Gore cables were made by Jagwire, so their outer is probably worth looking at.

I have the Smart Lunar R2. I bought it after I did a bit of research into what the Time Trial boys were using when riding in bright sunlight on dual carriageways. It has a noticeable effect on driving behaviour – I’m given more room and drivers hang further back before they overtake.

There’s a 30mm section of the steerer (where the crown race becomes a friction fit) and this, if it’s quite long, may be extending too far up inside the headset where it will jam inside the headset cup. Compare it side by side with your suspension fork. If it is too long, there’s not much you can do unless you put some kind of spacer between the crown race and the crown.

I was on an open road sportive a couple of years ago and the bloke in front of me ignored give way signs and markings and just bimbled across a crossroads in front of a VW doing 30ish. There was a sickening crunch that I’ll never forget, the bloke folded over the bonnet, smashed his head into the windscreen and was launched clean across the road into a ditch, well beyond the junction. His carbon bike made it 30 yards further, over a hedge and into a field. I was the first to him and really, really didn’t want to be. He had some pretty nasty leg injuries but was conscious (helmets work!) so we kept him warm and looked after him until the ambulance arrived.

Half an hour later and one of the ambulance crew (who were stabilising him at the scene) came over to talk to me. I was sitting by the road, apparently looking a bit shocked. A nearby pub gave me free coffee until I was ready to get back on the bike. I dumped any idea of finishing the sportive and rode home, pulling into driveways if a car came by. I didn’t ride again for two months.

So, I hope the OP is OK as these things are pretty nasty to witness, and I hope for the best for the rider involved.

All my bikes run Elixirs, so I’ve had lots of practice. The pro bleed kit really helps, too. Elixirs are a bit harder to bleed than Shimano but not impossible – the key is to have no air anywhere in the system – reservoir or lines – whereas Shimano are happy with a bit of air in the reservoir.

Make sure the pistons are pushed all the way into the caliper before bleeding and insert a bleed block. It’s easier, especially with the rear brake, to bleed if the lever is raised up obove the caliper – easy to do if you have a workstand.

Fill a syringe very slowly from a fresh bottle of DOT5.1 as it froths and gets air in it if you haul on the syringe plunger. Attach this syringe to the caliper bleed point and an empty one to the lever end. Push a good amount of fluid slowly through the system. Remove the lever syringe and junk the old fluid, replacing with about an inch worth of new fluid. Refill the caliper syringe with fluid and reattach. Push a little fluid down from the lever end to push out any air from when you reattached the caliper syringe.

Now, push fluid up slowly from the caliper end towards the lever. Tap the hose as you do this and bubbles will be dislodged. When you get half way through the caliper syringe’s fluid, flip the bars so that the lever is highest, tap the hose, push a little fluid through and then flip the bars down so that the bleed point is uppermost. All the bubbles trapped in there should flow straight out.

After you’ve done this, you should be able to push fluid through from either end push fluid back and forth several times to check) and see no bubbles coming from caliper or lever. Never let a syringe empty, EVER, while you’re doing this.

Finally, remove the lower syringe with the bleed cap ready to screw in. Push a little on the upper syringe before replacing its cap to ensure fluid is coming out instead of air going in as you replace the bleed cap.

I always replace the pads and pump the brakes carefully to push the pads to just above a disc thickness before replacing the wheel. I think you’ll be impressed how good you can get them using this method.

And the flies are everywhere this year! I’m on an involuntary, high-protein diet just by riding a few km. I’m going to suggest that Strava do a Lord of the Flies award for the most eaten when riding a segment.

The Epic site has a hose cutter that does a very good job of getting a clean, square cut. You’ll need to cut the hose, insert a new spigot and olive and reconnect the hose. If you keep the hose upright while you work, you don’t usually need to bleed – just connect the hose , tighten the collar and check that you’ve got brake pressure.

I have a 50 litre one I got from Screwfix a few years ago. I imagined I’d use it to drive air tools but the inline oiler thing turned into a faff and you need to completely bypass the oil system and use different hoses to inflate tyres, so the air tools sit unused in a drawer. I’d say the air gun gets most use, blasting crud and water off parts.

I also have a standard tyre inflator head but I got fed up of using adapters on Presta valves so I cut the Schrader connector off and screwed a BBB track pump head onto the hose. It now fits Presta or Schrader valves and I can inflate tyres up to 80 psi.

Your digital gauge isn’t reading bar, is it? 2.7 bar is about 39 psi so are you seeing 2.7, not 27?

http://www.rczbikeshop.com/ sell them cheap (€13.99) but only have road rears (130mm) and 100mm fronts. It might be possible to swap the handle onto yours.

You need one of these[/url]. Wind it in behind the errant bearing race and tap it off with a hammer.

+2 for Hexus as I bought another for the road bike. I’ve used the chain tool and it works better than my mini Park chain breaker – more leverage. If only I hadn’t lost one of the 6mm hex adapters.

If it’s a like for like swap – a new lever of the same type to replace the old – then it should be doable. It depends how tightly the wrap is done around the lever. You might run into problems getting the brake cable to line up so that you can feed the inner through from the lever.

It’s simple enough to unwrap as far as just below the lever, secure the wrap with tape (so it doesn’t unwind further while you get the lever swapped), swap the lever, feed through your brake and gear inners then rewrap the tape. The tape will hold its previous shape as a good guide to wrapping it back up again.

Sold the X reg Vito last year and bought a 10 reg Berlingo XTR diesel

Vehicle Tax went down from £220 to £125
Insurance went down from £450 to £220 (and I didn’t have constant arguments with van insurers about not having a business)
Fuel consumption went down from 32mpg to 54mpg
I gained three seats, so don’t have to say “Sorry, only two seats” when going out with friends
I can still carry two or three bikes with wheels still attached or five without.
Ferry and tunnel costs are cheaper
I can park legally in council car parks

The only thing I’ve lost is a bit of security from having windows in the back.

Is it heel damage? If you’re riding flats (or SPDs with the cleats turned so that you ride toe-out), your heel can easily strike or rub there when standing on the pedals, left pedal forward.

My OH has one. I’ll check tonight for similar damage.

I lived in Menai Bridge for a year. Every day, I looked out of the kitchen window at the clouds forming on top of Snowdon. I had my Marin in the shed. It didn’t turn a wheel for that entire year.

🙁

Ooops – double post!

Start with the Cane Creek Headset Finder and either get one of their headsets or use the info to find a similar one from another manufacturer.

The Minoura Tru Base stand is very good, a lot cheaper than the Park stand and can be bought as a package with spoke key, setup tool and a wheel dishing tool.

Email their head office and, if they don’t react appropriately, head for Twitter. They will likely have GPS tracking, which will put the truck where you say it was, when the incident occurred.

Hannah Barnes (the road rider) for winning practically everything she’s entered, even when she’d fallen off on the last lap and split her chin open

TFT will send a courier to you to collect it. It’s probably cheaper and easier than posting it.

So the seals fail in low temperatures? I’m sure we’ve been here before.

Another good spoke calculator is http://leonard.io/edd/

I use both the DT Swiss and above link and compare results to make sure. If your rim or hub is in their database, always check their measurements against the real world item you have in your hand.

It’s a known problem and cannot be cured by batteries, licking, tightening, not washing the strap, etc. It’s a fault with the strap, not the electronics.

I bought this[/url] and it cured all the problems you describe with my Garmin softstrap HRM. You need to trim the rubber cups from around the two press-studs then the Garmin unit clips straight in.

The HR strap has worked perfectly ever since with no stupidly high readings at all. It seems to connect more reliably when you first fire up the Garmin before a ride, too.

It’s a beautiful county, sadly let down by some of the older, bigoted, tory and UKIP voting natives. But the 5 deep crowds in Farnham and Guildford this weekend show that the NIMBYs who are raising this petition are massively outnumbered by those who like to see cycling on their home streets.

Blimey, it tore the bearing out of the BB cup!!

Why just mountain rescue and not all charities?

Every charity, from big organisations like Cancer Research and RNLI down to your local care home, has to pay VAT on their purchases. To add insult to injury, if a UK charity pays for, say, a fence round a game reserve in Africa, they may still have to pay VAT, even though the materials and services were sourced in Africa.

Repeated attempts to get this situation changed have met with Treasury opposition, because it’s a good earner. They would argue that charities can claim back income tax paid by the donor as part of the Gift Aid scheme. I would argue that all charities should be VAT exempt and receive Gift Aid.

CRC?

You need to torque up the pinch bolts equally, meaning you do one, then the other, then back to the first, then the second again and so on. If you don’t, the first is effectively released by tightening the second, so you end up with one correctly torqued and one under torqued. Uneven torquing means that the crank wobbles on the tighter one as you pedal and knackers the splines.

Top tip: use the hooked end of a spare spoke to reach into the tube and pull the cable through.

Strava imitates life. There are pros, willy wavers who will go out on fresh legs to hammer up a climb and get a KOM, good riders, medium riders, slower riders and absolute beginners.

Aim for half way. If you get into the top third, happy days!

Building a new rim onto a current hub probably isn’t going to be cost effective. You’ll probably be charged £20+ for the rim, around £1 per spoke and £30 to build it. It’s going to be more cost effective to buy a pre-built wheel.

I don’t agree that £200 is too much to spend on wheels for a £600 bike. You can probably get a set of Mavic Aksiums for £220 and then you’ve got some nice wheels on your bike. When the groupset gets tired, swap that for a better one then save up for a better frame. Before long, you’ve got a good bike bought in instalments.

I have two carbon bottle cages on my carbon bike, that I often ride the 10 miles to work. I use one very lightweight cage to carry a normal plastic bottle with 3/4 litre (and this 750g) of fluid inside. I arrive at my destination hideously dehydrated, with the bottle still full, having time-trialled a bike that weighs nearly a kilo more than it needed to.

Then I have a drink from the bottle in a place where there’s a tap nearby.

I struggled to clip in with SPD-SLs and discovered that I ride a bit toe-out. When I was clipped in, the cleat was near the limit of float, that didn’t give me knee pain but meant that the cleat wasn’t aligned with the pedal when I tried to clip in. I rearranged the cleat for a bit of toe-out and can clip in much more easily.

I recall reading that it overshifts in both directions. Normal derailleurs can only do this going down from top to 1st as your cable pulls the chain slightly over the point of alignment with the gear, making it shift more efficiently. But going up to top gear is just releasing a spring against a stop – no overshift. Di2 is meant to do this in both directions.

We did the Canal du Midi a couple of years ago. It’s tarmac for the first few miles out of Toulouse then hard packed for much of the rest. You could easily do it on and cyclocross bike. There was one, weird, 100m long section of claggy mud but that was all.

These things?

I’m all for a bit of bodging. Perhaps I could find a suitable bit of metal and make a bush.

That’s them. The different discs are centres for different makes and year of derailleur.

If it’s a 2009 or earlier X9 mech, the top wheel has a bushing, not a bearing. You can buy BBB jockey wheels for X9 mechs, you pay a lot less than for SRAM originals and you get bearings on both wheels.

I wouldn’t use it on an MTB. The speed data you get from the GPS is rarely very bad under tree cover anyway and the chance of the unit getting clagged with mud or kicked into the wheel is so much greater than on a road bike. The sensor has to mount on a chainstay and the speed sensor is the arm that pokes out towards the wheel, very close to the spokes. You tend to have more float on mountain bike SPDs so it’s very easy to clout a heel on the sensor, push it into the wheel and rip the arm off.

The cadence data it will give you on an MTB is mostly useless as it will show peaks and troughs of pedalling and freewheeling.