Order placed on Monday, dispatched on Wednesday, received on Thursday. That’ll do for me.

I’d just get XT again. The ceramic bearing in the RD-M732 (about 1992/1993 I think?) rear mech on my commuter bike is still in perfect condition.

EDITED TO ADD: Just actually read the above post properly!. Too late, never mind.

Sort of on the same subject, does anyone happen to know the nearest RAL code for the red used on new-ish Ducati Monster motorbikes? My colleague has a 696 and I’d like to get something powdercoated or painted in the same colour.

A quick browse around the Ducati forums seems to suggest that Ducati have lots of different reds, and I’m not sure which one I need.

alanw2007 – Member

My mate, the night before a big race: “I’d better fit the timing chip now, rather than just before the start when I’m stressed.” Result:

Your mate lives in Tokyo?

I phoned up yesterday to ask about my order, as is was still showing as ‘Processing’. As somebody pointed out earlier in this thread, CRC claim to despatch orders the same day, provided the order is received before 3pm and the item is in stock. My order was placed at 4:30am and all the items were in stock, hence my querying it not having been dispatched after two full working days had elapsed. I have no problem with waiting for stuff if that is what I’m expecting to do, but if someone claims to do same-day dispatch then I feel they should stick to it.

The guy I spoke to checked my order told me it was all fine and the items were all in stock, so would be in the list to be picked and could potentially be picked and dispatched ‘any time now’. He made the point that CRC had received 50,000 orders that day so I would be somewhere in the list of 50,000. I pointed out that my order was from the day before and asked if the order was, realistically, likely to be dispatched either that day or soon after, he replied that he had no idea and it would get dispatched when it got dispatched.

Not the most helpful customer service ever, but at least the guy was honest and I’m betting he has to deal with tens – if not hundreds – of similar calls each day.

I checked the site again this morning and my order is now showing as dispatched. All in all, my stuff has been dispatched within 3 days of ordering and should be with me comfortably within a week of ordering, I don’t think that can really be grumbled at.

Hob Nob – Member

A £20 note, and your local powdercoaters with an acid bath.

Scienceofficer – Member

If you want to do it yourself, ‘green’ Nitromors is best…

…Budget about 10 hours and keep alot of newspaper or similar nearby.

No contest! Unless you value your time at less than £2 per hour…

Rob Hilton – Member

P.S.
I wouldn’t consider a full-suss at that price range, even heavily discounted, such as: http://www.paulscycles.co.uk/products.php?plid=m1b0s1p1748 as it’ll be a really heavy piece of shit.

Is it wrong that I’m actually finding that ‘really heavy piece of shit’ quite tempting? :oops:

As per some of the posts above, if I ever see mine come up for sale (very unlikely now, it’s been 5 months) then I’d arrange a viewing, probably taking a mate or two with me, then (once I was sure it was my bike, of course!) give the guy the option of just letting me walk away with my bike or me ringing the Police to come and sort it out. This is where the mate or two would be handy, Mr Scumbag might be tempted to get punchy if you’re on your own, less likely of you’re not. Of course, as soon as I got home I’d ring the Police anyway.

What I’d do if I just saw somebody riding down the road on it is another matter. I suspect it would involve confrontation and me getting myself in trouble…

– Raleigh trike with the ‘cranks’ attached directly to the front axle :D

– Puch (just a ‘bike’, single speed not a ‘racer’ or a mountain bike)

– 5 speed friction-shift racer, can’t remember the brand. Used to watch the TdF with my Dad then go outside and pretend I was Sean Kelly…

– Emmelle Nevada 15, Hi-tensile steel frame, 24″ steel-rimmed wheels and 15 speed friction shift, brand new on my 9th birthday. It weighed a ton and was, to be fair, a heap of poo. I loved it though and went all over Derbyshire on it. I went through Christ-knows how many back tyres by deliberately skidding it round the corner at the bottom of our Close (cul-de-sac if you’re posh!). I eventually got my Dad to brush paint it black with Hammerite (he picked the lugs out in red enamel, I thought it looked the dog’s danglies a the time) and carried on riding it until I couldn’t raise the seatpost any higher. By this point I had begun reading MBUK and had also had my first big crash – Whilst riding home from a mate’s, I was trying to do cross-up wheelies. The two main problems were that I couldn’t do wheelies at that time, so I was just ‘manualling’ the wheel maybe 20cm or so off the deck. I was also riding quite swiftly at the time! The inevitable happened and I landed with the wheel crossed up, went over the bars and went sliding along the road, using my face, legs and arms as a brake. I still have the scars today…!

– Hawk Trakatak. Hi-tensile steel, mig welded, triple triangle GT copy. Bought from a mate in my class at school (Peter McCall, if he’s reading this!) for the princely sum of £16. I thought it was fantastic, on the grounds that it had 26″ wheels so could take ‘proper’ tyres and it had indexed gears. Shimano SIS, no less! I upgraded it with Specialized Ground Control tyres and an incongruous pair of white unicrown forks – one of the dropouts sheared clean off the originals!

– Raleigh Mirage. 23″ Reynolds 501 lugged frame in a fetching shade of purple. My Dad bought it for me in a Police auction and, again, I loved it. All decked out with Shimano 300LX, it had 21 gears, STI (the original Rapidfires with both buttons stacked underneath each other and operated with your thumb), alloy rims and a quick release front wheel. I really was going up in the world! Sadly, I managed to bend the frame along the top and down tubes during a session of repeated heavy front wheel landings off the tabletop at Alvaston BMX track. So I saved up my paper round money and replaced the frame with…

– Raleigh Dyna-Tech Diablo. I bought this off a rich kid from school (Chris Endacott…!) for, I think, £50. It had aluminium lugs and titanium main tubes. All my mates kept telling me I’d been seen off and the rear triangle was bent (even I had to admit that the rear wheel never sat straight in the frame!) but it never seemed to hold me back. The colour scheme was truly ‘special’, with Royal blue lugs and a kind of mottled purple ‘petals’ effect on the main tubes. Not my actual frame, but one like it here http://hilarystone.com/retromtbbikeandframes.html
I initially kept this as a spare bike when I got my Kona but the frame ended up getting passed round various mates over a few years. It met a sad end when one mate who’d borrowed it crashed his car into a tree at around 80MPH and, unsurprisingly, died. He was 18 and, sadly, thought himself invincible. The Derby Evening Telegraph published a picture on the front page of his car in-situ, with my Dyna-Tech half hanging out of the boot. I was virtually inconsolable at the time (I was only 16 years old) and formed some stupid guilt complex in my head that if I’d never leant him the bike then he’d never have been for a ride, so wouldn’t have been driving home from said ride and therefore wouldn’t have crashed and wouldn’t have died. Weird what grief does to people.

– 1996 Kona Fire Mountain. Bought brand new in October 1995 with a loan from my Dad, mail order from Leisure Lakes in Daventry. As standard it had Shimano Acera gears and Gripshift. It went through many, many build permutations, including a full respray, disc brakes and a Fox fork. I adored this bike and it was still in daily use right up until the day it was stolen last November. I’ll freely admit to having been close to tears.

– 1999 GT XCR3000. First of the i-Drive bikes and replacement for the LTS. I bought this brand new from Leisure Lakes in Breaston as a present to myself when I got back from my first Operation tour. By today’s standards, the rear suspension was probably pretty agricultural but I enjoyed it. It met a very bizarre end in 2001 when a mate and I got very very drunk on tequila. My mate decided that it would be funny to post it out of the window on the premise that a full suspension bike should bounce. My room was on the third floor. At the time, I though it was hilarious, when I surveyed the bent-to-buggery frame the next morning through sobered eyes, I wasn’t laughing anymore… The best bit was when I told the nice lady on the phone exactly what had happened. Somewhat bemused, she just said ‘I’m afraid we don’t have a category for that. We’ll just put it down as crashed’ and sent me a cheque! I still have the Judy 100 forks today, although they’re currently unrideable as they leak like a sieve and need so need to go to TF for some love.

– Trek 9000 full suspension – the really old ‘pogo stick’ one with the single beam swingarm and elastomer shock. The frame was given to me by a mate who had bought a Specialized FSR. I had it stove enamelled and built it up with all brand new parts including a full Deore groupset, Magura HS33s and RST 281XL triple clamp forks. A pretty shocking bike by STW standards, but I had a right laugh on it. I once even took it round Coed y Brenin for a weekend and didn’t die.

– 1993 (I think) GT Timberline. I got this for nowt in about 2002 from a mate who was chucking the entire bike away on the basis that the seatpost was seized into the frame and he’d somehow managed to snap the top off the post by heaving on the saddle to try and shift it. I took it into the REME workshops, got them to apply a bit of heat and out came the post. One cheapo post from the LBS and a saddle from the spares bin later and it was a perfectly functional bike. Resplendent in hearing-aid-beige and with a farm-gate 23″ frame, this is still my commuter bike today. I’ve upgraded it slightly with a Titec low riser bar, XT thumbshifters and period XT mechs, SPD pedals and a neon-yellow Magura HS33 front brake for comedy effect (£25 off eBay!)

– 2007 Kona Caldera. My current steed, bought for £275 of eBay when my Fire Mountain was nicked. So far I’ve ‘upgraded’ the forks by inserting a stack of 2p coins under the preload adjuster to try and firm them up some. I’ve replaced the seized Hayes Nine brakes with M956 Deores and I’m currently waiting on a Hope headset to replace the knackered Cane Creek original. The WTB bar and stem (very high rise) have been replaced with an Easton EA70 low riser from eBay and a Hope 0 degree rise from the STW classifieds. I’m not planning to spend too much on this bike (I realise how futile an intention that may be, even as I’m typing it!), with a view to saving up some proper pennies for A Nice Bike in a couple of years. We’ll see…

CCTV? I think you can get motion-triggered set ups nowadays that will start recording (digitally) once the would-be thieving scumbag has entered your shed.

Complete Gareth Hunts, I hate thieves. I really hope you get your bikes back and that they were insured (like mine wasn’t).

Yes, there will. If you use the SLX and your bike finds out that you have an XT available, it will crumble into a thousand pieces, mid-ride, and you will die.

Thankyou, you have just brightened up my day!

bigblackshed – Member

…the Bike Tart / OCD in me would keep me up at nights knowing that the shifters and mechs don’t match, if you don’t upgrade this minute.

I have Deore shifters and front mech… with an XT rear mech! :twisted: Feel free to come round and replace the shifters and front mech with XT anytime you like… :D

Leaving the M5 to pulling in at Woolacombe takes us under an hour mate.

PJM1974 – Member

I’ve had loads of chain routing lols…

You’ve had loads of what? All of a sudden, I feel rather old!

The XT will probably be fractionally lighter (as in the the weight of two, maybe three Cheddar & Onion Real McCoys) but will also be made from higher quality materials – more metal and less plastic, will have a fractionally more precise action and will, all other things being equal, last longer.

Mechs and shifters aren’t ‘matched’, however, you don’t have to use like with like if you don’t want to. XT shifters will work slightly more accurately and precisely than SLX. An XT mech weighed against an SLX mech would be the same. An SLX mech will work fine with an XT shifter and vice versa, using XT for both would give you a fractionally(!) better shift and a tiny weight saving, that’s all.

The big plastic area you mention, it’s not the shim between the mech clamp and the seat tube is it? I only ask, as all Shimano mechs now seem to use that system, so you’ll get plastic shims with SLX and XT.

Does it have to be South Devon? We’ve been to Woolacombe Bay on the North Devon coast (just down the road from Ilfracombe) a couple of times and really enjoyed it.

The set up is a complex of 3 or 4 holiday parks, you choose which one you want to stay on but your price gives you free access to all the other parks, with a cheap bus (about £1 for a day I think) that will shuttle you between them and also to and from Woolacombe town itself. There’s plenty to do on the parks (organised kiddy clubs during the day and discos at night, swimming pools, crazy golf, bingo/music in the evening for the adults etc), but also the peace and quiet option you mentioned.

The accommodation ranges from caravans to chalets and, on the main park, a huge great farmhouse (4 bedroom I think) with a decent kitchen, washer and dryer, it’s own private garden, hot tub and BBQ – this is where we stayed last year and loved it.

Woolacombe itself is fairly small but has the usual cafés and gift shops etc, plus a massive sandy beach. There is a bus service as I mentioned earlier, but you can walk down from the main (Woolacombe Bay) park in about 15 or 20 minutes. Alternatively, you have Ilfracombe about 15 minutes drive away and Barnstaple about 30-40 minutes away.

As a reasonably priced UK holiday, I can’t recommend it highly enough, we’ve been for the past two years running and would be going again this year if we did not have a house move to fund.

Here’s a link

http://www.woolacombe.co.uk/

mccett – Member

Shop mechanic asked to cut bars down, cuts an inch off one side, has a brew, cuts another inch off the same side again….

Shop mechanic fitting new forks, measures head tube of frame and cuts steerer…. without allowing for headset/stem/spacers.

Shop mechanic drills out Santa Cruz Bullit swingarm pinch bolt using too big a drill, removes bolt and the machined recess the bolt sits against so that it will actually pinch together…

I see a pattern…! I trust that:

a) This wasn’t all at the same shop.
b) In each case, the shop replaced your FUBAR’d kit FOC.

Not bike set-up, but still bike related…

Racing at Sherwood Pines in ’99 on my brand spankers GT XCR3000. Feeling good and from halfway round the last lap I put in a big charge for the finish, getting myself up to 3rd place. I crossed the line and slowed to a blowing-out-of-my-arse stop, feeling pretty damned chuffed with myself.

At which point, a bemused looking marshall quietly said to me, “You do know you’ve still got another lap to do, don’t you?”

I eventually finished something like 15th.

Cannondales always look pretty nice. Don’t they file the welds smooth or something, so the tubes all end up looking like one continuous piece?

Yes, 25 May. Sorry, blonde moment!

I ordered from CRC in the early hours of this morning (04:34 on Mon 30 Apr 12). The order is currently (15:59 on Mon 30 Apr 12) showing as processing, I just hope my order doesn’t fall into the black hole that some others seem to have.

I toyed with the idea of buying from Wiggle, as they’re normally very quick to deliver (I find it very frustrating though that, even though Wiggle are less than 5 miles from my house, there is no option to collect in person) but was swayed by CRC’s 10% off offer – I hope that’s a decision I don’t come to regret.

I need the item in question (a Hope headset) for a stag-weekend trip to Coed y Brenin at the end of this month, but it obviously needs to arrive in time for me to get the bike into the LBS and have it fitted. The reason I didn’t order from the LBS (Cycle Surgery, Portsmouth) in the first place is that neither they or Solent Cycles had a gold Hope headset in stock and neither could even give a vague forcast of when they’d be able to get one in.

I got one from my LBS for £1. They even crimped it onto the hose for me for nowt. Might be worth ringing round whoever is near you.

It’s probably because of the high cumulative value of the loss. They’ll be looking for absolutely every little thing they can to knock money off your final awarded sum, from the obvious depreciation factor(unless you have a ‘new for old’ policy?) to perceived or implied flaws in security – ie trying to make out the theft was partly your own fault for having nice bikes in the first place, being seen on them/loading them in and out of your car etc by passing scumbags and not storing them in an apocalypse-proof underground bunker which is in turn guarded by a pack of particularly antisocial Tyrannosaurus’ Rex.

I just use Excel. It doesn’t take long to make yourself a basic template that then lets you enter your wages and any other income, plus another column for your expenditure, giving you an ‘available’ running total. I’m not particularly hot on graphs, but I know Excel has the capacity to generate them.

oliverd1981 – Member

I dunnno – having to trail to the sorting office to pick up a small, cheap item beacause an Ebay seller is being over cautious is quite annoying.

I should perhaps have mentioned that I state quite clearly in all my listings that any postage will be Signed For and that that is non-negotiable. That way, any interested parties know exactly where they stand and can elect to look elsewhere if they feel I’m being unnecessarily over-cautious.

I’ve been ripped off in the past for, admittedly, fairly small amounts. I couldn’t give a toss if someone only stole a pound or a penny from me – they’ve still stolen from me.

Double post.

Gold Hope headset and black Space Doctors (plus a £2 Kenda innertube to take it over the £75 threshold!) ordered from CRC at 4:34 this morning when I couldn’t sleep! Used the ‘YES’ voucher code and the whole lot came in at £69.26 delivered, can’t grumble at that.

The only problem now is that I keep logging on to CRC when I’m supposed to be working to see if my order has changed from ‘Processing’ to ‘Dispatched’… I hate waiting for stuff!

I’ve used Clarks canti blocks ‘back in the day’ and they were fine. I preferred Koolstop or Shimano M-System but I’d be surprised if either was still available. The Clarks will be fine, canti blocks are a universal fit (Shimano even used to make really long ones that curved to follow the rim) so I’d say get ’em ordered.

Cork is nice and comfy.

Not really, other than the risk of the ‘cheap as chips’ ones not actually being very good as being brake pads. If they grip OK then yes, they’ll be fine.

godzilla – Member

It’s the oldest eBay scam in the world, if you buy ANYTHING and pay by PayPal then recive the item and it comes with no tracking number all you need to do is tell eBay you never got the item and you will be refunded in full. I do loads on eBay and people try it on all the time, I got done on a small scale years ago and never again.

Snap. I now insist on sending anything I sell on eBay, no matter how small, by Signed For delivery or the buyer collecting in person. There’s few very things in this world that can make your blood boil like knowing you’ve been stolen from.

If the item has arrived at it’s intended destination (ie the buyer is lying) then a theft has occurred. OK, so technically it’s actually ‘Fraud by false representation’ but you get what’s meant. Parcelforce should be able to say whether the frame was ever delivered, if it was and the buyer is saying otherwise, somebody is telling porky pies and the frame has been nicked by someone.

If the buyer is indeed being honest, then Parcelforce have lost the frame and they are liable, I’ve got a horrible feeling the standard uninsured value they put on things is something like “Not exceeding £50” though. :( I’d still be tempted to involve the Police even in this case, however. As totalshell pointed out above, a mountain bike frame doesn’t just get misplaced under a stack of envelopes or at the bottom of a mailbag. If it’s gone missing, then somebody in the postal chain has half-inched it.

^^ I think the assumption here is that the OP’s knowledge of the item not arriving is based on the buyer telling him so.

If Parcelforce turn round and say it was delivered, my next phone call would be to the Police, definitely something fishy going on.

warton – Member

I for one do not want Redknapp.

West Ham
Portsmouth
Southampton

All nearly went bust. Why? because Redknapp NEEDS millions upon millions to build a team, and as he’s again proving at Spurs, he’s not very good at actually delivering results….

National sides don’t buy players though, they just borrow the best available from their relevant clubs and give them back (more often that not, broken!) afterwards. Surely Harry would be ideal in this position, where he can cherry pick whoever he likes?

With regard to Spurs’ poor recent form, incidentally, I truly believe that is due to the uncertainty and speculation over Harry’s future. They were doing pretty damn well before Capello was sacked, if the FA were never going to approach Harry then I think they’ve done Spurs an injustice by not saying so at the outset.

Bit of a shitty way to treat Spurs really.

If the FA were never intending to offer Harry the job, they should have made that clear from the start. Spurs’ recent dip in form coincided almost exactly with the speculation surrounding Harry and the potential England job, if they now fail to secure a Champions League spot (quite possible if Chelsea either win the final and negate 4th spot or just finish 4th themselves – I don’t see Spurs overcoming Arsenal for 3rd) then they will justifiably feel pretty aggrieved at having been mucked about by the FA.

I have a 25.4, 0 degree, 105mm FSA XC115 in pretty good condition (few minor scratches here and there, can post a pic or two up if you wish).

£15 ono posted?

Rocky Mountain Blizzard please, preferably with an 80mm fork, flat bar and dripping with XTR.

EBC Greenstuff, £7.99 a pair from JE James (And, I assume, many other places too). Product code is CFA 370.