You could hardly afford half the fuel pump cost but you bought a modern turbo diesel? Things are not going to end well for you….

I wouldn’t touch a modern TD if I was spending my own money and I didn’t have lots to spare.

I have an Ikea one bought many years ago and it’s been faultless, it was the only one I’d ever used until recently when I used a friends one which was pathetic….

“Lakes full because rivers not being allowed to drain / run fully due to downstream developments etc ?”

Wrong. 313mm rainfall in 24hrs on already completely saturated ground and high water levels is going to cause flooding.

Stay down south please, it’d be far too scary for you up here.

“Not my account, pictures of the situation in cockermouth awful

https://m.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10100129703318078&id=276702248&set=a.575591226178.101037.276702248&source=48&refi”

To be more accurate in that post – the defences haven’t failed, they’ve just been overtopped, which they are designed to do. The sheer amount of water they are managing to hold back is terrifying though – so although there is water coming over them it could be much much worse for those houses on the other side. I certainly would have legged it from those houses a while back!

Unless they tell you otherwise, still come

Amen to that – ring up beforehand to check but still go, and spend as much money as you can while you are there.

313mm rainfall in the last 24hrs at one guage in centre of Lakes…

That is very very very unusual. Trust me.

This is potentially worse than 2009.

Post pics up or links of anything?

I have the same light as peterpoddy. USB charging, handlebar control which even has a main beam function! Light sensing too. I have one of their rear lights hooked up which automatically switches on too – and is a brake light which detects when the hub is slowing down quickly as when to put the brake light on. Works perfectly too! All electronics are inside the Front light head unit so no extra boxes or anything.
Can’t see why anyone would get anything else, it really does everything.

I am finding if I stay in the left lane on the M62 going west on the way home I go a lot faster than anyone else and no one bats an eyelid about the undertaking. Quite happy doing 60mph in the inside lane while the rest are doing 50!!!

Are those clip on tri bars???
Are they attached to a riser thing on top of riser bars???

Mikey,3 – lol!!

I’ve been riding since 87 and seen a few changes. More money coming into the sport is always a good thing, if the rich folk think it’s the new golf that’s great, no problem here!

However – and I might be wrong here – has it become more expensive at the bottom end? When I started an entry level bike and a helmet (or not!) and you were set. I’m hoping that teenagers and newbies don’t get put off by the magazines and websites who do seem to show most people spending thousands on kit. And why does no one smile in magazine and website pics?

I like the money coming in, I just hope it’s not getting too “serious”.

Just used my Diablo on a short road ride just now. Holy cow that thing is bright on full power! Easy to use and was easy to attach to my weird carbon bars. Can’t wait to use it on my helmet off road – I can’t believe the MaxxD I have is going to be twice the lumens, surely I’ll set fire to Yorkshire when I turn it on!

It doesn’t seem too bad considering the original price and the fact you can’t get them any more.

£25 a pair http://m.alansbmx.com/1625952/products/odi-mushroom-ii-grips-limited-edition.aspx

If these have been made from the original tooling and are essentially the same grip as made in the 80’s they could be worth a fair bit to BMX restorers – the price of some original BMX parts from that era makes rare retro MTB exotica (Klein et al) look very cheap.

I’d recommend a frame builder for you, but I like them so I won’t……

“Maybe even 140mm disc on the rear”

As soon as I read that I knew you didn’t know what you were taking about…. obviously never ridden a laden bike!!

I always think a bike looks unfinished if it doesn’t have decals on it. A lot of decals nowadays are a bit naff though, all computer designed geometric go faster stripe like, and always tend to be black/white/red as well. Rare to find a mainstream manufacturer making the effort they used to do 20 years back on even their budget bikes.

My 1992 Tequesta, a sub £500 bike with a paint finish that’d cost nearly that much to recreate to the same standard nowadays:

Many more like that from other manufacturers, and let’s not forget about Klein/Fat Chance/Grove Innovations and the like.

I don’t think you put the unit through the loop, you wrap it round the unit and pass the lanyard through the loop to make a new loop (hard to describe!) I found it won’t slip off this way, especially when pushed into the grooves as instructed.

I had a sub for Cyclist for a while, but I got bored with it as I’m not really a proper roadie and the ride articles got a bit boring for me. The tech articles and the visit to factories were really good though.

This reminds me of a line in a song I love – “Fashion is something so ugly it has to be changed every 15 minutes, but style is something versatile, it’s in the way you move and in the way you smile”.

My unfashionable bike?

1991 Haro

Not even worth joking about.

Lovely lights but for th life of me I can not work out how the button to change the settings works. I given up trying to work it out and just use it for on and off. Not sure why they designed it to be so complicated. Know doubt people will come along now and explain how simple it is and I have been a dumbo!!

It isn’t obvious how you do it, you need to read the instructions. But once you do I can’t see any issues, the instructions are pretty clear.

EDIT they have videos to show you how to do it as well.

The bloke who taught my last asbestos course had been in the MOD since before legislation came in and has been involved at a high level for decades in asbestos work. He was saying that we have already seen the peak of deaths from people who manufactured and installed asbestos products. He said that research suggests that in the next 10-15 years we will start seeing people dying (Slowly and painfully) from asbestos exposure who were the sort of people who removed and disposed of it (incorrectly). That could be builders/demolition experts but also DIY work renovating houses. He said the research suggests that the amount of deaths from this group of people is likely to be a lot more than the people who manufactured/installed it as there as so many more people doing it with very little or no understanding of the dangers of it, not using the correct procedures to handle/dispose of it or even much knowledge of how to spot it in the first place.

We were shown pictures of all the items you can find asbestos in and it scared me witless to be honest. I’m no doom merchant either.

Butter spreads just fine if you don’t keep it in the fridge, should be in a nice butter dish in a cold area.

Although slices of cold butter ARE awesome!

Asbestos wasn’t banned completely until 1999 so there’s always a chance you could find it in a house that new but obviously much less likely than an older house.

You’ll never get immediate death from asbestosis anyway, it’s normally a horrific slow painful asphyxiation 20 years later.

I built a bike for a lady who is very fit and wanted to get into cycling a bit with her kids – the charge ladle I put on it was soon covered in a big gel cover as it was killing her!

If the lady in question rarely rides bikes then I’d go for a more padded one to start off with. Forget fashion, she won’t want to ride at all on a racy type saddle which I would consider the Charge/Fizik ones quoted above to be. She might be used to that sort of seat already though but that’s your call!!

My wife has the specialized BG saddles and loves them. They do seem to do nice looking saddles which still have a good degree of padding on them but aren’t sofa wide. That’s why they tend to sell for a decent price on eBay.

Edit this one: http://www.tredz.co.uk/.Specialized-Dolce-Gel-Womens-Saddle_67146.htm

“It’s easier to spread and doesn’t rip the bread apart”

“A pie in a cob is pointless.
Pie should be with chips, peas and gravy, and the bread used to make a chip butty and to soak up excess gravy.
That is the way it has always been. I have spoken.”

Even though you are my brother and we come from the same place in the UK and should share the same values, I cannot agree with you.

You have pledged your allegiance to the south, mine is to the North. I have witnessed many many food miracles in the north. Hot pork pie, mushy peas and mint sauce. Chips and curry sauce. Pies so large you gasp at their enormity. Yorkshire puddings with everything. So many sausages everywhere it makes you weep. And we haven’t even got onto the myriad of traditional butchers dealing out their own brands of pork pies made with secret ingredients like crack cocaine to the masses. Curd tart (vile but I respect the passion for it), white pudding, beef dripping sold everywhere. Never being more than 2 minutes walk from a Greggs. So many food places where the owners are openly hostile to their customers but it doesn’t matter because the food is so good you’d crawl over broken glass naked to get it. Pork scratching stage size of your arm (and a lot hairier), gravy so thick you can mortar bricks with it. For crying out loud there’s even a Rhubarb Triangle to provide fruit for massive crumbles all year round. Being served tea with an extra pot of hot water at EVERY tea shop (I think environmental health close them down if they don’t round here).

However, I do have to agree it should be called a cob. I just can’t get used to calling them baps! ;)

Thanks for the advice Del

MCTD – this sounds a little lame but I’m actually slightly scared of turning the MaxxD on!!!

The Diablo instantly warmed my hand when I pointed the beam at my palm from 15cm away.

No way I would be paying sky to watch the F1. Been watching for pretty much 35 years but it’d stop if the BBC lost it.

Such a shame the money grabbing bosses have taken the soul out of the sport (boring tracks/countries hosting who don’t give a crap about the sport just the prestige) – it’ll go the same way as my other Motorsport love world rally unfortunately (maybe for different reasons though).

I’ve got a softshell of theirs and I love it, looks so good I decided to use it for casual rather than cycling use. Only small issue I had was the cuff velcro coming away from the rubber strap but I used some contact adhesive on it and it’s been fine since. Not sure if mine was a one off as the rest of the jacket has been superb, I wear it all the time.

Just bought an Addict jacket for cycling and ordered some of the Addict trousers too.

” I heard an interview with him where he said that he was never at 100% when playing due to dialysis.”

Blimey! I bet some opposing players were glad he never got to full 100%!!!

I work with the EA flood folk and their comments on those two were very funny. Not particularly concerned about them floating away, it’s the dysentery they’ll get from being in the flood water/raw sewage mix. Bleeeeuuurrgghhh.

That was a great read, really glad I read it. Thanks.

I am thinking of buying a particular Volvo and the wisdom online in the Volvo forums says the engines they use do prefer a certain OEM plug to work at their best, even really fancy ones can cause problems fitting in an otherwise standard engine.
I don’t think you’d be able to gain any performance with spark plugs alone so using the OEM ones is probably the best choice in most cars.

Is it the threads on the screw that are stripped or the head itself (from the tool slipping and chewing up the head)?

If the threads are stripped I hope you haven’t stripped the frame threads.

A pic of what you’re dealing with would be useful.

Sometimes cars do like the OEM plugs more than other ones, even fancier ones. Did you check the gaps on the new plugs before installing?

Maybe put longer cable on to stop it rubbing? My Pitch has cables going under the BB (160mm travel frame) and the cables on the bike built by Spesh were much longer under the BB so they don’t touch the shell.