No cheaper for the Hope headset that I need than Wiggle or CRC.

From what I can make out with my shatter-resistant Rexel ruler, it appears to be exactly 28mm. Not a size I’ve ever come across, to be honest. Might I be better looking into a 27.2mm to 28mm shim?

I could (and probably will) measure it, but with seatpost diameters being accurate to tenths of a millimetre and my eyes not being the best, I thought I’d just enquire on here first to see if anybody just knew the size. If you don’t ask, you don’t get.

For a sale that arguably would not take place at all if the lower US price were unavailable… I don’t think the current state of the wider European economy is in any way due to a few enterprising STWers buying themselves a bike in the US here and there.

timthetinyhorse – Member

Indeed I could fly out with my bike bag and bring it back with me for less, couldn’t bring it back as a new bike though ornibwould still have to pay

IA – Member

Even used, it’d still attract VAT IIRC.

Once upon a time, timthetinyhorse went on holiday to America, taking with his bike, safely packed in his bike bag. The exact details of this bike are unclear, it could very well be a complete shed he’d bought for £25 on eBay or even got for nowt on Freecycle.

Unfortunately, whilst on his holiday in America, timthetinyhorse’s bike fell into a skip and was never seen again. timthetinyhorse was very sad so, to cheer himself up, he went into a shop and bought himself a shiny new bike, timthetinyhorse was now happy again, the sun shone and all was right with the world.

The next day, timthetinyhorse decided to write a letter to his Mummy and Daddy. In the letter, he included the receipt for his new bike so his Mummy could keep it nice and safe, along with the user manual for the bike because he knew his Daddy would be interested in reading it.

At the end of his holiday, timthetinyhorse put his lovely new bike in his bike bag, got on a big aeroplane and flew home. When timthetinyhorse walked through the airport, his bike bag did not seem unusual to the men and ladies who worked in there, as it was the same bike bag he had been carrying when he went on his holiday. Some of the men and ladies did want to look inside the bag though, but they were happy because the bike inside had little bits of dried mud on it and a couple of tiny stone chips here and there, timthetinyhorse had clearly owned the bike a while and had taken it on his holiday with him.

The end.

mrdestructo – Member

‘Society’ is an artificial apparatus placed upon us humans as we are only one step away from an anarchic madness

Wow. If ever there were an appropriate use of ‘deep’ as an adjective, this post it it!

Admittedly it’s something of a sweeping generalisation, but there seems to be an inverse ratio of company size and spares availability. [comparatively] Small outfits such as Hope and Pace seem to continue offering spares for previous products a lot longer than the larger ones such as Shimano or SRAM (for example).

ska-49 – Member

We have a posh school in the neighbouring village. Whenever I drive/cycle past they have all the sprinklers going on sports pitches, cricket grounds, boarding house gardens and on the golf course. This happened during the last hosepipe ban and is also happening now. Does make me wonder how it all works. They get lovely lushes fields (acres and acres) whilst all the local gardens and community pitches turn into dust bowls. We’re not on a meter so I continue paying extortionate prices (that are rising) for using next to nothing.

Shop ’em! If nothing else, it would provide a useful insight into what response

a) Mr & Mrs Local Curtain Twitcher will get if/when they outragedly report you for using a hosepipe.

b) The water authority will employ against a reported offender.

I think I can guess the answers to a) and b) but it’d be interesting to find out.

TurnerGuy – Member

yeah, fat people who want a seat on a train or plane should have to pay more than the normal fare as their bulk spills over onto the neighbouring seat.

people who have to sit next to fat people get to pay less as they are not getting a whole seat.

:lol:

IHN – Member

It is for the vast majority of people.

That’ll be the same vast majority who would happily ignore a hosepipe ban if they thought they could avoid repercussions then…

IHN – Member

Surely it would be better to change the legislation to say that, for safety reasons, you can clean the windows and lights of motor vehicles, with a bucket. But that’s it.

There’s a shortage of (mains) water, and having a shiny car or bike is not a priority. If you want to clean your car or bike from your own stored supply, go for your life.

Your first paragraph was kind of my point – you can use a bucket to clean windows and lights (although I would suggest that number plates should also be allowed, given that it is a legal requirement to ensure they remain legible), you can also quite legally use the same bucket as many times as you like to repeatedly throw water over the car to rinse it, expending far more water than a sensibly controlled hosepipe.

On your second point, keeping things ‘shiny’ is not the only reason for keeping a car clean (although it makes sense to keep an item you’ve spent thousands of pounds on in good condition, but that’s a different debate). Clean cars (and motorbikes etc) are far less likely to corrode and degrade, due a lack of harmful dirt trapping moisture and oxidents against perishable metal surfaces. Someone who regularly gets ‘hands on’ with their car is also far more likely to spot faults such as corrosion, tyre wear etc as they occur, rather than when it results in a breakdown or accident. Conscientious car care results in safer cars on our roads, reducing accidents and pollution and therefore reducing environmental impact.

mjsmke – Member

Just say you didnt know about the ban. You dont watch the news and dont buy newspapers. They can’t enforce a fine if they cant prove you knew about it.

ransos – Member

Ignorance is no defence.

Correct. Ignorance of a given law is not admissible as a defence to prosecution.

IHN – Member

Ignoring hosepipe bans – More about petty eejits who rabidly object to being told what they can or cannot do than actually, god forbid, making any real point about wider issues with saving water.

On the contrary. The overwhelming sentiment is one of frustration at a lack of common sense on the part of the relevant water companies.

Outlawing the use of a hosepipe for purposes of tasks like bike or car washing but happily condoning the filling and tipping of buckets, when the former method actually uses far less water than the latter, is ludicrous. I’d be astounded if each and every one of the water companies involved hasn’t had this reasoning pointed out to them from numerous quarters, yet they resolutely refuse to budge or give any leeway. They base their argument against hosepipes on the assumption that Joe Bloggs cleaning his car will leave the hose running at full blast throughout the process. I never do this and I can’t think of anyone I know that does.

A caveat on the legislation that hoses used for washing cars or bikes (or any other desired application) must be turned off between actual periods of use is all that is needed.

If it was a very old Raleigh, and depending on the type of bike (‘Gents’ sit-up-and-beg general purpose bicycle as opposed to a drop handlebar ‘racer’ (in old speak)?) then it’s possible the original wheel was a 27″ or 28″, as opposed to a 700c.

Presumably he still has the original rear wheel though, so a look at the markings on the rear tyre sidewall should clear things up.

Of the two you’ve narrowed your choice down to, I’d take the Hope X2s. Any difference in weight or outright power is likely to be marginal and Hope’s aftersales service, should it be needed, is legendary.

Now for the shameless pedantry bit…

chillidave – Member

Not used Hope brakes in ages but a big fan of their customer service and a bit more unique.

Something is either unique or it isn’t, it can’t be ‘quite’, ‘fairly’ or ‘a bit’ or even ‘really’ unique.

£1000 fine potentially though, and this time around people are being actively encouraged to ‘shop a neighbour’ :o . I’m bloody pee’d off too. As PeterPoddy says, a correctly employed hose will use far less water when washing a car than having X amount of buckets flung over. I wash my car a lot (and then spend countless hours claying, waxing, polishing, hoovering and generally titivating it, but I’m just sad like that) but according to Southern Water I’m not going to be able to use a hose again this side of Christmas if I don’t want to be hauled up in court and relieved of a bag of sand.

All this said, a fairly thorough internet searching session has failed to turn up a single case of any individual actually being successfully prosecuted for contravening a hosepipe ban, but there’s a first time for everything.

Are you riding on Saturday or Sunday? Or both?

You’re not a massive distance from Cannock Chase. Failing that, Allestree Park and Little Eaton woods are quite good. There’s also the Chevin trail up near Milford/Duffield, but it’s not especially long.

They’ll be absolutely fine.

You weight the same as me, or maybe even slightly less, and I run Deore M596 brakes with 180/160 rotors on a bike that I’m confident weighs more than 30lb, they’re plenty powerful enough and don’t fade (I’m using EBC Greenstuff pads for what it’s worth, I don’t know how much (if any) difference that makes, but they are available for pretty much every brake under the sun).

The Hopes will be easily as good and probably better, especially with big old 203 rotors.

If you don’t ask, you don’t get. No harm in trying, the worst they can say is “No”.

bruneep – Member

I advise that you get some proper advice :wink:

Helpful…

sugdenr – Member

Fact is I hear load of people talking about the great Hope warranty – which actually means loads of their stuff breaks.

But I dont hear people going on about say Shimano stuff always breaking.

Not necessarily, not a disproportionate amount to other manufacturers anyway. It just means that Hope actually do something about it if something does break.

The reason people post on here about Hope’s warranty replacements (or in a lot of cases, replacements of kit that was out of warranty eons ago) is because they’re pleasantly surprised and want to tell people about it. The norm in today’s society is for the manufacturer to say “The warranty ran out 3 days ago, unlucky, jog on.” or “We deem that your shiny new item turning to cheese on the first ride was due to fair wear and tear, unlucky, jog on.”

If someone posted a thread up here saying “I asked Madison to repair my 8 year old XTR hub and they said no.” then the response would undoubtedly be something along the lines of “Err, yeah, what’s your point?” Hence when a Shimano, SRAM, Avid etc product fails, we don’t tend to hear about it much, as the owner simply puts it down to experience and buys something to replace it.

By offering the outstanding customer service that they do, Hope give people confidence in their product, meaning they’ll probably go back to Hope the next time they want to buy something and also advise their friends to do the same. One way of telling them is to post the good news on an internet forum.

Torx bolts on rotors. What exactly is wrong with allen key bolts?

After rounding one out…

pdw – Member

You just answered your own question.

The bolt I rounded out was a Torx.

jasonm945 – Member

or even just a straigh inbred

Good call. Almost forgot, done CyB on one those too (borrowed), with a Reba, those God-awful Dual Control shifters/brakes and a rapid-rise rear mech, very wierd.

rupertpostlethwaite – Member

if your riding demanding technical terrain such as coed-y-brenin then I would say maybe no less than 160mm of travel front and rear

I’ve done Coed y Brenin several times quite happily on my old Kona hardtail with an 80mm fork, and also on a Trek 9000 full suspension (the really old one with the single pivot swing arm and an undamped elastomer, basically a pogo stick!) and an RST 281XL triple clamp fork up front, I’d be amazed if it had more than about 75mm of travel at either end. I’m off down there again at the end of next month on a hardtail with a 105mm fork, I don’t anticipate any dramas.

IA – Member

That 450g for the 819s doesn’t include the nipple thingies*

*forget the correct word

Eyelets?

Torx bolts on rotors. What exactly is wrong with allen key bolts?

After rounding one out (removing a seized-in bolt to in turn remove a corroded-beyond-rescue rotor from a wheel of a bike I bought) recently, I went online to buy more but could only find Torx heads. I ended up ordering a job lot of allen headed bolts from XYZ Random Bolt Manufacturer off eBay, but found they can only be used on the rear rotor as the heads are to large to fit between a rotor and fork leg. I got round the problem by stripping the very old bolts out of my Hope rotors on my road wheels (with allen heads!) and using 6 in the front rotors on each pair of wheels, with 6 of the new ones in each rear.

Looks like I’ll be buying my headset from Wiggle then.

Cheers

If you’re 18 and drive a Citroen Saxo or Vauxhall Corsa, driving around with your sidelights and front foglights on (but no headlights, big no no) apparently makes you look cooler than a polar bear’s paw, impresses womenfolk everywhere and adds at least 50BHP to your car’s power.

Buy a frame that fits you properly, swap the parts over and sell the P7.

You could look for a saddle with longer rails, but this will only make a difference of a few mm at best.

alexb17 – Member

My question is, do I already have a layback seatpost??

Yes, you do. A layback seatpost is one that positions the saddle clamp behind the centre line of the seatpost.

About 3 years ago, I ended a near enough 2 year abstinence from biking and began commuting by bike. I very quickly found that my trusty Flite Titanium that I used to swear by had metamorphasised into an instrument of torture, determined to cut me in half from my soft, saddle-shy butt upwards. I also had a complete numbness of the gentleman’s area. After a bit of internet research, I invested in a Specialized Alias 143 which was a night and day improvement, no more numb nuts or walking like John Wayne when I got to work.

relliott6879 – Member

Is it on the tellybox, perchance?

Anyone know?

flange – Member

I also wish that people would accept that when someone discovers a new ‘food’, there is a possibility they could get it wrong. See sprouts for an example of this….

clubber – Member
Sprouts are one of the best bits of Xmas!

What’s really wrong is brown sauce….

I bloody love sprouts. And brown sauce too actually, although obviously not together. Although now you mention it…

TurnerGuy – Member

Nothing like buying British to help our economy out of its current hole…

brakes – Member

what do you mean?

I think the inference is one of unpatriotism on the grounds of buying a Far-Eastern produced, American branded headset rather than a UK designed and manufactured one, thus not contributing to the UK economy.

However…

johnny – Member
Currently looking for tapered headsets for a new build, does anyone have any alternative suggestions to the Hope Pick and mix?

relliott6879 – Member

Just out of interest, Johnny, why do you specifically want a headset that isn’t a Hope?

johnny – Member

i’d love a Hope headset, but they are less than easy to get hold of ATM.

If the guy needs a headset in a rush and Hope aren’t readily available (I rang my LBS today to book mine in for having a Hope headset fitted, and they too said they’d have to order it in, fortunately I can wait a week or two.) then what’s a man to do? Also, Johnny will presumably be buying his headset from a shop in the UK, using Pounds Sterling…

Is it on the tellybox, perchance?

I spy a troll! Fair one though, they’re not for everyone. I’m undecided but will probably stay with a 26″ for the same reason as wwaswas.

zippykona – Member

I don’t like tomatoes. Anyone else not like something?

I don’t like fish, seafood or lamb and I’m allergic to fresh ginger.

wwaswas – Member

You should contribute to the debate – it’s been going 2 years and I can’t see a firm conclusion being reached in the near future;

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/probably-a-stupid-headset-question

Oh… my… God… :o