Specialized do seem to make very good bikes in the extreme sizes – my wife loves, and I mean loves (she made a point of saying exactly that last week) her XS Spesh road bike – no other manufacturer had anything that would fit.

I have some brand new unused Salsa CroMoto forks I might sell. IIRC they have a 300mm steerer!

The triple butted P2’s on my 94 Kilauea are beyond perfect, but I’m not sure they make the light versions any more.

I got a few Bahco pliers and cutters from my last work for 50p when they were cleared out – they last ages and they’ll probably outlive me! I was super chuffed when a mate of mine who is a high-end marine engineer was well impressed I had some!

Hora – we took it through a full service and MOT while we had it and there are no issues. They are just vague wallowy sofa like City barge for shuttling kids around.

We have my father in laws one every year for 2 months while he is abroad. My wife said “it doesn’t actually feel like the steering wheel is attached to the wheels” when talking about the handling.
I never dare calculate the MPG as the fuel guage drops alarmingly when you use it round town (and I am used to 1.6 petrol cars).
I fixed something on it and the build quality is on the scary side of terrible.
They look hideous.
They smell a bit odd.

Positives:
They must be great for kids as you can walk, yes walk, into the back seats and out the other side like you are getting on a bus.
The front seats are nice and comfy for long motorway drives.
The dash is bonkers.
You can see over hedges easily.

Saying all that – you have my permission to come and shoot me if I even consider buying one. So many better cars out there.

Are you anywhere near Huddersfield? I can put you in touch with someone who would give you some good honest advice.

Cornering clearance too – you need to be able to pedal round corners without grounding a pedal. I can on my road bike and when I ride my MTB sometimes I can’t do it and I forget! Going round a corner and hitting a pedal on the floor at 30mph is no fun at all!

I should never have sold this…. took me years to get just right…

WeThePeople Pony
19″ Toptube and ultra short back end, used for flatland/street/ramp riding.
Odyssey Milk Bars (more knee room for flatland), Thermal forks, Standard Industries flipped and shaved stem. Odyssey Monolever. DiaCompe Hombre Fiesta brakes (when they came out!). Primo Hemerroid saddle and post. Profile Racing cranks and racing spider with Tioga blue ring, front wheel G-Sport on Sun rim, rear is Static Freecoaster (with Standard industries heat treated axle and 11t Graveyard welded on drive cog, cutom tuned internals (by me!)). T1 dual metal rear pegs and Standard Hand Grenades (I think copies) on the front.

Cost me about £1300 BITD, sold it for about £400 IIRC, really really wish I could have it back…. 🙁

Houses, for the price you pay, should be built to a good standard and straight. They should start out good, and not need work doing to them to make them good.

My grandad was a foreman bricklayer and took pride in his work, as did the people he worked for. Unfortunately the greedy house builders all nowadays want to squeeze as many houses onto a small a plot of land as possible and erect their shoddy little boxes with no consideration to quality and longevity. There are exceptions of course, but given a choice of building better or taking more profit they’ll choose the latter everytime.

The crazy thing is that the new houses attract a premium!!!! Why??

After seeing many many brand new homes I cannot for the life of me understand why anyone would buy one. Nasty cheap tacky builds and everything in them put in at minimum cost with maximum speed. Shoddy workmanship, cheap materials and so many things not even straight/level.

Find something you really want to do and do what you need to do to be able to do it. That might mean working from the bottom, it might mean working for free, it might mean learning in your spare time. However if you do something you love you’ll never worry about how much you are paid.

The older you get the more you realise its not about the money it’s about loving what you do and doing it well. Learn that lesson early and you’re set.

Someone who works hard at something and had a genuine passion for what they do will always shine through.

Never had a problem even with work PC’s running massively out of date IE, smartphones and laptops etc.

Used at least 20-30 times.

I did a 10 hour round trip to do 20 miles in Thetford.

He was about to buy a nasty bike from a pawn shop but thought to ask me first. Glad he did!

I will ask him about his motorbike too.

Limiting factor is budget I suppose. I will try to get a basic rigid bike and do some measurement with him sat on it.

The double bar setup could be cheap and would work with all the various gear shifter or brakes options. The clip on extensions and reversed bar ends wouldn’t and I’m not too keen on them anyway.

Love those modified BMX bars!

TedC – good idea – might need to use that.

Budget is definately an issue – I need to balance the need for the bike to work properly against the money available and the fact that I want it eventually to work well as a bike for use off-road eventually – it needs to work well, not just adequately.

Thanks very much – very helpful suggestions there.

TimP – will send you an email, thanks.

If he has no working elbow then any unexpected forces from the handlebars are going to be sent straight up his arm into his collarbone, surely? That doesn’t sound a good idea.

He can ride a motorbike ok (pain only comes from having a twisted seat position so compensate for his arms) so I assuming a bike on gentle trails would be fine, and with suspension forks later probably ok on slightly rougher stuff.

Having the stem wonky would put the angle of the bar in such a way that the LHS (in this case) would be at a completely wrong angle – probably pointing away from the rider|

Chuffin’ pic is wrong way round – sorry!

I have ordered rear parking sensors, don’t think so at the front.

Cool. I’ll send you loads of texts with long, obtuse words in them and see how it gets on with those.

You’ll just send them with things like “beefle” “parpity parp” “squeeefly breeeee” in them.

Press a button and the tow bar magically appears ready for use too!!

I wasn’t bothered about the auto stop thing but if you order the heated windscreen (which you HAVE to on a Ford, its awesome) they come together as a package because the radar is in the windscreen.

PP – I’ll be able to use my phone as it has one of those Ford Sync things that is wireless Bluetooth audio and reads our your texts too! And is a digital radio.

AWSUMS.

I still have a nagging feeling that I could even get driving into an inflatable thing wrong………..

My mate rang up the Aiston bloke and wasn’t impressed – no lighting board included and other issues. Sounds like you basically buy a garden gate from him and sort the rest out yourself. 😉
And no tilt? What use is that??

Nose weight in his new car is 75kg so ok with 4 bikes. The witter one looks really good if you have a standard tow hitch. No good for me though as I am getting a swan neck one on my new car.

I have a friend who comes from Mansfield ( I am from Sutton) and we take turns to say how bad it is.

Wow I hope some of you guys don’t ever come to Todmorden, home of STW, if you dislike Farnborough so much. Some great riding up here but boy are some of the towns struggling.

And we don’t get big payouts when we flood up here which doesn’t help…..

FWIW I think Farnborough town centre isn’t the best but it’s improving. It’s honest and it’s trying hard. Plus PP lives there so that adds 20% to its awesomeness factor. 🙂

Errr the one I’m looking at is a 2.3l inline petrol turbo!! RWD too. 😀

Wow – if growing up means I HAVE to get a boring car I don’t want to grow up at all.

Rob, 37 and wanting to buy a turbo petrol car…..

I was asking for a friend and he has decided to go for a Witter ZX404. I think he has been wise and gone for a traditional tow bar setup with the flat plate and bolt on ball. The Witter rack bolts to the tow ball fitting.

I think that will be a much stronger/sturdy/stable option than the ones which attach to the ball, which are ok for 2/3 bikes I suppose but 4 bikes is starting to push it!

Any other ideas?

Don’t over eat to compensate…….you’ll end up the size of a house. Look at the fatties you see at trail centres, pretty good on the bike but for every 1000 calorie ride they then go and shovel 5000 calories in their pie hole.

I used to do that. Have a bacon sandwich on the way, sandwiches and pies for lunch then a takeaway on the way home. Wondered why I always felt sluggish and put weight on – simple fact was I was burning 1-2000 calories but eating 10000…. 😯

When you say your Ribble frame “died” what exactly happened? Quite difficult to break most modern frames in normal use I would have thought??

I have a Kinesis Maxlight frameset and I love it. Not sure why you had problems with one before as they are designed to last as a training bike. I have a T2 and it’s quite versatile as it has rack and guard mounts and will take mudguards easily with 25mm tyres.

Hmmmm yes I think it may have been delayed bonk (sounds so wrong!).

It’s a bit difficult to judge food at the moment as I’ve been losing lots of weight (24lbs since Xmas!) so I genuinely can’t eat as much as I used to as my stomach has shrunk! I want exercise to have an effect so I am trying to balance my good correctly to give me enough fuel but not negate the effects of the exercise. Seems I got it wrong this time.

Made up for it in last 24hrs by eating my own body weight in chocolate. OM NOM NOM!!

80km in west Yorks!

I’m new to road riding and that’s a lot for me. I don’t think I drank enough really.

Oooof that’s a beauty! 3 years – shame on you!

To be honest existing 26″bikes like my flux should be ridden until no longer fit for purpose

So basically forever, yes?

Absolutely no failings with quill stems. Both systems have their positives and negatives depending on what you need from them.

That’s crap. I’ve backed him up on Twitter. I only worked in retail management for 12 years and should know less than the folks at Porsche but I at least know that this issue should have been sorted out a lot quicker.

I think they only use staples in the manufacturing process as it’s quicker – the contact adhesive I used is never going to fail!!

I went to a shop and selected the leather myself to make sure I got some that wasn’t too thick. It doesn’t have to stretch much though but does need some give.

It’s much easier to cover a saddle which has plastic bumpers as they cover up the hard bits.

Some people on Retrobike have recovered original Flites well, even redone the graphics.