I came back on here after a couple of years break (glad to see TJ gone). I don’t read mags so was surprised to see this 29″ wheel size, never mind 650b (which mugs are buying into that? Are you kidding me?) Ok, 29″ gives a nice alternative but 650b is playing you all as idiots. I can’t believe people are actually buying into it, I really can’t.
Stil riding a 20yo 26″ bike, my 2010 26″ bike works fine too. Don’t ever remember seeing a 29″ bike round here (W Yorks), no one I know owns one or is even thinking about it.
I think I’ll be able to buy decent kit for my bike for a few decades yet…..

I never replaced the fluid in my old Hope minis and never had a single problem.

Probably going to replace with new Deores but want to sell the Avids with an accurate description.

You should try the Retrobike scene. Early/mid 90’s konas – sellers wanting £250 for a Fire Mountain, £200 for a Hahanna. Parts prices daft just cos its old stuff. No one buys it but newbies get in a huff because they see the adverts and think their bike is worth the same. Don’t get sold and probably chucked back in a shed to rot instead of going to a new owner at a reasonable price.

I think 2nd hand may be the way to go but I’m finding it hard to beat the Pendleton. No idea on geometry for it though.

I have the same problems as the OP, slight leaks out of reservoir when pulling brakes hard, and I can’t seem to retract the pistons.

I have never bled them, they have never needed anything doing to them. However the bike they are on is very rarely used. Is that the problem? Are the pistons seizing? New brake time?

Wheel size is still the same. 🙂

Peterpoddy – I will admit its not the best hair in the world, but at least it’s not going anywhere. It’s a good thing too, as my head shape, if exposed, is so alarming that I would be forced to be under some sort of house arrest so the general public wouldn’t be distressed. 😉

I am 36 and I still have to get my hair thinned every time I get it cut as its so thick and luxurious.

You can all boast about saving money on haircuts but you all wish you had my hair really.

And I don’t need glasses either. 😉

If you want to go somewhere and practice I would recommend laying some sticks or rocks at the side of a flat piece of land and giving yourself a target. Start small, a couple of metres, where you have to keep the wheel up, and gradually extend it. You’ll be able to track your progress and get some joy in knowing you’ve improved!

When I riding BMX I always found it easier to practice by hopping up onto and accross a platform – could be low like a small section of kerbing (often found in big shopping car parks) – if your front wheel didn’t touch the pltform it felt great. Not so useful in MTB but combining the two skills was very satisfying when you got it right

That’s quite a good idea. I assume your car is an MPV type vehicle? Wonder if it would work in my Astra estate?

If you supply any email address as a way of contacting your company you should answer every email. Same with phone/letter/tweet. If you’re not going to answer, don’t promote the contact details.
Basic customer service rule.

I was heading for a Reverb but I’ll check out the KS ones too.

I moved from retail management to work for the Environment Agency.

Most people think you are thick because you worked in a shop even at management level but in all honesty I would interview anyone who had been in retail successfully as the skills you acquire can be pretty top notch. Pity people don’t see that.

If you move to most other jobs you’ll be amazed at how slowly everyone does things!

I went through ALL the things I was good at and picked out what transferable skills I had to promote those to a new employer. It amazing what you can pick out to fit to another job.

It might take time, but put in some groundwork and hopefully you’ll get something.

I ended up moving from being an Operations manager in charge of a small team and £2m of stock, responsible for all cash/loss accounting/stock control/deliveries/security/pricing compliance to being an Environment Officer with 50% pay INCREASE and a free lease car. And EO’s don’t get paid much – everyone who started at te same time as me in the EA took pay cuts to join – I was laughing!!!

Don’t listen to the lies inside you saying you are qualified. You could probably teach a thing or two to a lot of people in a lot of jobs, you’ve just got to figure out what you’ve got to offer.

I kinda thought that… isn’t there any others that come close?

Need help on size/length though.

Not sure if it fits but most of the Jackie Chan films are fun to watch, clean for the kids and have some great fight scenes in them.

I am not aware of anywhere that will rent bikes out in Holme valley.
The bike shops themselves are pretty thin on the ground despite it being a decent riding area.
Best ring round the bike shops to see if they can help, or point you in the right direction. You never know!!

I have found the autoglym upholstery cleaner works very well on my Astra seats, and doesn’t leave a tide mark. But I do clean it often and any marks are only water. It doesn’t leave a tide mark.

Don’t take it to a hand wash place
Don’t use a petrol station jetwash
Don’t use a car wash.
Don’t let anyone drink in your car
Don’t let any kids in your car.

Waxing and polishing doesn’t take long if you use good stuff and use it carefully and methodically. And if you wax reasonably often your car doesn’t get dirty as quickly and is easier to wash when you get to it.

The first wedding cake we did took both of us about 2 weeks each full time when we calculated the hours it took. Even if halved that for a pro who could do it quicker it would still be £400+ in labour. Materials cost was £130. Someone baked the cakes for us (a cake professional) and the cost of the ingredients was £35!

The bike I went to when I switched to 31.8 was so different I wouldn’t have been able to tell any difference BUT I did notice I didn’t get any creaks and the whole thing seemed more solidly put together.
Road bikes make a big difference, especially when sprinting. 31.8 miles better.

Sat – help paint my church for an upcoming conference – great fun
Sun – church then shopping. This is where it went wrong.
Was going to ride Sun afternoon and Monday, but I lost my house/bike lock keys at Sainsburys. There was a decent chance they were stolen so I couldn’t leave the house on Sunday when it was really sunny
8am Monday morning I was at screwfix buying new locks then fitting them until 1pm.
Then I went into a sulk as I had lost all that time for the rest of the day. 🙁
Sat and ate crisps on the sofa until nightfall. 🙁

£80 is quite cheap for a decent single layer custom decorated cake. £40 on materials quite normal!

We have done wedding cakes for 3 people and we calculated they would have cost between £500-£800 each if they had to be paid for, we did them as a present to the couple.

A lot of the ones you buy over the counter are awful compared to a properly made one.

Your best bet is to find one at a supermarket. Should be able to find a Spidey one!

You’ll be needing some of these.

Perfect. 🙂

thisisnotaspoon – you reckon its worth sending off to be retuned? I’ve had from 2010, don’t ride it much tbh so never had it serviced apart from doing an air can relube.

Thought about a coil shock but they aren’t cheap.

I can’t see it either – tried thinking about it in a number of ways.

Does the :innocent face: text make some sort of smilie??

A relative of mine was on the show a couple of years ago. She already had a successful recruitment agency in Yorkshire and would genuinely have benefitted from the opportunity offered by Mr Sugar. She is normal and hardworking.

However because she wasn’t a complete shouty know it all retard like the rest of them she was kicked off after a few programmes.

She went back to the recruitment business.

Is it really a genuine job offer at the end? Is it worth it?

It enrages me so much I couldn’t even bear to watch most of the ones with my relative in. It’s so bad it makes me want to gouge out my eyeballs with a rusty spoon and pour hydroflouric acid into my ears. After I’ve fed all the contestants into a slow moving meat grinding machine, after peeling their skin off and rolling them in salt.

Brant – that’s actually a nice thing to say. Thanks. (Not being sarcastic)

The bikes rode really well to be honest but I’m afraid I’ve been put off now. As far as value goes you can’t be beaten, that’s for sure. Sounds like there are a lot of happy customers nowadays which is great.

Peterpoddys new Saracen has amazing paint.

EA were all over me like a rash when someone reported a bonfire I was having on a little development. Only burning wood so it wasn’t really causing a problem. It was basically nimbys trying every trick in the book to disrupt the development!

Well everything has to be investigated, especially so if there is a lot of complaints. Always easy to spot the nimbys, but as long as what you are doing is legal then there’s no problem.

Smoke can be considered a statutory nuisance though, dealt with by the council – Env Health – so even if you are burning waste and its ok with us the council may still have a problem with it if its annoying local residents. No idea how they enforce this though.

But if they are requested under the Freedom of Information then they will be.

If information is requested then if it is about an ongoing investigation then no details at all will be released.

If there isn’t an investigation as such (say its about a permitted site which attracts complaints) then only certain information will be released, such as general areas and general levels of complaints. Nothing would be released which would give away the identity of a reporter.

The frame didn’t cause chainsuck itself, but the clearances were so tight that if the chain was picked up at all it jammed between the chainset and stay, causing big gouges in the metal.
Brant admitted it was wrong himself on here.
Argos cycles replaced my brothers chainstay with one with as much usable clearance but a different shape and he hasn’t had a problem since.
On-one uses its customers as testers and doesn’t even fix issues straight away when they know about them.

Wanna know why all the headtubes are so short? Brant makes some sort of design reason nowadays but the original reason was that he forgot to change the headtube lengths when he made the different frame sizes and never bothered changing it.

Details won’t be shared.

I thought the specified day for burning dodgy stuff was 5th Nov?

That does happen a fair bit, yes. 🙁

Did you report this to the EA in the end?

I’d stick with what you have if I were you.

Some wider riser bars would help it ride a lot easier – some nice cheap ones on CRC at the moment.

EDIT see here : http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Mobile/MobileModels.aspx?ModelID=15827

Well that MTB coach is an idiot.

Head over to Retrobike and you’ll find loads of people riding bikes like that quite happily off road.

Some v-brakes would def be better, or even better some Maguras.

Get some old Marzocchi Z3’s on it if you want (60-80mm travel) which should be ok but I wouldn’t bother.

I rode my 1994 Kona Kilauea a bit more recently and kept up with the modern riders just fine.

You don’t need to spend loads to get it nice to ride. It’s be a good starter bike to help you learn some skills on, then you could maybe buy something modern later on – gives you time to save up.

And enjoy it!

You might find it goes downhill nicely but uphill the steering may be very floppy and hard to keep in a straight line. A change in stem may help but probably not enough.

If it had 400mm rigid forks on I think 60mm forks would probably be the max you could use. Maybe 80mm at a push, could be worth a try.

Also the frame may not be designed for the extra stress a long fork will put on it so could fail in a worst case scenario.

On the other hand, I have had 3 On-one/PX frames and they have all been defective in some way.

First white Inbred – terrible paint, disc mount badly welded so had to hand file it straight (OO advised me to do this)
853 inbred – well known chainstay issue caused huge gouges in metal, sold mine quickly but my brothers chainstay snapped and he got Argos cycles to fix it with a properly designed chainstay. Attitude of OO was “ooh yes we know about that, maybe we should sort the problem out”
PX kaffenback – unable to use 11t cassette as chainstays designed/made wrongly.
My brothers C456 has had headset issues which were the fault of the design of it.

I bought their products as they were all I could afford but I will never again buy something from them. Now have a Specialized Pitch and a Kinesis road bike – the kinesis was same price as Kaffenbak was but is nicely finished, great paint and not a single issue to report. Spesh is the same.
My 1994 Kona Kilauea is better designed than any of the On-ones I’ve had.

I’ll wear a (fitted) baseball cap until the day I die because I like them and have been wearing them since I was 12.

IAnd how old are you now ?

36…

I don’t care less what anyone, apart from my wife whose opinion I really rate, thinks about what I’m wearing. I still wear my cream baggy cargo trousers and skate shoes (none of this 661 malarkey) as that’s what I used to wear BMXing. I can’t stand wearing long sleeve shirts, tie or not. I don’t think I actually own one. You’ll never see me wearing what’s in fashion because everyone looks the same.
I’ll wear a (fitted) baseball cap until the day I die because I like them and have been wearing them since I was 12. I’ll never have a fancy watch or a collection of cuff links or fancy English hand made shoes or fitted shirts or jeans. I’ll be wearing surf and skate brands forever.

Thanks for making me happy about what I wear, I’m just glad I don’t fit into your “cool” niche, thank you very much.