It’s not like they are going to refuse to pay out for the car, simply that they are refusing to pay out for more than one car on that policy.
Anyway, the top and bottom of it is that the OP has agreed to the terms and whether it’s worth his while to pursue some other avenue to try and re-coup some of his losses is going to be dependent on the how much money is involved. It’s not dishonest it’s just not what you might hope would happen.
Car insurance isn’t fair, I’ve had to claim and been screwed over because the circumstances of the accident made it impossible to prove who’s fault it was.

But when you look at it from their point of view, not unreasonable, they’ve had, at most the value of the policy off you, at the least one month’s payment, and they are going to have to pay out the value of a car. Why would they then risk paying out even more during the rest of the year? Insurance companies tend to run at a loss on car insurance I believe.

Yea, I think it was a combination of wacky designs like the Super-V and Raven, and poor QA on stuff like the Prophet when they moved to Tiawan.

No, it was the older conventional diamond frame ones that all cracked. When you sold one, you could be quite sure that at some point you’d see it again with a crack in it. To be fair it wasn’t a major issue as Cannondale were very good about replacing them.
Most likely better these days, but even in those days it certainly wasn’t a case of it folding up under you, just that they fatigued in the end.

No bother, I’ve been there, it’s really difficult to visualise how a frame will sit in the completed bike until the forks and wheels are in and the Banshee frames have a very sloping top tube.

It’ll be a really nice bike, I’m quite jealous :-)

The air pressure pushes the tape into the holes, same happens with the yellow stan’s tape.

Ah, gotcha, Although I’ve got that set-up on four wheels at the moment, I’ve only ever had the tyres off tubeless set-ups on my old wheels which were UST rims and didn’t have tape.

ive recently had about 8k of stuff 3d printed.

very very underwhelmed!
Conversely, we’ve had a good few things 3D printed for scale prototype testing and been delighted with the cost, finish and durability of the parts.

How come you can see the spoke holes (i.e no tubeless tape) but there’s no sign of a tube? I guess something else has got ripped out, even with a tube in there you’d need a rim strip.

robinlaidlaw – even when I came off at speed and buggered my hip I still thought ‘oh I’m not going to land this square’ feeling before I landed.

It’s possible we ride differently :-)

Even if you KNOW you are going to go over the bars? That IS like slow-mo.

It is at low speed, but I learnt how not to do that and I haven’t had one of those in a long, long time. I’ve been ejected over the front at high speed from catching a hidden stump or hole hard enough that my arms couldn’t stop me and that happens too fast to think about too. Mostly I come off the low side on corners though and that’s pretty much an instant “Ouch, I’m on the ground” thing.

When I fall I tuck in. I dont hands-out as I know it can cause the dreaded collar-bone break.

You must be falling in slow-mo, I don’t remember ever having thinking time between realising I was coming off and hitting the deck.

To protect my palms when I come off. How often do I fall with a hand out? Most of the time, it’s an inbuilt human panic reflex like blinking to keep stuff out of your eyes or gripping when you fall, you can’t stop yourself doing it if you truly don’t see the crash coming.

metalheadmarsden – Fair enough, but from the numbers mindmap3 is giving and the way that frames like this are mass produced I’d put money on this being a measuring problem rather than you having a one off medium/large hybrid.

There’s no way you can realistically measure the effective top tube without building it up. How are you making sure that you are measuring horizontally? With a frame where the top tube slopes so much it’ll be very easy to measure too parallel to the top tube and you’ll get a much smaller length.

I’ve had to measure seat tubes/toptubes before and from my experience its from centre to centre of each hole (e.g. headset centre to seat tube centre).

This is only true for a frame with a horizontal top tube (i.e a traditional road bike). The measurement is taken on a built up bike, sitting on a flat surface, from the centre line of the top surface of the head tube, horizontally back to the centreline of the seat tube. The point you are measuring to will be a long way above the actual top of the seat tube.

Great unless you want to drive somewhere in the snow and ice.

Winter tyres aren’t a big expense if you’ve already bought a 30k car.

they don’t do the Touring in 4wd

In the Diesels they do, right up to 335d. 335d X-drive Touring would be lovely. They don’t do the 5-series in X-drive, which is a shame but see the above point for the fix.

the back roads in Scotland are narrow, with kids, cyclists, sheep, deer, tractors, walkers etc, on them.

Not everywhere, or even most places. There’s a lot of empty, well sighted roads out there.

could i get a works component adaptor to tweak the head angle at all… seems confusing from their site.

Yes you can.

Everyone was raving at the EWS about some new WTB tyre. Saw a lot of riders with them.

Vigilantes?

It takes a wee while at mincing speed but at least you can stop for breaks.

Well, mine had the painted rear end but basically, you are trying to make the shock eye-to-eye length 4 or 5mm shorter. Judging by the proportions of the rocker, that’ll move the seatstays bridge in by 1.5x that, so at least 6 or 7mm. If you don’t have that much clearance at full bottom out just now, it won’t work. Also have a look at the bottom link under the seat tube at full compression, there’s not much clearance there either.
I did run an angle set for a bit, which helps and always ran the sag on the rear a bit more than Turner suggest, typically 17-18mm on the shock shaft, which also helps. If you don’t have forks already longish forks, i.e 150 or 160mm travel will also work well to keep things a bit slacker and it doesn’t feel at all unbalanced with 160mm 36s on the front.

Or after the Bitch, but before the Wormhole, look for a crazily steep trail on your left.

If its dry hang on and have fun, if its wet hospital food is much better than it used to be!
Where does that drop out? I’ve seen it but never followed it as I’m usually tired at that point and didn’t fancy having to re-climb it if I couldn’t figure out where I was at the bottom.

I’ve got a set of Burgtec bushing that I bought for my 5Spot on the basis of those sort of recommendations. Fortunately, I actually let all the air out the shock and saw no clearance at all at the seatstay bridge before fitting them. It cannot possibly work as the wheel starts and finishes higher in the travel with the offset bushings, so if there is so little clearance just now it will definitely hit if you try to make it move another 5 or 6mm. Some of the frames may be a little different due to tolerances but there was no chance on mine.
I’d suggest that folk that are getting away with it are riding a ticking time bomb and a few really big hits will damage the frame pretty quickly.

I feel a bit daft buying it, seeing as I have no hair …

Precisely why we used to delight in sending one of our crew cut sporting mechanics round to the chemist for 10 cans of cheap and nasty hair spray when we ran short :D

Your last line is why not. There’d need to be a bit of clearance there, there’s not. The bottom link comes close to the frame too.

Hairspray and lock wire. Or just get some lock-on grips.

For a short cut take black to top of Britney Spears, climb to radio mast then follow shortcut path fire road down to spooky woods (un signposted sharp left off the fire road)

This is madness!! :D
I do the exact opposite for a short-cut, ride up the red climb but by-pass the turn off to Spooky woods and continue out onto Boundary Trail to do that, Shane McGowan, Leithen Door etc and on down Deliverence. Various options to short cut after that but that descent from just below the mast to the bottom of Deliverence is my favourite bit of Glentress.

It’s not for everybody but I think everyone tends to forget that we are a diverse bunch, with very different fitness levels and preferences, riding in very different locations, on extremely varied bikes. What works very well for some or many may be a total no-no for others. It doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea, just that it doesn’t suit you and your riding. There’s a good few folk on here for instance who seem to get on fine with single speed MTBs that’d be almost entirely useless to me, doesn’t mean it that it doesn’t suit them. Likewise, a lot of folk will insist that a 36t ring and 11-36 is the best option for 1×10 and all that you need. Not for me it’s not.

I tend to set rebound by riding off a decent sized kerb, seated and watching the suspension move. Start with it quite quick and slow the rebound down one click at a time until it just compresses then rebounds, without an over-shoot and dropping back. Usually the right setting is one click faster than that. It’s certainly a good starting point. I set the forks to be a fraction quicker by bouncing hard onto the pedals and seeing whether the bike rebounds front first or rear first or nice and flat.

It saves some weight, often makes the bike run quieter, cleans up the controls on the bar and helps to give the bike that satisfying feeling of using something that is exactly fit for job at hand with nothing extraneous.
If none of these things appeal to you, it’s not for you, I like it for all of these reasons. On the weight aspect, going from a 2×10 with a bash and chain device to 1×10 with no bash (no longer needed) and a much simpler chain device I saved a little over a pound off my bike, enough to be noticeable. If you don’t have a bash and device on your 2x or 3x set-up the weight saved will be a good bit less.

The problem is more likely to be the side-to-side position than the diameter as 30t rings are often offset in a bit. If it’s not, you’d probably be fine with a 32t one.

how does one re tighten a SRAM clutch mech please?

Pop off the wee round black plastic cover in the middle of the Clutch pivot (where it says “roller bearing clutch” or something similar) and tighten the huge Torx a little. (T55 I believe although you might get a smaller Torx or a 8mm hex to hold). If the arm feels like it sticks then suddenly releases when pushed forward you can undo the big Torx, which is a preload cap and either take apart and grease the innards or just drop some oil in and work it back and forth to draw the oil in.

ike it’s made of a really poor steel alloy. It has that sort of grainy look that I’ve seen before when cheap tools snap.

It may well be rubbish material but that grainy texture just means that it failed suddenly. Any metal part that has let go without warning will show that.

I suspect you are right and it’s the chainring.

Is it only when they are topped out or when they are down in the travel a bit? Only when topped out is normal and won’t be noticed when riding. Down in the travel and still moving is too slack.

I reckon you’ll melt it, +1 for the milton tablet, followed by rinse and store in the freezer.

Short top tube is the thing that makes the difference. My wife is 5’3″ and saddle height / standover isn’t the problem on most things, it’s the reach to the bars.

Yup, you can prize off the cover in the middle of the clutch pivot bit and tighten it, it’s a huge size Torx socket.
Also as mentioned above you might want to grease it all up first, in which case take the back of the cage off and use a hex key in the bolt that holds the cage to the mech body to work against the previously mentioned huge torx and you’ll be able to get the guts out. Be a wee bit careful as you go, the spring for the cage will release with a good ping as you go. Give it all a good clean and cover everything in grease then re-assemble, again being careful of the spring.

be grateful I’m on a Ti frame

Why?

If I were to get the shocked pushed, would that mean the lock out actually locked out, get less peddle bob and be able to climb easier / give out of sadle efforts?

That sounds like the sort of thing that’s more in the range of an ordinary service or mild amount of custom tuning. Having the shock Pushed usually means that a substantial amount of the internals are replaced with different spec parts, specifically things like replacing the main piston with one with larger ports and then adding shims in order to allow the shock to have both more low speed damping and better absorption of big hits.
Edit: If you are happy with the way your shock works when descending but feel it lacks when climbing you probably aren’t the target market for a Push tune which is more likely to emphasise descending performance.

I’ve never cleaned it off and never had any bother. I’d rinse the inside of the tyre out and give it a wipe with a rag if I was changing the sealant but otherwise I’d just give the beads a wipe and fit the tyre.

A new set of discs on the new wheels to match the size of the existing ones should make it all easy.

I choose a bike to be most fun for what I want to use it for. Accordingly I’d never buy something that prioritised climbing above all else as climbing is never much fun. It’s a balance, biased towards the parts of the ride that I enjoy most. That happens to be the bits I’m best at but it’s fun not performance that makes the decision.