Remove rotor, clean it with brake cleaner,

Automotive brake cleaner isn’t good on bike brakes, it leaves little residue which burns off on car brakes but not on bikes. Meths is better on bike brakes or just a really good scrub with fairy liquid and wire wool then a good rinse.

I have tried resetting the caliper position on the mount (spinning wheel, braking, then tightening the bolts/screw). But this doesn’t really help.

Getting the caliper aligned needs a lot more care than that, despite what Avid may claim. You’ll need to align it carefully by eye until the gap to the pads either side of the disc is even when the brake is off and ensure that the disc is running straight and not catching the pads. Once you have it like that and spot on you can maybe rule that out.
Other things to check are that the disc is on the right way round (look for the rotation direction arrows) and that the disc / pads aren’t contaminated with something (did the brake work o.k previously? Did you make completely sure that you didn’t get any brake fluid on the disc or pads during bleeding?)
Are the bolts holding the adapter to the frame and caliper to the adapter tight? Is the wheel QR or axle in tight? Are the screws holding the disc tight?
If it’s never been right you could try new pads and cleaning the disc, or possibly as a least shot, as different design or size of disc.

As above, yes, it pauses if you stop as far as the overall average and ride time are concerned but for segments it’s total elapsed time in the segment.

I run a set of 650b Pikes on a 2011 Enduro with 26″ wheels for much the same reason. It works just fine and as mentioned above, gives plenty of mud clearance. There really isn’t much difference, the 26″ wheel doesn’t look weird in the 650b fork.

all you are going to do is put massive stress on the bolt (or snap it).

I didn’t say to go mental, just take it past “nipped” to “tight” for that bolt size, it’s pretty easy to feel by hand.

I rode 3/4 of Penmachno with no top cap, after the stem is tightened properly it’s only purpose is decoration.

All that proves is that on your bike you don’t need to tighten it every 3/4 of a ride without the top cap in place, try leaving it off for a year and if it still doesn’t come loose then perhaps you can claim that it’s not required, at least on your bike.
I’m not just guessing, I’ve tried this both ways on a BMX and you honestly do need the cap if the bike is being ridden hard.

plastic top caps – no way will that exert any clamping force.

More than you’d think, but regardless, the fact they were supplied that way doesn’t mean that it worked well.

But I always just undo it and re tighten so it’s only nipped up.

I’d recommend the opposite, gentle nip to preload, clamp the stem, then tighten the preload bolt up a bit more to stop it working loose.

Whilst the top cap shouldn’t do anything at all once the stem is tightened, in reality it does.

This is absolutely true and I doubt that anyone who claims the top cap is not needed has tried riding hard with it removed over a period of time. The stem does get worked a little on the stem by impacts and vibration and without something to stop it being able to move up the steerer freely, it will. This is the same thing that makes thread lock necessary despite the fact that when considered the same way as people are considering stem clamps, nuts and bolts shouldn’t come loose if they are done up properly. It’s worth nipping up the top cap a little more once the stem is clamped for exactly this reason.
Other things to check OP, how much steerer is clamped in the stem? It clamps best when the steerer actually comes right out the top of the stem and you use a spacer on top to allow the top cap to work. Conversely if there is a big gap from the top of the steerer to the top of the stem it will tend to work loose easier.
How good a fit is the stem on the steerer? If you slacken the bolts right off is it a nice tight fit on the steerer or is there play? The better it fits before clamping up, the better it’ll clamp and hold, some stems aren’t very well machined and never hold well.
Is it a standard type stem clamp or one of the hidden wedge type ones? The wedge type ones never clamp right.

I’d suggest that if you have a mid cage mech, the extra £25 for a new cage that fixes the shifting is worth it, I’m happy with my top gear as is and no longer see any need to think about SRAM 1×11 until everything wears out and dies.

The new One-up mech cage fixes it, as does running an SRAM mech which already has same offset jockey wheel set-up as the One-up cage. Otherwise, yes, the shifting is poor on a Shimano system.

Edit: to clarify, I’ve got one on both my bikes, a 40t Hope on the hardtail with a Shimano transmission and a 42t wolf tooth on the big bike with an SRAM transmission. The SRAM set-up always worked spot on, indistinguishable shifting from a standard set-up, the Shimano set was very lazy shifting until I fitted one of the One-up cages to the mech, and the shifting is now spot on again.

45.4mpg….
Interesting, but pretty dire mpg for a diesel….
In the real world, I think that is pretty usual.

I would say thats pretty good to be honest. A lot of diesel cars are a decent size and won’t necessarily return 50s mpg figures unless they are being driven gently on a long trip. I’d go so far as to suggest that the majority of diesel cars on the road never make it over 45 mpg average as they are mostly driven in town but most owners don’t actually measure what they are getting, they just assume they are getting what the manufacturer claims.

Do you need the b-tension screw as far in as that? As the mech body swings down away from the cassette, that arm will swing up toward it. If you can slacken the b-tension and get clean shifts you might be able to find the sweet spot.
The Rad cage will help though as it allows less b-tension, or just file a touch off the corner of that arm.

My question to the garage is going to be how close can we get to £6K Assuming it has tax and MOT for at least 6 months I think the right price is between £6k and £6.5k

Sounds about right.

No unusual noises from the suspension, could do with driving along a road with speed bumps to confirm.

It’d mainly be over smaller bumps you’d notice, rough, uneven road surface, mini pot holes, badly patched roads, that kind of thing. If you had some of that on the test drive and it didn’t clatter like you were carrying a barrel of typewriters, you should be fine.

doubt you’ll see 30mpg, even on a journey

There’s no chance unless you do long trips at a steady 50. Expect an overall of 22 if you drive in town at all, or maybe 25 if you mainly do longer trips.

That vintage Legacy is quite small in the back, as well, Octavia is more practical.

Yeah, there’s not a huge amount of space in the rear seats, better than a 3 series, not as good as a 5. It’s pretty easy to check if it’s acceptable for you and unless you are regularly transporting 6ft blokes in the back for long trips it should be fine. The boot is big though and the seats fold flat quite easily.

Never sure why people worry about the extra tax, it’s only a few quid a week, neither here nor there in the scheme of things.

Indeed, there is zero chance of predicting the total ownership costs of any car to within £200 either way over a year, why worry. The Legacy is less likely to throw a surprise £200 bill too.

Most likely the secretaries and junior staff only own one car.
The directors probably have garages stuffed full of proper exotica for the weekend.

Depends on the company, at ours (total of 14 staff) the nicest car “belongs” to the part time admin, it’s a new Golf R, leased at a monthly rate the MD would never consider. He drives a diesel Astra, also leased but at half the cost.

The Spec B will be so much more fun and the reliability will go a long way to balance the fuel costs. One possible cost – new shocks, if they need done, are very dear as they are very high spec inverted struts. Was the suspension all silent on your test drive? Is there enough history to see if the shocks have been changed? Otherwise there should be no problems.
£7k for a 95k miles ’07 plate seems a bit steep, I’ve been watching them recently and they are going for less than that (admittedly an ’06 but it is the face lifted model):
http://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/201402181894814/sort/default/usedcars/radius/1500/postcode/ab157yz/keywords/spec%20b/onesearchad/used%2Cnearlynew%2Cnew/make/subaru/page/1/engine-size-cars/3l_to_3-9l/model/legacy?logcode=p

That’s good to know! I’m having an operation on my bunion next month and won’t be able to drive for two months unless it’s an auto.

Legacy 3.0 auto will do fine then. Much quicker than the official figures suggest, i.e my Outback 3.0 easily produced a 6.2 second run to 60 simply by standing on the throttle and letting the auto do it’s thing. The official number says 8.4. It’s a super smooth motor and sounds lovely. The Legacy is quite nice car and although it’s not a BMW or Audi, it’s very nice inside for a Subaru and well equipped.

The 2.0 is a stronger engine, on the 2.5 the head gasket(s) is (are) a little thin between the cylinders and they eventually start to leak. I don’t think it’s a massive deal to fix it but the 2.0s don’t do it. FWIW, neither does the 3.0 flat 6 in the Legacy / Outback, which is a superb engine (apart from the fuel consumption obviously).
The stories of big ends going are from bad oil change practise which they seem sensitive to and bad tuning / imports that weren’t remapped for uk fuel. The older classic imports don’t have a very sophisticated ECU and are mapped for 100 octane Japanese fuel. Without a remap they can’t pull the timing back far enough for uk fuel and they eventually suffer severe enough detonation to kill them.
If you make sure the car you are getting is either a uk car or well mapped and are a little careful with the oil changes (turn it over on the starter until the oil pressure light goes out with the crank position sensor unplugged so it doesn’t fire up), you’ll be fine.
They aren’t hard to work on yourself and there is a huge amount of info available on how to do it on forums like Scoobynet which is huge and very busy.

Reliable? I had an exhaust joint, air/fuel sensor/boot/driveshaft/window regulator/throttle body fail.

Sounds like pretty poor luck to me. I ran tuned Imprezas for a total of over 100,000 miles, both sold at around 130,000 and had one exhaust up pipe fail. That’s it. Some other consumables like brake pads and so on. Much better on tyres than most things that quick too. The Forester ran for 3 or 4 years with no maintenance at all other than a little oil added and a pair of new rear shocks.

Why not a Impreza R sportswagon? 160bhp without the ancillaries.

Because it’s not particularly more economical than the turbo but it is short about 100bhp (nobody runs a standard Impreza turbo), a whole heap of lovely elastic mid-range grunt and a great noise.
I’ve owned two classic shape Impreza wagons, my wife had a Forester and I’ve now got a 3.0 Outback. All very reliable and eminently liveable with. The only downsides are expensive parts of which you won’t need many and the fuel consumption.
IMHO given that N/A Imprezas are hardly any cheaper to buy or run it just doesn’t make sense not to buy the turbo ones.

I think they just use the trebuchet to load the vans

Sounds about right.

Yodels head office is in Trebuchet Lane

I’d rather have my purchases fired towards my house by a trebuchet than entrusted to Yodel.

It’s pushing the limits with a medium cage on a bike with any significant chain growth so there’s no way you’ll get a short cage to work, sorry.

Unless you are racing I’d always pick the largest total range over smaller steps, it’ll keep you moving comfortably more of the time.

…but I just wanted to add for reference that a 26er rim with a large volume tyre will be comparable.

For non 27er reasons, I’ve just stuck some 2.4s on my 26er and the rolling circumference is very close to a 27er rim with 2.1(ish) tyres.
😀
Straight in with that old one on the first reply. That’s just rubbish. In terms of the ride qualities, the differences between a 2.4″ tyre and a 2.1″ tyre will far outweigh the difference between the wheel sizes. And why even compare the two things, if you’d want to run 2.4s on 26″ why would you run 2.1s on 27.5?
I’ve no experience of it on that bike, but there’s no reason that the head angle will need adjusted, it’ll be lifted the same amount at both ends.

I’ll chip in with an opinion based on no knowledge of what your application is – Magic Mary. 🙂

It’s all about the chain tension. If it doesn’t have a tiny bit of slack at all positions the bearing’s won’t last long. It’s tempting to try and get the chain tight on single speeds but it’ll kill the bearings.

also i read that some headset brands suggest NOT running any spacers ABOVE the stem also, hopefully thats the FSA way so it ‘could’ be the clicking noise

No, that wouldn’t be headset brand specific, they all work the same way, there’s nothing magic going on with particular brands.
I’m going to break with the traditional advice on here and suggest you do a couple of things:
As you already suggested, drop the forks and grease every part where something touches something else, including the top and bottom faces of the spacers and stem and re-assemble. Snug the pre-load bolt up using a hex key holding the short end or using a multi tool straightened out like a screwdriver (don’t haul on it with the long end of a hex key) then check how freely the headset rotates by moving the bars with the wheel off the ground, if it’s still totally free, give it a touch more preload and repeat until you start to find the point where either there is noticeable drag as the headset moves or the bolt actually feels like it’s clamping something tight. If you start to feel a little drag as the headset moves, back it off slack and tighten back up, feeling for the point just before that. Once you’ve got the headset snugged up, clamp the stem and then put another nip on the preload bolt. Lots of folk will tell you this is pointless and the top cap doesn’t do anything once the stem is tight and in a static sense that’s true, it’s not carrying the loads through the headset. What it does do though is act like the nylon in a self locking nut, meaning that as the stem gets loaded up on the steerer under the extremes of riding loads having the top cap there and tightened down a little more will prevent it slowly working up the steerer. This does work, it’s pretty hard to keep the stem tight on a BMX without a combination of the steerer passing right out the top of the stem with spacers above and re-tightening the top cap as a final step.
Your headset will not make noises, come loose or wear prematurely if you do this and I’d argue that with todays integrated headsets with drop in replaceable bearings, going a little on the tight side and causing the bearings to wear slightly quicker is hugely preferable to going a little slack and having a bearing or cup moving and fretting the seat in the headtube.
If it still makes a noise once you’ve set it like that, it’s something else.

Mount it underneath on the opposite side.

This

There is no need to ever turn your bike upside down

And this 😀

am i missing something? if that gap of 3-5mm isnt present how can i possibly create the right preload?

Yup, you are missing something by thinking that the size of thae gap is important. It can be a 3mm gap, a 20mm gap, whatever, it never closes up fully, the preload is simply how tight you make the bolt. The gap really only closes up as the parts of the assembly settle into place, 3mm is specified as an amount that makes it unlikely you’ll fully close the gap while also leaving the top of the steerer near the top of the stem for clamping strength.
Imagine the stem as a headset spacer with a handlebar clamp on, it doesn’t matter where in the stack it is.

spacers above the stem are fine and serve the same purpose as them being below.

This, preloading the headset is nothing to do with a 3mm gap and everything to do with how tight you make the preload screw, there just needs to be enough space that the preload cap doesn’t bottom out on the the steerer, while also having steerer tube inside an sufficient length of the stem clamp. I usually deliberately cut the steerer so that with my expected amount of spacers it’s flush or slightly above the stem, then just run a spacer on top to allow it to be preloaded. It’s a nicer set-up in terms of the stresses in the steerer and it makes it less likely that the stem will slacken off.

About spring settings. Do you set the spring stiffer than a typical trail setup?
Yes, most racers run a stiffer spring setup with only 10 to 15-percent sag

Well, my apologies. I’m surprised, but now educated.

Severe arm pump with numb little fingers!

As above, I’d bet on that being due to the set-up of the controls rather than the fit of the bike.

Does this not mean that the bike is riding a lot higher than it’s designed to be, which is at odds with the popularity of lower bottom brackets for better handling?

Indeed, that sounds like a pretty amateur attempt to get a firmer ride. Better tuning of the damping would give him more what he wants I’d think. Certainly, watching the top guys riding their DH bikes the ride height looks normal so this can’t be a standard set-up.

I’d be put off 5 series size cars by the handling. Having driven an A6 avant for the day, it felt like a barge compared to our Scirocco.

Have you had a shot in a 5 Series rather than an A6? You might be surprised. My older 5 Series had an amazing ability to feel stable at a cruise while still being amazingly fun and agile on twisty roads when required. Coming from Imprezas and an old VW Corrado for reference as knowing what a decent twisty road car handles like.

put taxes up sharply and a number of north sea oil projects where cancelled as they where not financially viable.

Yup, there seems to be a lot of people talking about taxation of industry like it is punitive for making lots of profit. Surely the point is to maximise the total amount of money raised. So if the level of taxation is making new developments uneconomical, then lower taxation may be the answer and the government and the rest of the country in general receives a smaller piece of a larger pie.
And if anyone is arguing for higher taxation to try and drive the use of oil down you need to look a little more carefully into the availability and cost of alternatives.

There is a lot of fantastic riding all around you out there, you are going to be very happy as you start exploring.

Here’s a start:
http://www.ecurieneep.co.uk/routes1.asp

Probably wouldnt expect to see much more than 35mpg average

This is also true. My ’03 530d got 36mg over my ownership. I was happy enough with that for a car that size and performance but don’t expect 50mpg+ from these kind of large premium diesels with big engines. They are very nice and a lot more economical than a petrol of equivalent performance but you are still talking mpg in the 30s usually.

Or just miss some holes on the hub and use a 32 hole rim, works fine.

raceface half nelson

Excellent grips but very slim. Suit my XXL glove size hands well but I do prefer slim grips.

5 series (E60/61 not E39) will be a bit cheaper to run and nicer to drive plus won’t have the huge rust issue that the pre 2006 E classes do. Those, and the older E39 5s ALL rust in the end and the older E classes rust absolutely all over.
Smaller boot on the BMW than the Merc if you are looking as estates, similar in the saloons.

Well, perhaps it’s more that if someone asks for advice on an internet forum, that person has most likely already tried to figure it out themselves and doesn’t feel they are getting anywhere, and probably doesn’t have regular riding mates who are good at that skill to learn from or they would most likely be doing that, not asking strangers on the internet, so the options are:
1 – Everyone gives them conflicting advice, some of it wrong, some of it right, some of it reflecting what that person thinks they do, not what they actually do, most of it hard to understand and all of it without having seen them ride.
2 – Suggest that they might get on best by going to see someone with a proven track record of watching people ride and knowing what the tell them to help them ride better.
Given that, the second doesn’t seem daft advice. It doesn’t mean that if that rider asked these same people for advice in real life they’d all send them for coaching rather than trying to help a bit.

Just looked this up and my 2009 orange blood has the same geometry.

I’m going to suggest that they don’t ride anything like the same though, demonstrating that the numbers are very far from the whole picture.

‘m riding a german bike (aluminium)with a 10 year transferable warranty that weighs the same as a carbon Nomad.

Liteville? Is it as stiff as a Carbon Santacruz? Not so much at the 160mm travel setting if I’ve heard right.
As for the geometry not bring so long in the front centre, maybe they reckon they have what they need for the market they are aiming for. Maybe that market is you, maybe it’s not.