Hmm, I’d use Meths over auto brake cleaner which does contain some oil. If I just want to give the discs a quick wipe I happily use meths, if they got contaminated I’d use meths then give them a good scrub with fairy liquid, hot water and a scrubby pad them rinse.

If they are easier to get, 650b ones aren’t much longer, I’m running some with 26″ wheels and they are no longer than 26″ Fox 36s.

Does it matter what anyone else is running? You can easily enough buy 22t granny rings and change the 24t out for what you want. Not a big additional spend in the context of a complete bike.

Man that looks tall in the 2nd picture (BB height, compared to the fence)

Given the change in the rim radius is 1/2″ I think there’s some camera angle effects at work there as it looks about 4-5″ higher at the the BB compared to the fence.

Gutted by Hill and Ratboy crashing, both were looking so good but, to be fair to Gee, he ended up with a decent margin given how much time his stumble on the stream gap must have cost him.

start a 2 minute song at the top of the run and see what happens

Surely your phone has a stopwatch on it? You’ll have to allow for a couple of seconds at each end to put it away and get it out but it’ll tell you whether the run is 2 mins or 4. If you really want to know, buy a moto timer, a swimming lap timer or botch a way of fixing a stop watch to your bars.

Sticking a piece of tape down then pulling it off is a standard paint adhesion test used on the offshore equipment that I work on. The tape used isn’t super sticky, and the paint is onto steel which is easier to paint and it’s still not an easy test to pass. What’s happened is frustrating, but not surprising, and as ever with Helitape, I can’t help wondering how it can keep your bike looking better when removing it once it’s beat up is likely to do this.

I’ve started lifting off the gas in my car around this type of junction because so many people misjudge your speed or simply don’t see you.

This +1 million, anything else is putting your life in someone else’s hands, someone who may not even know you are there never mind any other potential failings.

That speed was IMO well within ‘cruising’ speed for an experienced biker on a big Japanese sports tourer.

Along the parts of the road where there is no junctions, yes. Through a junction with cars approaching to turn across your path, absolutely disagree as above.
As folk have said, technically it’s the driver’s fault but I’ve had an accident in a fast car as a result of a similar mistaken assumption on my part to the one the rider made. Fortunately no harm done other than to the car. The other driver involved was in the wrong, in that he moved into my path, but the decision that lead to me being in a place where I couldn’t avoid him was mine. It was definitely poor judgement and failure to look ahead as to what might happen and I was lucky the the consequences weren’t worse.

That paper on why bikes aren’t seen written by that fighter pilot gives a great explanation probably relevant to this.

What an RAF pilot can teach us about being safe on the road

Sobering stuff in as much as I can well believe that the drier didn’t see him coming and it really re-enforces that you must try very hard never to put yourself in a situation on your bike where you are relying on a driver seeing you and reacting the right way to keep you safe. So many crashes are down to an assumption being made about what another driver will do or is doing that turns out to be wrong.

I’ve had a few sachets that were rotten but I think they just weren’t sealed properly. I now have a gentle squeeze of the box of sachets to puff some of the air from inside out and sniff it before taking the box. You’ll easily smell the ones that are dodgy. You look a bit mental in the supermarket but the rotten packets were rank enough that I’d be very happy not to open another one before breakfast time. It’s hard to imagine what could be going wrong with tins though.

Neither here nor there to your warranty concerns, but if it’s an aluminium frame it was always going to crack again. Repairing aluminium frames just doesn’t work, there is quite a bit of heat treatment done to new alu frames which can’t be re-done and any repairs don’t get that so they are always very prone to cracking.

I’d happily go until it’s too hot to touch, i.e more like 60-70 C, unless you’ll be using like that all the time in which case installing some cooling would be smart.

Everyone knows some dogs love chasing bikes. What you should have done is stopped and said hello to the dog and had a chat with the owner. Or seeing as it didn’t actually bite you and probably wouldn’t have, carry on and not given it much thought.

This

If the dog wanted to bite you it would have

And this. Something the size of a Collie can easily exceed 30mph for a few seconds so unless you are going very quickly on your bike the dog could have caught you and bitten you if it wanted, it was probably just playing chase and if you’d stopped, it would have too. Same reasoning as when you are training a young dog to recall you never run after it, it’ll think that’s great fun and run away. You attract the dog’s attention and run the other way, it’ll think that’s fun too and soon catch you up.
Best bet is to stop and hop off your bike.

That 1% sounds nonsense. Working on 260 days per year of paid employment, you would be earning 260% of a permanent staff member. Why would anybody agree to that ?

Because a: When you hire a contractor you aren’t just paying a person, you and paying a small company, which is then supplying a person. The fact that the company is one person is neither here nor there, they still need to pay corporation tax out of that 20% and then wages, expenses, pension etc. The contractor ends up better paid than perm staff but not by as much as it appears. And b: because the cost to the company of having that £50k person there is more like £100k, so the contractor doesn’t look that dear.
Plus, as above, no paid holidays, so you be working 230 days max usually.

2 part Epoxy (i.e Araldite) carefully and neatly prepared and done and left a good while to properly cure. Shouldn’t be any danger of catastrophic failure in that location.

I’d bet that it’s to do with the chain wearing and becoming more flexible sideways more than the ring wearing.

I think a big part of the problem is that on a Five the BB to rear axle distance gets longer as the suspension compresses, so the more weight you shift back over the rear wheel the more the contact patch runs backward away from you.

Rubber. Unlike everyone else with large hands (XXL glove size) I found ESI chunky grips gave me sore hands. ODI Ruffian or Race Face half Nelson for me.

Interestingly I find it easier on my 26″ wheel Specialized Enduro than on my Solaris. I can feel how far back the rear contact patch is on the Solaris and it makes it harder to get your weight up over it.

Another +1 for Times as the indestructible answer to your problem.

As mentioned above, a fall that extends the lanyard will be extremely unpleasant and you are very unlikely to want to continue after that. You could always carry your classic type cowtail arrangement on your harness as a back-up for emergencies.

Just to be sure the lower bearing sits below the spliced bit rather than inside it? As I couldn’t seem to push inside the spliced bit

Yup, below. It’s a very weird proprietary set up. See page 4 of: http://service.specialized.com/collateral/ownersguide/new/assets/pdf/FSR—2011-Enduro-FSR-Manual.pdf

Substantial improvement to the shifting for me, it was always slow shifting one way or the other with the standard cage, but the RAD cage sorted it.
Interesting that the 10spd SRAM mechs are already like this with the jockey offset from the pivot and they shift just fine with the expander sprocket.

Would you use Magic Mary front and rear? What compound?

I do, yes. Trailstar compound as that’s the only available option that’s a not got the heavier casing. It’s a good chunk bigger and more robust than the Baron. Some people would suggest though that compound is the most important thing on wet rocks and for that, the Conti black chilli is almost unrivalled, which would leave you with the option of the Trail Kings (were Rubber Queen) in 650b if you aren’t too fussed about proper soft conditions.

Without sounding like a petulant teenager , what’s so good about the Magic Mary?

It’s a similar proposition to the Baron but it’s available to fit your wheels?

Also, is that Katy Perry and Zooey Deschanel

Yup

More importantly, the Hopes are a lot beefier around the outer edges, look how thin the Vaults look in the areas where they’ll take rock strikes.

This is how I’m running them. I’d already removed the centre pins because pins in the middle of the platform almost always reduce grip but as is happens, yes, one packet of long pins carefully deployed does both pedals. I left the middle pin on the front edges as a normal short pin and that keeps the total number of long pins down to one packet. The result is spot on in my opinion.

Me, and yes. I’ve actually also left out the pins in the middle of the platform and on the outside edge, so I just use the ones on the leading and trailing edges of the pedals. With the hollow pins in those positions only you get a nice concave feeling and massive grip. The quality of the pedals seems superb so far, definitely a notch above anything else I’ve looked at. Bugtec would be another option to look at.

Try a bionicon guide; really quiet and a cheap option before investing in a new mech.

The chainline using that on an Orange Five will be quite something.

Doric is bloody difficult to understand

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=588356164589181&fref=nf
The raffle prizes 😀
“…twa neeps, and haulf a rubbit”

Except the OPs attempt is only a phonetic representation of the sound if you don’t have a scottish accent, we pronounce the W and H in why, the sound of “way” in Dorric is a lot closer to just “y”

I hope the Canyon one is a mock up, the hub isn’t in the middle of the rear wheel. That might just be a clever new way of getting shorter chainstays though…

I’ve dropped it further, which has improved the frankly ropey small bump performance without any obvious drawbacks.

From the Avalanche website, here:
http://www.avalanchedownhillracing.com/Rock%20Shox/Pike%20Charge%20Piston_Valve%20Upgrade%20Kit.htm

FAQ’S

The damper seems to have too much slow/low speed comression and feels a bit spikey on slow bumps?
There seems to be too much preload on the check valve plate on the rebound piston. We managed to make a sleeve to space out the check plate but there is not enough room with the wider stock piston. Still has too much preload and this is causing the low speed harshness, sort of like a midvalve with no float. We ended up installing our whole midvalve assembly with our piston.

unclipping should be something you don’t have to think about. It is getting clipped in while getting pinged about on rocks thats the problem.

This. I ride flats if I think I might want to dab. Not because I won’t be able to unclip and dab, I don’t remember when that was last a problem, but because it can be a bugger getting clipped back in if it’s fast and bumpy and standing on a clipless pedal unclipped is the worst of all pedal / shoe combinations even on platform clipless pedals.

I think they are mainly trying to avoid lawsuits from people crashing due to trying to adjust fiddly shocks on tricky trails rather than being worried about it breaking. Early dropper posts without remotes had the same warning for the same reason.

If the steerer is uncut, they’ve been supplied to a bike manufacturer but proved to be surplus for whatever reason and never fitted to a bike.

Dont use 40t expander sprockets, my 1×10 was perfect before, cant get it as good now. Still worth it though.

The One-up RAD cage will sort this if you are on Shimano.

Full length outers.

Somewhat disagree. Full length outers keeps it sweet for much, much longer but for truly spot on shifting, exposed cables where everything (particularly the cables) is brand-new is much lighter and crisper. There’s a good amount of friction in the extra enclosed cable even though it’s less than you get with manky cables. Regardless, for MTBs, full cable outer all the way.