Hope External BB, solved.

Close, but until they last for the entire life of a frame without maintenance, not quite.

I’d like a properly sorted BB system for MTBs that provides equivalent performance to what we get from hubs and headsets these days in terms of strength, durability and not creaking all the time. Basically something for modern BB axles that is as good as square taper BBs used to be.
Also, MTB tyres with the grip and strength of super tacky dual ply DH tyres but the weight and rolling of XC race tyres.

Utterly unimportant and completely normal. It’s necessary to ensure that the brakes release cleanly. Provided the pads can’t actually slide out of the caliper it’s fine.
They take the play out on road cars to stop the rattle and the inevitable complaints that “something is wrong with my car, there’s a clunk when I put the brakes on at slow speed” but the result is brakes that drag faintly all the time. Track car brakes run a little play like bike brakes for free operation and to allow the pads to expand when they are hot on the assumption that the driver is clued up enough to know what the clunk is.

Take it off the market? That happens when the money is in my account and not before!!

Well, it’s pretty normal in Scotland to get a sale agreed well before that, the money only changes hands on moving day and the deal should be done well before that. On the three properties I’ve bought in Aberdeen our solicitors have always been able to get a deal sorted out and an agreement on price made without needing to go to closed offers. Particularly so if it’s been on the market for a while. The agreed selling price may or may not actually be above the offers over number.

Get a good local solicitor and ask them to find out what it’d take to get it off the market. The good ones should be able to talk to the selling solicitors and get a good idea of where to start at least.

If the discs have really only just been fitted then the most likely thing is that the mating surface on the hub that the disc bolts to wasn’t cleaned up properly and the disc is running out a bit. If they were fitted by a garage, go back and have them sort it.

Hans Dampf rear Magic Mary front if you really don’t ever want to have to change tyres.

Another one for get the balance re-checked. Many places don’t do a very good job of balancing wheels.

Either there’s a leak at the calliper and the oil is contaminating the pads or something about your bike maintenance routine is contaminating them would be my guess.

Every Grifter had bent cranks. It was just that you got used to the particular bend on yours and when you rode a mates the different bend on his felt weird.

The barrel adjuster is on the lever. Everything has been that way for a good few years now.

No, it works fine. Shimano cranks over SRAM every time regardless of the rest of the spec.

My non XL Grifter weighed 42lbs, and at least the cranks and the forks may well have been lead judging by how easily they bent.

I did suspect it might be live axle rear, in which case, as you say it won’t be that if both are doing it.

Feathery, ragged outside edges on the rears is most likely a tracking or alignment problem. How do the inner edges look? If the wear is only on the outer edges you’ve got too much toe-in on the rear, or not enough negative camber. Hopefully at least one of those things is adjustable.

No, V8s are all pretty rubbish compared to modern offerings.

Expert at an activity and expert at teaching it aren’t the same thing, and indeed often seem to be mutually exclusive. Those to whom things come naturally often struggle to describe how to do something as they don’t consciously understand how they do it themselves, they just do it.

I suspect that if you become a keen amateur at this sort of thing you might be finding out about the ‘afterlife’ rather sooner than you think.

Indeed, I don’t think explosives as a hobby is really to be encouraged.
Still most of the stuff you do with chainsaws could probably be accomplished with shaped charges McMoonter. I’m sure it’d be slower and more wasteful but there’s a certain appeal…

there might simply be no room to put a downward pedal stroke in,

I swing back and forth (on flats just now, my technique was getting sloppy on clips) but regardless, in what situation is there room to pull up but not to push down? When I pull up on one pedal, the other goes down…
Or did you mean that sometimes because of body position and gear selected you can’t get the leverage to get a pedal stroke in with flats but the ability to pull too when clipped in will make it possible? That is true sometimes.
FWIW, for me on clipless pedals it’s never the fear of not being able to unclip in time that bothers me, I can always manage that, it’s that having unclipped to dab you might not get clipped back in and have to ride something technical with only one foot clipped in and the other very insecure.

If you are considering going 1×10, SRAM mechs tolerate the big add on sprockets better than Shimano in my experience, I’m running an XT cassette with a Wolftooth GC 42t cog and my X0 shifter and X9 mech set-up shifts a lot better over it than my XTR shifter and XT mech. The SRAM set-up shifts as well as over a standard cassette, the Shimano set-up is o.k but noticeably soft, definitely worse shifting than standard.
As for the other stuff, SRAM is always more clunky, a much more positive click-clunk to change than XTR in particular. XX1 is sweeter than cheap SRAM but it doesn’t feel like XTR, nothing else does. I do slightly miss the double shifts but in all honesty I don’t mind the clunkier SRAM changes, the XTR was so light I sometimes overshot and got a double when I only needed a single if it was very bumpy.
The final thing I’d say is that for me, the better functionality, the loss of the weight and noise from the front mech and the pleasing simplicity of only having one mech, one lever and less cables is well worth it overall even if you need to get used to a more mechanical feeling shift.
Edit: I’ve ridden a bike with XX1 but don’t own one. It feels just like my SRAM 1×10 with expander sprocket setup but with a fractionally higher top gear. I’m not going to bother changing to 1×11 until my current kit is worn out.

do you ever stop riding your bike? If so what do you do to support it? Do you lay it down and risk scratching your bar ends and pedals or carry an Andystand everywhere?

Yup, I lie it down on the non drive side. Bar ends and pedals get scratched, I don’t care, I don’t touch them and I can’t see them. It’s not so much that I don’t want to damage the grips and saddle as that I genuinely find it easier and cleaner to do the right way up and I’d rather not start a ride with mud already on the grips. Plus I do have a Reverb (lever under the bar) and why risk damaging it by flipping the bike over. The bars are right in your field of view and one of the few parts of an MTB that doesn’t inevitably get scratched in use (crashing excepted) so again, why rest the bike on them and guarantee they’ll get marked?

Might as well go with the Hopes, they’ll be at least as good I reckon.

I still don’t understand why anyone turns their bike upside down for any reason other than crashing it, or how you can possibly find it easier to get the wheels in and out that way up. Seems to be a topic that divides opinion to an amazing degree.

As someone said above, you shouldn’t be pulling up with SPDs, at least only for suddenly starting sprints or big moves when you are in too high a gear. But you shouldn’t be spinning along pulling up, nobody does, even the pros are just turning circles and pushing on the downstroke. The muscles in your legs aren’t built to pull, I can easily believe it is killing your knees. So if you actually are pulling up on your SPDs all the time, stop, just push down and accept that the benefit is better security, stiffer shoes and the fact that your feet stay in the same place on the pedals.
If you aren’t pulling up, then regardless of having had pro setups done, they aren’t quite right if they hurt your knees.

In answer to your question though, no reason why you can’t run any pedals you want.

downshep’s suggestion of two stacked stems seems best to me to get a proper fit without any particularly exotic kit.

And at the end of the day what problem are you trying to fix?

This^
Off the top of my head, I’d think that by the time you’d solved the problem of how to stop your feet sliding off sideways and how to release, you’d end up with something heavier, more complicated and less dirt tolerant than normal clipless pedals but with no obvious major advantages and a few disadvantages.

Hmm, clutch mech then but not with a switch. Is the wheel definitely in properly? Try slackening the qr off, and pushing down on the bike to compress the suspension a touch then re-tighten. You didn’t by any chance use the lock button on the mech to hold the arm forward then forget to turn it off did you?

Shimano or SRAM mech? On the whole block or just on and off the biggest sprocket.
Without knowing more, it sounds like (in order of what I’d check first):

Your cable is a little too tight, if you back off the barrel adjuster can you get it going both ways?

If that doesn’t work and the alignment on each sprocket is right as you click up the block it could be sticky cables so the mech is being held from dropping down the block. You can check by clicking one click then pulling the mech down the block by hand to see if there is slack it’s not managing to take up.

Or it could be your b-tension. You want to set the jockey wheel as close to the big sprocket as possible while still maintaining a quiet, smooth shift on and off the biggest sprocket. I’m running a Wolftooth 42t sprocket and that won’t shift off the biggest sprocket if the b-tension has the top jockey wheel too close to the big sprocket. It’ll climb up fine but it just hangs onto it and won’t drop down when you click down one click.

My experience has been that SRAM mechs seem to tolerate the big adapter sprockets better than Shimano, but either way the shifting will be slightly slower than with a conventional block because the b-tension needs to be adjusted so far out to clear the big sprocket.

No spoiler for me. Rx7s are such a nice shape they really don’t need the spoiler.

The most elegant routing is from the lever on the right, across the front of the headtube in a smooth arc onto the frame on the left. It’s less prone to getting damaged if the bars go all the way round in a crash that way.

Yup, I’d go with the visibly bowing out due to the tyre pressure test.
If your rim sidewalls still look parallel it’s got plenty of life left.

Avalanche cartridge for your 36s for far less than a new fork.

The thick and thin teeth reduce the clearance so that it’s very difficult for the chain near but not on the ring to move sideways enough to miss the ring when it drops on because the chain that is on the ring can’t move sideways.
It’s working with the idea that in order for the chain to drop off the ring (as it’d do if you were running 2x and trying to shift at the front), there always has to be a point where one link is on the ring and then the next one along is not yet on the ring but is far enough misaligned sideways to go to the side of the teeth. If you take the sideways play away for the chain that is engaged on the ring, there isn’t enough play for the chain to move that far in the length of one or two links, so even when it does bounce it is guided back down into the right place.
It can’t actually grip the chain, that’d cause massive chain suck.

If the rust hasn’t got it then yes, absolutely. It’s hard to find anything so nice to drive for the same money, I miss my ’03 530d.

You have to match the spin on oolite which i dont remember from the original elite.

Yeah, you did, lovely when you got it perfectly right with an analogue joystick.

Of course, if you’re on SRAM, you just need to wait until it breaks.

Nope, you can tighten the SRAM ones too, you pop the cap off the clutch pivot on the outside of the mech and tighten up the enormous (by bike standards) torx head that is revealed. Also quite easily possible to pull it all to bits to clean and grease for a less sticky action.

It’s not to do with the suspension set-up, it’s to do with the positioning of the rider and technique. Don’t try to adjust the problem away, learn how to jump properly otherwise you are just gambling with your safety every time you leave the ground and have to just hope that you land right this time.

I make a concious effort to move my weight back but still….

This is the problem.
You are most likely hitting the take off with your weight back which causes the rear suspension to compress more than the front and then it kicks back, throwing your weight forward as you take off. Stay on top of the pedals and let the bike come up to you.

Fore-aft balance when jumping

the act of a loon to buy them in the first place

Without a doubt, but I love those people because they create a 2nd hand market full of interesting, fun cars that have depreciated away until I can buy and run them at the same overall cost as something superficially far more sensible. :-)

Hence my original post

They wouldn’t. Presumably that’s the point at which the admin cost entirely wipes out the money they make from selling you a tax disc and therefore they don’t offer it.