I think the trick with flat bars is to not put wide ones on. I had 600mm with bar ends and that was very much wide enough, a little narrower may be better though. I did once put some short bar ends inboard of the controls once in a bike and that worked really well.

Butterfly bars are really popular on the continent and I might give them a go one day. Fitted some quality ones to a friends bike and there are some really nice positions available on them.

Problem with drops is the levers and shifters you have to use are either very expensive (hydraulic road levers or STI) or just plain weird IMHO (bar end shifters – why put shifters as far away as possible?).

I never use the lower position on drop bars so bar end shifters are pointless, may as well have narrow flat bars.

Even my Deore trigger shifters that I fitted on my TDF are a little annoying – I miss my thumbies!

They come as standard on a few Spesh road bikes I think – I got one on mine I think they are great as they allow some adjustment but still look like a normal stem. They just use a shim between the stem and steerer which an be used in different combinations to get 4 positions in total.

I

Updated my TDF thread if you’re interested.

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/new-bike-beardy-touring-content-genesis-tour-de-fer/page/2#post-6840030

Changes – I’m going to try some of the Marathon Supreme tyres in a 35c size. I’m not going to be doing loads of heavy touring so the 300g weight saving of the Supremes per tyre will probably make a huge difference – they are very expensive tyres though and I can see why most people stick with the standard tyres as they are so good. I just can’t help myself though!!

I have also changed the seatpost to my favourite post ever – 1990’s (I think?) X-lite Metal Matrix layback post. This post is so comfy and 100g lighter and more importantly looks great in silver!! I’d love all silver finishing kit so I’ll look out for cheap silver stuff to change to if I can be bothered.

I didn’t report back about the handling!!

Went on a couple of rides over Easter. First was a gentle 25mile pootle around Huddersfield on the roads. Second was a 45 mile pootle over the moors to Lancashire and onto Congleton before getting a train home – mixture of rough roads and old railway lines and some proper rough towpath/off-road bits which weren’t expected!

I have the standard build apart from new wheels and flat bars with Deore shifter and brake setup. And a full SP/B&M lighting system.

First of all – this is not a light bike. It feels heavy to pick up and doesn’t accelerate very well. This is compared with my Kinesis Racelight which is the only other road bike I’ve ridden so draw your conclusions from that – my kinesis is probably 8lbs lighter with wheels which could be half the weight!!

However what it does do it make you sit back and enjoy the view. It doesn’t like you racing around and sprinting up hills. But that’s not what it is for, is it?

What I found my self doing is clicking down a couple of gears and spinning slowly up hills admiring the view and not getting out of breath or getting knackered. Which suits me fine! I managed an average 10mph on the very bumpy 45 miles to Congleton with its energy sapping tow paths which isn’t too bad being as I was feeling awful (touch of sunstroke after 30 miles).

What I did notice is that you do seem to sit “in” the bike rather than perched on top of it. The BB is lower than a CDF and the headtube longer which might be why. It feels comfortable, never jarring, and smooths out crappy road surfaces very nicely indeed. Also the handling does not feel slow at all but is very stable. I realised at one point I was riding down a fast downhill town centre potholed road one handed without realising it – even with a load on it seemed easy and sure footed. I could imagine it being a very welcome bike to be riding after 8-10 hours on the go on a long tour.

Posted this on the touring gearing thread:

Clearance – my TDF has the standard fit Schwalbe Marathon tyres on at 35c size or 37-622 as labelled on the tyre, mounted on XM319 rims
The front end has around 7mm either side of the widest point of the tyre to the fork and around 1cm to the underside of the mudguard. The rear has about the same, maybe a slight touch less maybe 1mm less but I only had a floppy tape measure on me!

So a 37c touring tyre will be ok, maybe a 40c with my mudguards. It would depend on the profile of the tyre on the rim you use but if a 45c tyre is exactly 10mm wider than my 35c (should be but we know that doesn’t always work!) then it should fit a TDF. If that’s important to you I would make sure you test a bike in person first.

I had to do a fair bit of bumpy canal tow path riding (quite technical in places!) on my last ride and the Marathons coped very well with good grip on the wet and loose surfaces. The shock absorption was fantastic, I’m certainly not looking to get any bigger tyres than my 35c Marathons.

The frame and fork will also take a wider guard than the standard one fitted.

Personally I think if you are looking at 45c tyres and above a touring bike isn’t really what you need, you need a 29er MTB!

Simonbarnes = what’s the tyre clearance like on the TdF?
Can’t quite remember off the top of my head and bike is at work and I’m on holiday. Have put 37c tyres on, pretty sure larger would also fit.

Clearance – my TDF has the standard fit Schwalbe Marathon tyres on at 35c size or 37-622 as labelled on the tyre, mounted on XM319 rims
The front end has around 7mm either side of the widest point of the tyre to the fork and around 1cm to the underside of the mudguard. The rear has about the same, maybe a slight touch less maybe 1mm less but I only had a floppy tape measure on me!

So a 37c touring tyre will be ok, maybe a 40c with my mudguards. It would depend on the profile of the tyre on the rim you use but if a 45c tyre is exactly 10mm wider than my 35c (should be but we know that doesn’t always work!) then it should fit a TDF. If that’s important to you I would make sure you test a bike in person first.

I had to do a fair bit of bumpy canal tow path riding (quite technical in places!) on my last ride and the Marathons coped very well with good grip on the wet and loose surfaces. The shock absorption was fantastic, I’m certainly not looking to get any bigger tyres than my 35c Marathons.

The frame and fork will also take a wider guard than the standard one fitted.

Personally I think if you are looking at 45c tyres and above a touring bike isn’t really what you need, you need a 29er MTB!

When I try trousers on I get inexplicably tired very fast. So I avoid it at all costs!!

You can have my sky dish FOC if you come and collect it! I think it’s a quad one.

It actually made me feel a little sick reading the OP story and the other ones like it. I know my parents wouldn’t fall for this sort of thing as they are wise to them but there are so many people that fall victim to the scams.

I am 5’7″ with a 30″ inside leg but a long body. 52cm bikes are the biggest I would look at. I spent a long time getting used to a road bike and am now comfortable and I now know any normal 54cm bike would certainly be too big.

That’s a good idea actually!

Nice one Scotroutes! Pretty nice place to be doing that work though, very jealous!

I’ve ordered those free maps as I know I’ll use them and added a donation too.

I love Sustrans, yeah the routes sometimes don’t follow on too well on the less used ones but they are a charity and only have so many funds to work with.
I think what they do is make the route to start with and sign it up even though some bits aren’t ideal or incomplete, hoping that they can improve sections later on when local councils/businesses can help out with funds – they’ve got to show people want to use it first.

I always buy their maps and add on a little extra to donate to them. I’ve done the Kennet and Avon canal route and the original C2C route and thought they were excellent.

Simondbarnes – that’s the same as the standard setup on the full build of the CDF.

I thought I would have to fit higher gears but after going on a couple of rides I think it’s perfect. The highest gears are just right and the lowest is good for churning up the hills taking in the views!

I think I’m set on going with an online agent to do the sale of our place – £5-600 instead of £2k at a normal agents doesn’t make sense if houses are selling well at the moment.

Sounds like I just need to get it on the market ASAP and sign up to the agents in the area to let me know about new houses on the market.

I am hoping I don’t get some buy-to-let investor buying my house as they have a bit of a reputation round here for dropping their price when it is expensive to back out of the sale.

Tomorrow riding Hudds-Outlane-Scapegoat-Slaithwate-Marsden-Farnley Tyas-Bradley then up to Outlane

If you want steeper hills just do that in the opposite direction. Slaithwaite to scapegoat hill is a pretty steep one (but not the steepest on that hill!).

I am hoping we might get a good deal as we don’t have kids and don’t plan to so are happy buying something which might put families off – school catchments, smaller gardens, weird layouts aren’t as big of an issue for us!

Just fix it yourself, I’ve done it for a couple of things that went wrong in our boiler. Lots of advice online and parts easy to get depending on boiler. I wouldn’t touch the gas side of it but the rest is basic plumbing and electrics. Service it myself too, got the service manual with the boiler and just follow that, takes an hour tops.

I’ll proabaly get loads of flak saying that, that I’m endangering the planet and not thinking of the kids etc.

Fitted a new expansion vessel at the weekend as ours had ruptured internally. Cost £50 to fix but £20 of that was buying a new 22mm pipe cutter. Plumbers charge would be £300+

EDIT there seems to be lots of complaints about these services that charge you monthly as they just bodge stuff or just fit parts willy nilly hoping it’ll fix the issue and you have to keep calling them back. A couple of friends had these services and had nothing but hassle, was cheaper and less hassle in the end to just use a good local CH engineer.

If you have an iPhone you need a regulated power supply that provides a constant voltage or it just won’t charge. I don’t know if that it the same for other phones but it may well be. The internal cache battery and electronics provide that regulated supply.

Trying ringing around the shops, people on here aren’t going to know what stock shops have.

A friend managed to tear 2 long rips in brand new tyres on one water bar going down Rangers. Agreed that if you don’t respect the descent it will teach you a lesson! ;) One of the best descents I’ve done though, love it. Just wish I could use the train to the top. ;)

Maps are the best. You don’t learn about an area as much following a GPS route. I have a lot of OS maps, love collecting them and poring over them to find new places to go.

I thought about buying a GPS unit last week, looked into it but then thought I’d have to carry a map anyway as a back up so why bother buying the tech as well?? For touring a bar bad holds a map fine.

Well being as he’s a road cyclist he is probably right. My brother Peterpoddy just went to Belgium and rode some of the cobbles on his CDF and mentioned they were horrific. There’s small bits of road around West Yorkshire with similar cobbles and it’s very difficult to keep a road bike upright on some of the worst ones. How they do it at speed in the classics I don’t know.

I have to log in too.

Anyone who makes jokes about country music just sounds ignorant in my book. I used to manage a music shop and we used to have loads of discussions about which music was good and which was crap. The consencus was always “people like different things, just listen to what you like, not what other people say you should like”. I learnt to like all sorts of music as I was intrigued by album covers in the store, so used to play them over the store system.

I learnt to enjoy particular sub-genres of Jazz/Big Band/Country/Classical/Metal etc etc but the only ones I still dont like are most World Music and reggae, but that’s ok of course.

Country music I’ve gotten into a lot more, there are some great established acts mentioned above and a LOT more appearing nowadays with all different styles. I like the fact that they arent afraid to sing about any subject, it tends to be direct and from the heart, and they sing about stuff that matters to them but that many others can relate to.

I like Brad paisley, great mix of songs and amazing guitarist. Try “Mud on the Tyres” or This is Country Music” which are my favourites of his. I just bought the Eric Church live album “Caught in the Act” after seeing him on a Country at the BBC programme, his live stuff is amazing. I also like Tim McGraw too.

There was a popup R2 country station on recently when the Country to Country festival was on a few weeks ago – there were some great programmes on there going through all types of the music. I especially loved the Country in the UK programme, some great artists coming from the UK putting a UK style on the tradiotional country style, not folk but something new and really good.

I still listen to hardcore punk/Dire Straits/Pink floyd and loads of other vastly different music – theres so much good stuff out there!

If anyone wants an original Mk1 fully restored frame let me know! I’m selling the one I have as I’ve never built it up, loads of NOS DMR parts too.

Peterpoddy has just finished a Belgian mini tour, looked really good. I’ll point him to this thread as he may be able to help

I looked for a long time for a 52cm retro road bike but they are rare compared to the 56 or 58 sizes which seem to be the most common. Maybe the road cyclists were taller in past decades.

One good thing about the older bikes is that they will take modern groupsets quite easily, maybe a little spreading of the rear triangle to make a 126mm spacing 130mm instead may be all that is needed. A lot have 1″ forks but as long as you get the forks with the frame it isn’t hard to find a headset or stem to fit – you can get quill to ahead adaptors which don’t look too bad if you choose stems carefully.

The main issue that put me off in the end was the more extreme position of the older bikes, long stems tend to be needed for cockpit length and the headtubes can be very short so quite a big saddle to bar drop. You can get around this with higher rise stems but that often looks awful and messes with the classic look that drew you to the bike in the first place.

I have loads of friends who want to get into cycling but can’t afford a decent bike – I’m always on the look out for bikes for them like this. Maybe ask around people you know to see if there is anyone who would appreciate and use it?

I love giving bikes to folk at little or no cost when they had really no chance of getting anything decent, but there doesn’t seem to be much around nowadays.

The amounts of interest you are talking about aren’t much, I’d rather keep the cash available for any emergency. If it goes into the mortgage you can’t get it back out for any other reason.

If it’s a considerable sum and you are close to paying the mortgage off it might be worth paying it in, just to bring that magical day closer, but I’m guessing you are a while off yet.

I once had a load of tubing decals for free off a guy who works at ATC for the retro bike crowd, they were chucking them out. I sent a couple off for free to folk who wanted them then after a few weeks of bumping the thread I was giving them away on I popped them on eBay internationally to reach a wider audience, covering costs plus a few (literally) pence. The guy who gave them to me then sent me a nasty email having a right go at me. Not bought anything since from them

I often find it weird when people complain about this sort of thing. When you sell or even give something away you relinquish any control over what happens to them in the future. They aren’t yours any more even if you gave them away, so why on earth would you get annoyed about what happens to them? Surely its pretty obvious that if you give something away that has some value you might find that someone realises that value later on?

Maybe the guy got them thinking he was going to use them but decided not to for a legitimate reason, but sells them on to get something else?

Let it go, let it go…..

Pity you don’t like the Maguras as I’ve some for sale!
Never had any issues with them myself, there is a reason why they are so popular on the trials bikes.

What’s good for the iPhone? Can’t find viewranger on the App Store.

I would expect enough space to store a bike for each of the occupants to the same standard of security as the main house. A dusty old shed with a tiny padlock on is not adequate. It should be dedicated for cycles or other sports equipment, not filled with other crap. It should be weatherproof too and reasonably easy to get the bikes into – i.e. you can roll them in, no carrying upstairs or lifting over other things. A bonus I would say is a ground anchor to lock the bikes to.

2 examples – we did a short tour and the first B+B we stayed at advertised secure storage – it was a carpeted garage attached to the B+B with good security and enough space to easily get our bikes in and out. The second place (B+B/hotel type place) said yes we have secure storage but when we got there all they had was a rickety old garage which was going to be pulled down filled with old kitchen equipment and rubble which we had to move to even have a chance to get our bikes in. I was NOT happy to say the least and made my feelings very well known.

Decided yet?