34 pages???? REALLY????

wwaswas – Member

the burning question is surely does a headset come with a crown race?

Every headset I’ve ever bought has.

Got to be worth buying one and trying it out before you go selling the whole bike.

115psi front and rear in 23C Specialized Mondo Pros

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

I just keep the same tyres on all year round and replace them if they wear out.

organic355 – Member

When you guys talk about hope hubs do u mean hope pro 2 evos? Or pro 3s? Or both?

Over the years, I’ve run the old Lightweight front hub (the uber-skinny non disc one with the titanium centre and anodised aluminium flanges), Suspension, Fatso, XCs and Pro IIs (the latter being still in daily use on my 700C commuting wheels). They’ve all been equally buttery smooth and durable, I’ve no reason to think any hub Hope make would be any different.

Go for the newest model you can afford or, if budget is more of a factor, whatever you can find currently on special offer. As others have said though, if you’re building up a new wheelset you could do a lot worse than a pair of ready-made Hope Hoops with your rim of choice. I’ve only heard good things about the build quality.

thisisnotaspoon – Member

After that it’s fairly irelavent what the problem is as 80% of the cost of replacing the clutch is labour (maybe under 50% if it’s a DMF as they’re £££) so you tend to go overboard and fit new friction plates, springs, release bearing, spigot bearing/bushing as they’re all cheep relative to the cost of getting at them.

Seconded. If you’re going to go the time and trouble/pay someone to get at the clutch in the first place, you may as well replace the job lot once you’re in there. You’d be sick if you just did the bearing and three months down the line you needed a new clutch and had to do all the work/pay for the labour again.

xc-steve – Member

wouldn’t there be tyre clearance issues?

Surely running a smaller than intended wheel would result in an abundance, rather than a shortage, of tyre clearance?

Hope. Easily replaceable (not that you’ll need to before you draw your pension) cartridge bearings, fantastic build quality and the all important customer service element in the unlikely event that you should ever need it.

mattbee – Member

Clutch release bearing?

+1

It will obviously all physically bolt together and be ‘rideable’. I imagine it will have a steeper than intended head angle (some of us don’t actually like head angles slacker than a hooker’s knicker elastic though…!) due to the shorter fork and the chainstays will be fairly long. These two factors will probably contribute to a fairly front-heavy feel but, in answer to your question, all I can say is try it. If you’re happy enough with it then it’s a result, if it’s dog toffee then you can always rebuild your current hardtail and put the Inbred frame under your bed until you have the funds for the bigger wheels and forks.

Grim – Member

It is worth checking to see if there is air in there by pumping the brake several times in quick succession. If the lever is further from the bars when you finish there is probably air in there and a bleed is needed. If not coatsey’s technique of getting the pistons a bit further out is the answer.
PS the Elixir 5’s on my bike were spot on from the start.

Grim

Just out of interest, why does this work? My front Deore does the same thing, particularly so if I’ve just had the bike flipped upside down for any reason, a minute or so of ‘pumping’ has the lever feeling great again. I thought I’d bled them OK but apparantly not, I’m just confused as to why this method works (which it clearly does) as surely the trapped air can’t actually escape from the system with everything done up and sealed?

Apologies for the thread hijack moocow :oops:

TandemJeremy – Member

Why not return your hopes to hope for a rebuild? £45 an end and as good as new afterwards

Posts #5 & #7 of this thread…!

relliott6879 – Member

In fact, you haven’t actually said there’s anything wrong with your Mono Minis. Are they goosed, or are these new brakes for a new bike? If it’s the former, a good strip, clean and rebuild of your Minis with new pads, hoses and rotors will have them working like brand new. If you don’t fancy tackling that yourself, Hope offer a service where they’ll do it all for you, it’ll probably be cheaper than new brakes.

Gunz – Member

Mister P, not me.
Elliott – brakes have been bought back to life several times and now just good for the bitsa bike.

Thanks for all the feedback.

http://www.rosebikes.co.uk/article/shimano-deore-disc-brake-br-m596/aid:516076

All you really ‘need’. £79 delivered for the pair, just need to source some rotors.

Mister P – Member

Rich, was it you after some top caps for some old Deore brakes

It was I! Specifically a right hand/front top cap for an M525

TBH, I don’t really want to spend out on this bike, so not buying a fork at all is the preferred option. The idea is to keep the scheckles in the bank until there’s a big enough pile for A Shiny New Bike. Even trying to keep it on a budget, I’ve still spent more than I intended.

Bike: £275 from eBay
Hope skewers: £20 from eBay (originals on bike were rusted to buggery)
Deore disc brakes: £100 new (Hayes 9s on bike were seized)
SRAM chain: £20 new (original on bike was a) rusted to buggery and b) horrible non-rejoinable Shimano nonsense)
Hope stem: £30 from STW (original on bike was a 15 degree rise, I like my bars low)
EA70 bar: £27 from eBay, (new stem was 31.8mm and the original bar was 25.4mm)
EBC Greenstuff pads £20ish new (always used them, swear by them)
Gold bottle cage bolts £5 new (because I’m a tart)

So in total, my ‘budget make do’ already owes me nearly £500! It still needs a headset, ahead (no pun intended) of a stag-weekend trip to Coed y Brenin at the end of May. That’ll be a Hope as, although they’re £60, my last one was still in perfect condition after 6 or 7 years of use on the original bearings. If they last that long, I consider it a shrewd investment.

I’ve used http://www.parcel2go.com quite a few times and they’ve never let me down.

In fact, you haven’t actually said there’s anything wrong with your Mono Minis. Are they goosed, or are these new brakes for a new bike? If it’s the former, a good strip, clean and rebuild of your Minis with new pads, hoses and rotors will have them working like brand new. If you don’t fancy tackling that yourself, Hope offer a service where they’ll do it all for you, it’ll probably be cheaper than new brakes.

Deores, SLXs, XTs, Hope X2s. They’re all good. If you’re on a budget get the Deores as, realistically, they work as well as anything else. If you like Shiny Things, get the X2s.

I know a few people who’ve had the XL 2 and thought very highly of it.

EBC Greenstuff. I’ve used them for years on bikes and cars in all conditions, they’ve never been anything less than fantastic.

8 pence later, and things have improved! Placing 4 x 2p pieces under the adjuster and winding the preload on full has certainly made a difference. The fork is still a lot softer than I’d like, but at least now it doesn’t feel like it’s going to pitch me over the bar every time I brake. In terms of ‘make do for the time being’, it’ll do! I think what I might do though is Araldite the coins together, to form a solid block. I’m just slightly worried about the individual coins somehow parting company and dropping down into the fork leg.

Well, I’ve just had a fairly productive 30 minutes on the phone. I first rang Greyville Enterprises, who import Suntour. They couldn’t help as, although the forks are Marzocchi branded Suntours, they apparantly don’t share any common internals with any Suntour fork.

Greyville gave me the number of Windwave, who import Marzocchi. The chap I spoke to went through various PDFs whilst he was talking to me and concluded that the ‘MZ Race’ on my bike must have been a Kona-specific OEM model, as it had a different internal spec to the retail/actual MZ Race as sold by Marzocchi. After patiently getting me to describe exactly what was inside the fork, he concluded that it was a mishmash of two other forks of the era, one of which would have had coils and elastomers in both legs and the other having a damping cartridge like mine but open bath oil damping in both legs too.

Parts for this fork simply aren’t available any longer, but Mr Helpful Windwave Man gave two suggestions; one was to place some spacers (washers or coins for example) between the spring top cap and the preload adjuster, so effectively increasing the preload. Failing that, he said I could bring my bike down (by happy coincidence, Windwave are in Gosport, about 10 miles from where I work) and leave it with them, they would then take all the internals out and do some experimenting to see what they could use from a later model (but with the same 30mm stanchions) instead.

In this day and age, I was pleasantly taken aback by just how helpful Windwave were. I’d never really considered Marzocchi products before (I got this fork more by accident than design) but you know what? In the future, I think I just might.

Scratch my last, I’ve just noticed it comes without a steerer tube!!!

Hmm, Rose Bikes do an RST Capa T 80 for £62 delivered. Any got any experience of this fork, good or bad? I weigh 12 stone(ish), my riding is woodsy/trail centre stuff (very XC biased, I’m not into jumps or drops) and road commuting.

bol – Member

The Ritchey would be nice in a less retro colour scheme.

Wash your mouth out, Sir! Some things just are…

If it’s purely an aesthetic consideration (I have to admit, the bike in the picture does have a certain ‘something’) and you’re postive you’ll never want to drop the saddle (when putting it in the car for example) then why not? It’s your hypothetic custom frame, after all. As far as weight saving goes, if that were a concern, I can’t see the difference between a longer steel, alloy or titanium seat tube and a ‘normal’ length seat tube with an alloy, titanium or carbon post inside it and a clamp around the top being more than a crisp packet or two either way.

kaesae – Member
I’m only using lockon grips, I play about with components all the time and I don’t want to go back to being 6 years old, jamming a spoon into my grips then pouring in water.

Saying that maybe I should try them and see how they work, what kind of glue is used to secure them?

No spoons required with the Porcipaws, they’re that thin that you can literally roll them up from the inside edge (think a condom in reverse!) then when you’re near the edge of the bar you simply pull the whole lot off. Just make sure you don’t roll them up too far and turn the whole grip inside out, as it’s a faff to then get the right way round again.

As for securing them, I’ve always used the tried and tested method of hairspray (the cheaper and nastier the better), as recommended by MBUK sometime in the early 90s… Spray a load inside the grip and it will slide nice and easily onto the bar, leave it for a few minutes and the hairspray will dry but also stick the grip in place, but not so much that you won’t get it off again when you want to.

Pik n Mix – Member

Onza pawcipaws, thinnest grips I’ve ever tried as I prefer to ride grip less but it’s just not practical.

transapp – Member

Pawcipaws are great, but can you still get them? I bought my last pair in the lat 90’s!

Porcipaws are indeed still available, I put a brand new set on my bike last month. I believe they’ve found a resurgence amongst the trials fraternity and, as such, they now come supplied pretty long. They have markers in 10mm increments though if you wish to cut them down a little. As a nice bonus, they come with end plugs for your bars. I got mine here: http://www.farnhamcycles.co.uk/Shop/p/43368-onza-onza-porcipaw-grips-black/

^^ There should be laws against posting such openly pornographic pictures on an open forum! ^^

I’ve had one of those for donkeys’ years, it’s still fine.

Waterlooville, Hampshire. Looking at moving to North Yorkshire later this year though.

DrP – Member

Firstly, I’ve frequently wondered how brakes come so ‘sharp’ out of the box…Are there hundreds of Chinamen squeeling newly built brakes down steep hills outside the Shimano factory…?!

Anyway – I’ve never really ‘bedded in’ brakes as such. Normally popped them in and got going. never had much trouble.
However, after contaminating the pads on my new XTs, I swapped them for Superstar sintered – pads i’ve normally been fine with, but these were naff!
Done a few rides, never really got them up to ‘heat’, and they still felt contaminated.

Did a ride yesterday eve near Arundel and there were useless all the way round. The final 50m of the ride was down Arundel high street – a rather steep hill.
Pleasantly, after going at it hammer and tongs down the hill, and with 3 firm grasps of the lever, my brakes went from “so you want to stop, well, let me check my diary and see if I can fit you in..”, to “getting off here sir? as you wish!”

I was so close to binning another set of pads, but a steep hill in a post end of the country has saved me a fiver……

DrP

Damn, wish I’d read this before ditching my brand spankers Superstar pads for EBC Greens! Like yours, my front pads got contaminated. The mate responsible for the contamination (whilst teaching me to bleed brakes!) replaced them with Superstar organic pads that, at first fitment, worked brilliantly (I made sure to clean the rotor with proper brake cleaner before fitting the new pads). After less than a mile of road commuting though, they developed a wierwolf-rivalling howl. My conclusion was that they were crap and I ordered up a set of EBC Greenstuff, on the basis that I always used them on my old bike and they were always great. It would seem that I should have just persevered with the Superstars until the howling abated… Oh well, you live and learn!

I’ve had a couple of frames stove enamelled at Mercian Cycles in Alvaston, can’t remember the exact cost but it wasn’t huge and the quality was good.

Yes.

Bloody hell guys, stop whinging! “The MoD has a big garden that I want go and ride my bike in, but they say I can’t because it’s theirs.” Tough titty! Why on earth should anyone in the MoD possibly have to offer justification about how the land is used and when? It’s the MoD’s, not yours, therefore they get to say who gets in, not you.

By the way virtually every point offered up in this thread has then been denied at some point by one person or another, I’d say the easiest way to answer the question would simply be “Not much.”

Nearly everything we have today we had, albeit in a more basic/less refined form, in 2002. The last 10 years have been a developing, tweaking and finetuning period, but there’s not a lot new under the sun.

You can’t really see from the pdf, but it sounds like the top cap you describe might be the same as the one on my Marzocchi MZ Race (also a Suntour in drag), a sort of ‘castelated’ design? If so, I undid mine by very gently tapping it round with a flat bladed screwdriver and pin hammer. Judging by the state of the bike when I bought it, I don’t think the previous owner did any maintainence whatsoever, so I’d wager it was the first time the fork had been opened, the top cap still only took a couple of the very lightest of taps to undo before it was loose enough to unscrew with finger and thumb.

My old 1996 Fire Mountain (nicked by a lowlife chav scumbag piece of excrement last November). The frame was extensively reworked by Mercian Cycles in Derby, shaving the rear canti bosses, brazing on an IS disc mount, adding in a strut to brace the disc, standard brake hose guides replaced with larger items to accommodate hydraulic hoses, Crud Catcher bosses under the down tube and then stove enamelled white.

I kitted it out with a full (brand new at the time) 2005 XT groupset, Fox F80 RLT forks, Hope Mono M4 front and Mono Mini rear brakes and floating rotors, Hope headset, stem, XC hubs, ti skewers and seat QR, Easton EC70 flat bar, X-Lite Enduro Stubbie bar ends and a USE Alien carbon post.

I absolutely adored this bike and never felt the need to change anything on it from the day of it’s makeover, it rode beautifully and, after so long with it, I knew every nuance of it’s handling, it was like an extension of my body. Having it nicked actually brought me close to tears.