Having just been through the pain of trying to get stans tape to conform to the deepish channel in an ARC30 rim, I can tell you I bought Schwalbe tape and it’s excellent. Just the right amount of stretch and stickiness.

I built a website/database to compare geometry, so I couldn’t help but comment. Here’s your search on the site…
https://geometrygeeks.bike/compare/kinesis-g2-2018-2019-medium,kinesis-g2-2018-2019-large,specialized-allez-2018-56-0/

Looks like the large G2 is closest. Very similar really, other than the head angle which will push the front wheel out and lengthen wheelbase. The ‘fit’ will be very close (certainly within sensible saddle positioning and stem choice) but the slacker head angle will make it a bit more relaxed handling… a good thing, I think, unless you like the crit-style raciness of the Allez.

Feeling bad for reporting someone to the police is probably a sign you’re a good human being. Same feeling you’d get if you went to the doctor but felt slightly better that day… don’t want to waste their time, right?

I’d follow through to prosecute, for all the reasons above. But you’re not the a**hole for having second thoughts.

RC2 or RCT3 Pike for a 130/150mm do-everything trail bike?

I’ve had the 2016 RCT3 and thought it was great. Would I gain anything from the RC2?

Good find. Thanks!

Have they only just reached the shops then? It was July last year the ‘first ride’ articles started appearing.

Interesting ideas for the list, thanks.

Just doing some initial research and the Stans Arch/Flow and DT XM481 are on the list too.

As long as I don’t buy something so cheap they’re made of cheese, can you really go wrong?

Cheers for posting the geometry. I’ve added it to the GG database.

Interested to know the reach but does look like very ‘modern’ geo.

I’ve used RX Sport and found them very good.

Last time though, I went to a local optician (Stirling Optical) and the service was excellent, including the comfort of knowing the heights and IPD were spot on. Cost about £30 more than RX Sport but I recommend.

Torwood?

It’s just been logged heavily and there are many trails just plain gone, but there are also quite a few survived or been rebuilt. Even a few new lines opening up.

Come on over!

Mega vs Spartan:

https://geometrygeeks.bike/compare/nukeproof-mega-275-2018-large-18,devinci-spartan-2018-l-lo/

Also…

Sort of. It’s affected by stack. If you have two bikes with the same reach, and one has a lower stack, to achieve the same stack height you’ll need to add spacers under the stem. This combined with a slack head angle reduces the effective reach, and can have a considerable affect.

This. Every 10mm spacer shortens reach by about 4mm, depending on head angle. (reference: trigonometry)

Detail of how I’ve done it…

I’ve called up when contract approaching end (and just over), stated I’m probably gonna cancel because we watch more Netflix now. [edit: we don’t even have Netflix. Does that make me a bad person?]

– first time our £25/month was cut to £5/mth for 12 of 18 months

– next time £25/mth went to £11/mth for 12 of 18 mths

Just called up last week to talk about getting fancy schmancy Sky Q with multiroom, but noted a one-off £10 discrepancy in advertising on their site. They apologised, gave me the 2GB box for £20 (not £75) and gave me a new 18mth contract at £23/mth (i.e. extending our £14/mth discount for the full 18mths but including multiroom now).

Zero negotiation skills involved!

STW delivers.

I use Polymax when at work… they’ve good a good range and do small quantities. No idea of what size or material needed for the Reverb though?

@thepodge – Ah I see what’s happened. You’ve looked at so many bikes that the site thinks you’re a bot, and is giving you nonsense data. There should be a pretty prominent message to that effect. If you log in, it fixes itself. Note that logging in doesn’t require a password, and we don’t do anything with your email address other than sending you the login link.

Cheers all

@thepodge – what’s wrong with the Murmur info? (edit: link)

(as an aside, if anyone does spot a typo, you can edit the geometry and bike info directly. We keep a version history too so if some weirdo did start intentionally abusing the data, we can revert)

@dadbike – yes, this. We’re working on it. Hard though because of data quality. We’ve done a massive amount behind the scenes in the last few months to identify and fix outliers, typos, wrong units, mis-formatted (spaces), differently-formatted (commas) etc, to allow this feature to work. Stay tuned.

@cokie – that’s nice idea but a massive amount of work! We’ve come across more different ways of representing a geo table than I ever thought possible. Any support for a boycott of brands who only provide it as an image?!

We’ve been playing with a self-made visual comparison tool (think BikeCAD) for a while, but it’s hard to get meaningful results when trying to extrapolate… there’s usually not enough data to fully define the bike, and often it’s contradictory. I do agree it would be great though. Anyone with javascript and GCSE geometry is invited to help!

I have an SB5c. Bought second hand so I can’t vouch for the maintenance it received before I had it, but it’s about 2.5 years old. I’ve ridden it a LOT, in pretty horrible conditions, but greased as per the schedule.

I recently replaced the switch link because the wee slider tubes had become very worn, taking the kashima coat right off (not visible until it was fully disassembled). That was expensive.

BUT… there was no play!

The knock I was chasing turned out to be elsewhere on the bike, so TBH if it happens again I’d just leave it in place. The bushings are long enough there’s no detectable slop when worn. Bad wear clearly isn’t a Good Thing, but really nothing to worry about in practice if you are unlucky.

I’ve started wearing Decathlon’s mountaineering stuff after many years of much more expensive ‘bike specific’ stuff from cycling/outdoor brands.

Windproof hoody thing is water resistant and a great slim fit – £40.

And quality lightweight breathable waterproof for £100.

EDIT – and they have girls versions of both too :)

I’ve added the Ridewill to our geometrygeeks site here

Hopefully that’ll help you compare side by side with whatever you ride right now? (e.g. vs 58 Synapse)

Onshape? Free, cloud based, very solidworksy.

Cheers, folks.

Have actually stayed with Bear Tracks (Chalet Luise) a number of years ago and the pancakes were excellent :)

Bump – any suggestions?

So I listed on ebay and within 10 minutes I have two bids at my £100 starting price and two private messages offering to buy for £300 and £450 if I end it early! Just gonna let this one run. Anyway, cheers for thoughts everyone.

Yeah I know it’s Not Good. He’s sucking it up and is now prepared to sell a few grand of kit for whatever he can get!

Cheers for talk photography tip, but need account for 60 days before posting in buy/sell so I guess it’s going on ebay.

Cheers anyway :)

B

Friends got me a nice truing stand for a birthday. Got the Musson book and bought the bits and loved it.

My first set were perfectly usable but not especially true or evenly tensioned. Second set have been brilliant and I think as good as I’d get from someone who actually knows what they’re doing :)

I love it and will probably never buy a built set again.

I’ve not found it to be cheaper than buying factory wheelsets or from a shop/pro though.

B

I heard ‘compare geometry’ so here it is, the inevitable plug:

https://geometrygeeks.bike/bike/giant-anthem-2017/%5B/url%5D

…select your size then search for your current bike to compare side by side. Simples.

I also have a non-private plate with my initials on, and also fear people think I’m a knob

They might be right regardless

We made a website to help answer this question – geometrygeeks.bike

Looks like we have a couple of Jeffsy models on there already. You can compare with whatever else you’ve ridden, and it’s pretty straightforward to add another bike if we don’t have it yet.

B

Re: power usage, I read the headlines this last week and thought the numbers quoted seemed very high, but got distracted before I could try to work out the maths myself.

This guy[/url] has made an attempt and reckons it’s <21TWh/annum, or about a third less than the papers were saying. Still a huge number and I’m not defending it, but it’s a fair bit below Ireland.

@rone: GBP on Blockchain – if you sell BTC for GBP, where is your GBP held? And can you bank transfer to a UK account? Genuinely interested as I didn’t think you could withdraw it!

And Bitconnect – I have no evidence to prove it is a Ponzi, and there’s a lot of mud slung on the internet, but there are some high profile folks saying it – link[/url]. My approach is to avoid anything remotely suspicious. If you’re comfortable with your research and the risk, then more power to you :)

(re: scams, and as I see it mentioned above, there are also rumours about Bitconnect being a Ponzi scheme)

Just when I see Bitfinex mentioned – you’d be well advised to stay well away from them.

There are many who believe that Bitfinex and Tether are a massive fraud, and when/if it was to come tumbling down, I’d expect to lose 100% of anything held on Bitfinex exchange or in Tether.

Some other advice for anyone thinking of dabbling:

1) It’s much easier to get in than to get out! Buying BTC (or other major coins) is easy-ish with a GBP debit card, even if the fees sting. It’s MUCH harder to get back to GBP. The likes of Coinbase allow you to hold a GBP balance, but can’t bank transfer it back to you! Advice: plan both your in and your out. I use Coinfloor, but I see they’re about to raise their minimum deposit to £2500 or 0.05BTC/BCH.

2) Keep as little as possible on exchanges. Control your private keys. Exodus and Jaxx wallets are a good option – less faff than hardware with most of the benefits. Plenty others available too.

3) BTC transaction fees can be punitive. Think £2-20 to send any sum at all. Transferring back and forth from exchanges could quickly make it unviable. Other currencies (BCH, ETH, LTC…) have much lower transaction fees.

4) I fully expect the bubble to burst at some point. A Tether collapse (FBI raiding offices maybe?) might trigger it, as could any number of other scenarios. I think it’ll go higher first, so I’ve got a small stake in a few currencies. However, only put in what you can absolutely afford to lose, and take profits along the way :)

5) When there is a market shock, stuff breaks. BTC transactions get clogged up, expensive and slow. Exchanges crash. Bugs appear. Do not expect to be able to buy or sell or even move your funds when the market gets a fright.

6) There are a lot of scams about! Be very careful with wallets, exchanges, apps… do your research and work out what’s well trusted. Some is rumour, some is well grounded, but there are enough good options you don’t need to take a risk.

…I could go on but that’s enough for now :)

@sweaman2: thanks. Is it a British thing that we don’t want to be too forward?!

It’s a bit more in-your-face on the ‘compare’ page, logic being that by the time you’re there, you’re using the site as it’s meant to be used.

A lot of traffic arrives from google to an individual ‘bike’ page and we want to give folks useful info before begging for help!

Thanks, team.

@Stevet1: not yet. It’s one of our most-requested features, up with a visual comparison. We’re working towards it, with a lot of work behind the scenes on data quality both in the database to date and in ‘guiding’ users adding new bikes. We’ll get there.

The reach figures on that site don’t seem correct, the reach on 16.5″ Slackline has been revised to 424mm, and the head angels to 67°

https://www.stantonbikes.com/product/slackline-853-next-gen/

You’re right, they’re different. Looks like they revised the published figures to be the ‘sagged’ numbers. I’ve added them to the site :)

https://geometrygeeks.bike/bike/stanton-slackline-853-mk2-2017-1/

@nwmlarge – thanks. Started building the site a year ago with a friend coz I was fed up of spreadsheets. Now have >2,700 bikes listed!

Slackline vs Hornet…

https://geometrygeeks.bike/compare/dartmoor-hornet-2017-small,dartmoor-hornet-2017-medium,stanton-slackline-853-mk2-2017-16-5,stanton-slackline-853-mk2-2017-18/

:)

Hmm yes we (I say ‘we’ like I’m something other than an incompetent groom) are doing BE 1 day events now so I guess that’s not helping the premium.

Just got the renewal in from E&L; it’s gone up 20% and noticed that fencing clause too… another horse at our yard just ran up a 5-figure vet bill due to a fencing injury so it’s fresh in the mind!

Bravo :)

Don’t think we’ve checked out NFU yet, will take a look…

Posting only to vote down Talktalk!

Literally the most frustrating ‘customer experience’ I’ve ever had.

I have a small pile of talktalk routers (free to good home) because they seem to send one out as a first step in resolving any problem, even though it’s clearly nothing to do with the router.

They read from scripts with no idea what’s going on. They have a billion different departments that don’t communicate. They promise what they can’t deliver just to get rid of you. I now take notes on every call I have with them.

I have not left them yet… only because I honestly believe that will be more painful than just keeping them and hoping nothing goes wrong so I don’t need to talk to them :(