and the others are Deore.

So what’s an RT75 then, out of interest?

Wow, friendly.

Dusty and dry here, for the next four days at least supposedly!

I heard the Conti Rubber Queens are not ‘Conti-Size’, i.e. the 2.4’s are quite large.

http://www.bikemagic.com/news/article/mps/uan/6680

http://www.bikeradar.com/mtb/gear/category/components/tyres/mountain/product/rubber-queen-31783

Thanks guys great response and a great help. Would never have found all those options on my own! Will probably start ordering bits next week.

Is your chain long enough? Big cog to big cog, suspension fully compressed?

I really can’t stand littering.

Hmm, that Dirty Jo looks interesting, not heard of them before. Any idea if they are lightweight, comparitively speaking? It would be good to build her a light bike, I don’t want to put her off!

Hmm, Merlin stuff sounds interesting. Not keen on the decals, but I guess I could probably remove those. Shame bout forks – £70 for a P2 sounds like a lot to me. Could probably get carbon for not much more.

Fair enough, manual-tastic!

Is it just me, or is that saddle really far back, like over the middle of the rear wheel?

ho ho ho

bleh. anyone here got a qualification in statistics?

>trailbreak-martin

Thumbs up.

perks –

1. Cyclists risk compensate
2. Drivers risk compensate
3. Inconvenient
4. Hot head
5. Helmets cost money
6. Ruins your hair

the issue with reduction in cycling is indeed a problem, however, you could read that as an ABSOLUTE reduction in number of accidents.

So… your policy for reducing the total number of cycling accidents is to reduce the number of people cycling?!? Hmmm… maybe I misunderstood that.

“safety for the remaining cyclists has not detectably improved” ?

So why bother?

FWIW I helmet off road, or when doing a ‘serious’ road ride, but don’t when pootling about town.

This is taken from a comment on BikeRadar, posted by an employee of the CTC: http://www.bikeradar.com/blogs/article/naughty-duffy-eh-20525

“* The evidence from places where helmet use has been increased significantly, notably through helmet laws (e.g. in Australia, New Zealand, parts of the USA and Canada etc) is that cycle use has declined drastically, and that safety for the remaining cyclists has not detectably improved, in some cases it appears to have got worse.

* There is very little evidence about the reason(s) for this apparently counter-intuitive lack of benefits from helmet-wearing, however there are plenty of possible explanations. For one thing, helmets offer at best only very limited protection, they are (and can only be) designed for minor knocks and falls, not impacts with moving traffic. And then there are a whole host of possible reasons why the wearing of helmets may make cyclists more likely to hit their heads in the first place, potentially negating or outweighing whatever (at best limited) benefits a helmet might provide in the event of such an impact.

* For instance, it is known that some people, including young children as well as teenagers, “risk-compensate” when using helmets, i.e. act less cautiously. Drivers may also risk-compensate – one small-scale study has found that they leave less space when overtaking a cyclist with a helmet than one without. By effectively increasing the size of the head, a helmet may also turn what would otherwise have been mere glancing blows or even complete “near misses” into very serious neck injuries or “rotational force” injuries of the kind most likely to result in brain damage. Or, by reducing the numbers of cyclists, pressure to wear helmets may also be counter-productive by reducing the “safety in numbers” for those cyclists who remain. There are other possible factors but these are the main ones.

I explained all this very patiently to him. I also sent him links to CTC’s main helmet page (http://www.ctc.org.uk/DesktopDefault.aspx?TabID=4688 and http://www.ctc.org.uk/DesktopDefault.aspx?TabID=4641) and to the Bicycle Helmet Research Foundation (www.cyclehelmets.org).”

Buggerfarts, I just bought xt inner and outer rings, could have got SLX for peanuts!