The teeth are known to chip easily on the cheap copies. This then leads to little bits of metal floating around inside your hub and causing all sorts of damage. Not with the saving in my opinion. Either leave the genuine 18t in there or pony up for the genuine article. If it softens the blow the real things come with a little pot of ludicrously expensive grease – which again is highly recommended over just workshop grease if you want to keep things running in tip-top condition.

I have a rigid Norco on 4.8s set up tubeless that I still use as my winter bike. Lots of fun and riding fully rigid every now and definitely teaches me how to use my body to remain quick / not get beaten up by the trail. The huge tyres give help give near full-suspension levels of grips through regular chunder but when things get a bit rowdier it’s more of a case of holding on and trusting that the bulldozer-like handling will safely see you through.

I lose track of the “I bet that’s heavy” / “I bet those tyres are expensive” / “That looks slow” comments. Obviously I’m not riding it for bagging Strava KOMs.

A dropper post, or this moderately fun looking hardtail?

I get that one’s at the top end of dropper post technology, and that the other’s at the bottom end of what constitutes as a useable mountain bike, but £730 is a bit bonkers. IIRC the first Reverb droppers (back when if you wanted to drop your seat post you had to stop and loosen your seat collar) was only $300

I’ve been rolling some Sony WF1000 XM4s (the in ear ones) for a couple of years now and have been mega-impressed with the battery life. Can easily do a day of calls with them. YMMV however with regards whether you can tolerate earring in-ear earbuds for a whole day. Sony have jus released the XM5s (updated version) which apparently boast better battery life.

In addition to being great sounding headphones (clear, solid bass etc) the noise cancelling’s pretty good, and they have clever technology that picks up the vibrations through your jawbone when talking which means that in a busy office people only hear what I’m saying (and due to the NC, I can only hear the call that I’m on).

I picked up a Garmin Edge 200 from FB Marketplace for twenty quid a few months back. It’s pretty basic and to sync your rides up to Garmin Connect it needs to be connected to a laptop with a USB cable, but by the same measure it gives me all the data I need, GPS tracks my rides and allows to to do post-match analysis in Strava should I so wish. If you’re not looking to spend a lot I’d suggest an old Garmin would more than suffice.

Look into how much you’ll use the dryer function versus how much you aim to spend. Our 15+ y/o Bosch gave up the ghost late last year. For reference it’d survived four house moves, and let’s just say it had “put in a shift”. I had no qualms about buying into the brand again.

We ready to spend ££££££ on a top of the line heat pump equipped washer/dryer but when we looked into our usage and how much energy we’d save with a more efficient machine versus the higher purchase price it was going to take eleven years to break-even, and that was when energy prices were pretty horrendous. John Lewis had a tool for this but it doesn’t appear to be live any longer: https://www.johnlewis.com/electricals/energy-savings-by-youreko/c300000004212

In the end we went for a Bosch series 4 for > £600 and couldn’t be happier.

To balance out the argument I bought a pair of cheap TPU tubes from Amazon for the road bike  (purple ones – about £7.00 each, so similar to the price of a butyl tube) and they’ve been a god-damn revelation. After seeing feedback here about their fragility I took care fitting and pumping up. Since installation though they’ve held air as well as anyone could hope and the reduction in rolling resistance is night-and-day. It honestly feels like I’m cheating.

Both of my mountain bikes are still caked in 2023 dirt and haven’t turned a wheel since at least August when my son was born. I’ve been out on a handful of road / gravel rides but I’m missing the feeling of real (dry-ish) dirt under tyres.

Royal Racing’s ‘Storm’ jacket is rather good. Strong and stretchy without being too hot. Lots of zips and pockets. Giro make some good stuff too.

I bought from Fitwheels directly post Brexit. The price you pay includes UK duty and I can’t recommend them enough.

I must be the only one here who just fills it up from the tap when it’s getting near empty. Been using the same machine for 4 years now. Coffee tastes as good as the day I bought it. Clearly I’m not the connoisseur I thought I was.

I’ve a friend who used to work for a publisher, whose portfolio included cookbooks. Whenever they had a book launch the cooks (Oliver, Wallace, Stein etc) would all come in, say thank you for the hard work, generally smile and glad-hand.

She tells me they were all nice (Greg Wallace especially) but that James Martin was an utter **** (her words, not mine).

Looks to be MaxxTerra going by the description. Ordered, and secretly hoping it’s an OEM tyre with the white logo to match the DHF I’ve got up front.

If you have bolts already, have you considered applying Birchwood Casey Super Black (or Super Blue) ?

PSA – sorry about the inevitable ‘Murica Yeah!! content that you’ll discover when googling this stuff. Gun people love it, cos god forbid you get a scratch on your gun.

Peanut butter and Marmite.

Bibimbap on Greek St in Soho. They serve… Bibimbap. Seriously though. It’s good value for money and quite good.

And I was just saying to my wife the other day how Pulp are under-rated. Great band, great bassist. RIP.

If you go with just a pair of Rad8 glasses you might look a bit keen when off the bike. Whether that’s s good or a bad thing, only you can decide.

I bought some DT XM481s laced up to 350s with a 54t ratchet about a year ago from fitwheels.eu. They cost about what you’re looking to pay and fitwheels were superb to deal with (my frame’s got a funny dish on the back and they accommodated this in the build). They also did some sort of voodoo with the tax so that was paid before they were dispatched, meaning the price I paid included import duty.

Nothing to write home about, which is pretty much what I want from a set of wheels. They get the job done, have survived a few clumsy moments without going out of true, and go up tubeless with an old fashioned floor pump without any bother.

My (s/h) Rockshox fork came with the thread stripped for the cable guide. Tapped in an M3 thread and now use a bolt from a lock on grip. Much better.

Can I nominate star nuts. Such a crap solution to a problem. Many better alternatives to tension a headset yet we persist with them.

My now wife had hers and her housemate’s bikes nicked from their garden shed (they removed the door by unscrewing the hinges). Her housemate’s bike was found by the police some weeks later in the home of a local scrote, but my wife’s bike was never recovered. Insurance said to pick something from the Wheelies website, however the then-current model year offerings were nowhere near as nice as the bike she had pinched (…why do bike manufacturers think women want girly graphics and paint colours on their bikes?)

There’s really only one way of stopping thieves from nicking a nice bike if you park it in public. Don’t leave it parked in public. I have an old Kona that looks ratty as hell for shop and pub duties, and that get’s locked up with a Kryptonite D lock for the frame and a separate Kryptonite cable lock for the wheels.

Interesting that you frame it is “finally” moved over. I like cup and cone bearings. Easily serviced at home and if you keep on top of it, servicing is never more than a finger-full of grease.

For what it’s worth I can get a 29×2.5 DHF shod wheel into those storage bags from IKEA. I can also get a 26×4.80 fat bike wheel in them too.

Linky

The local trail crew put a load of work in over the autumn to sort out the issues with water logging on the blue trail. It’s much improved now.

As w00dster says, there nothing majorly technical on either of the waymarked trails, and due to the geography it can feel a bit climby. There’s enough going on to make for an interesting ride most of the time though. ‘Red’ and ‘Blue’ are just used to identify each of the trails, by the way, not their gradings.

Things seem to have calmed down with regards riding the (non-permissive) back-woods. Things went a bit crazy during Covid, and I can sort of see why the locals began showing distain given the volume of riders compared to normal, but since shops reopened, Britain have returned to their pastime of choice and the trails are much quieter as a result.

Best place to park is here (note – approach it from the north, not the south. Although that looks like a road on Google maps, you’ll not make it there from the south unless you’re an experienced driver in a lifted Landrover Discovery).

Have you bought the paint yet? We have Dulux Diamond Matte. It’s super-flat and seriously scrubbable. I’d recommend this over making your home-office look like a wipe-clean fun dungeon.

Outer diameter for BH59 and BH90 is the same. I’d dare say you could use the existing hoses (with new olives) on your old levers without any bother.

Yet another great example of “standards”.

For commuting I used to use one of these.

Union 34 Stripe Rucksack With Quick Release Seatpost Fixing – 30 Litres

Apart from having to get used to NOT swinging your leg over your saddle when mounting the bike, and the general change in feel with weight being so high up the bike, it was absolutely brilliant. If I went back to bike commuting I wouldn’t choose anything else.

Added bonus being that if you want to un-commuter your bike you can do so in about 10 seconds.

Moco damper? You would be correct. 155ml of 5wt oil.

Yeah, that’s taking the p*ss a little bit. Especially considering that all of the trail maintenance is performed by volunteers and that the only reason they introduced passes in the first place was to address the issue of liability in granting access to the public to ride on private land. It’s not like the Duke of Bedford is struggling to make ends meet with his net worth of £685 million (making him significantly richer than the Queen).

…but if you shortened the 110mm axle by 5mm each end, then obviously it won’t flex as much, I suppose they could have created a standard around 100mm axles that might have been stiffer.

Oh, wow! There seem to be some good deals on Charger dampers from Uncle Jeff then …which is handy since the basic Charger RC damper on my Revelation started playing up the other day, and I’m doubting a service will be cheap.

Can any experts out there advise on whether this damper will fit my 29” 2019 Revelations?

(Dirty Amazon link)

Rockshox’s Trail Head app, and the Charger upgrade manual suggests that his part (00.4020.169.003) will fit but I’m really aware that the description says it’s for a 27.5” fork.

Are the dampers wheel-size specific?

The brakes… I forgot to mention the brakes.

Ah, yes. The brakes. In addition to being terrible there’s little to no regenerative braking, which means if you’re going down even the slightest incline you’re constantly trimming the brakes to avoid gaining speed.

Another critic of the ID.3 here. I work for a company that’s involved with EV infrastructure and was given the keys to one for a few days (common practice where I work as it’s key for us to know what the market is doing). It’s an utterly hateful thing, and I was relieved to get back into my 18 year old Golf.

The whole thing felt cheap. It didn’t drive very nicely, it’s not quick (esp. compared to most EVs), and simple things like the heat/aircon controls and the cruise were diabolical, eclipsed only by the clusterf*ck that is the infotainment and nav.

Oh, and at 5’10” my head was nearly touching the headlining and when you put the sun visor down it obscured 3/5ths of the windscreen.

Shockingly bad car. Find something else (Hyundai, Kia, Peugeot…)

You’d probably just about get an FS 29er in the boot with the front wheel off and the passenger seat all the way forward.

New Superocean 3 available at Jura:

https://www.jurawatches.co.uk/search?q=SUPEROCEAN%20III%20%20AND%20-vendor:Archive%20AND%20-tag:Insurance&type=product

I like it.

I *really* want to like Breitling’s offerings, especially since they returned to in-house movements. They strike just the right balance between luxury and utility for me, but I really don’t gel with any of their designs. I guess there’s a reason people call them Bright Bling. The Superocean Heritage is almost right for me but I’m paranoid that I’d do a serious damage to the domed crystal.

In true STW I’ll give an answer to the question you didn’t ask. How about a trail bike (c. 130mm, so nothing too rowdy, but capable of tackling bigger stuff if you wanted it to), flip the road bike and replace with a gravel bike and a spare set of wheels for road use? Gives you two bikes that covers a very wide spectrum of riding.

Now answering your question, I’d go for the trail bike over an XC bike. More versatile.

The right decision in my opinion. Here’s my pseudo-scientific justification. The 8th fasted time in the 2020 mens 100m Breaststroke at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic was 6.19 seconds faster than the women’s Olympic gold.

In my case it was (and remains) the BB – basically if it’s not completely greased up on the threads, there’s just enough movement under load for it to move infinitesimally and squeak

PTFE tape will sort that for you. Make sure you wrap it on the right way on the reverse tread.

How did you get the extra 15% … or was it just applied unexpectedly and automatically?

Maybe it just liked me? Discount was applied at checkout.

Devils advocate here – no-one else is getting wage inflation anywhere near cost inflation so why should they be any different?

Devils advocate here. Wages have stagnated for decades whilst simultaneously the cost of living has increased, housing prices have continued to rise, large corporations openly boast about making obscene profits, and the wealth divide continues to widen.

But we’ve all just sat here accepted that cost-of-living pay rises are a thing of the past.

If we had more unions pushing for pay-rises that matched inflation we wouldn’t be in a situation whereby someone can work five days a week, be stuck in private rental with no hope of being able to save a deposit to buy a starter home, and still have to rely on food banks and school dinners to ensure their family’s fed.

Just to add to this – I spent about a month tracking down a creak. It wasn’t the bottom bracket (which I refitted several times), or the saddle, or the seat collar, or the cranks, or the chainring, or the rear mech, or the axle. It was a stem bolt.