This is mountain biking, any chance you bought the emperor’s new clothes?

Attack it with a stick, wearing only your pants and the wife’s lippy to a heavy metal soundtrack. Ideally loud enough to drown out the noise of a grown man screaming for help. If all goes well you will feel awesome, if not you could make a first responders day.

25mm slicks all year round for my Manchester road commute, I can only think of 3 days last year in the snow when I had to get the mtb out.

Well you are right on the cusp between small/ medium, so I guess it depends on your proportions really. If you got it from a shop did you not give it a test ride for sizing? On paper it should fit you, so I’m not sure it’s the shops fault, but I would have hoped either they or you would have thought ‘lets sling a leg over this?’. Since you are stuck with it, why not try a 400mm seatpost?

Used merlin and crc in the last week, great service from both, it’s an outrage!

I’m currently on duty in a deliberate self harm team, there is not really much point on me speculating on your friends situation, but I do hope all goes well. IME mental health support for long term/ chronic alcoholics can be pretty patchy, for a wide variety of reasons. Anyway, best finish me sarnie, saturday nights usuare usually pretty lively!

I believe there is a solution to all that unwanted rubbing, ride on fat bikers;

No knocking of orange here; it seems the the ideal road bike for an mtb’er already invested in the orange. I think some of the press gubbins from orange was quite open about their customers being happy to pay a premium for their product. I paid a silly amount of cash decking out my parlee, and is it worth it? to me yes, but to others it’s still just a push bike. As a bike, it doesn’t really do much for me, and objectively it does seem pricey compared to the competition. When you consider planet x are throwing some dura ace onto a carbon frame for just over £1500, you would have to be into orange.

I’m pretty obsessed with cycling, and take my hat off to to the niche crew as I admire the way some of you celebrate cycling; I don’t even have an issue if there is a bit of ‘look at me’ in it, why not? But these threads always collapse into the same names having some big group hug in response to a few less than sophisticated wind up merchants, it just makes you look a bit precious. I love seeing all the pictures of the bonkers, to my mind, contraptions some of you are riding, but I’m starting to avoid these threads due to the repetive bitching and the trying too hard responses. So from my purely selfish point of view, ignore the haterz and just keep posting pictures of mad bikes and your adventures, ta.

If you listen to all the tools on here banging on about how car drivers are trying to kill them; then surely this will just make us an easier target?

By being double super awesome gnarrrr, pulling off a sick rad no handed 12 foot drop, before breakfast?

BT – I wish you all the luck with your project; the pic was just a comment on this thread. As a somewhat disinterested observer I think you should back away from any debate with tj on this matter. It took precisely 2 posts from tj to return to the same crap as yesterday. Why not just ask who might help you and take discussion away from the forum and hope tj just backs away from the issue, even if he doesn’t it sounds like any future discussions will be had in the real world.

Not sure of the technical detail, but a mate had a similar issue with his and lbs told him it was a known fault so was fixed free of charge. I guess it depends on the age of bike etc, but might be worth talking to the shop where you got them.

http://www.bikeradar.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=16099296
http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/sun-ringle-freehub-probs-help-please

Google seems to throw up plenty similar. If you can’t get any joy with the retailer, I think it’s hotlines that are the distributer.

quote from shiggy;

Not a setup for everyone. I do not claim it to be.

Meh, he wouldn’t survive 10 minutes on here with a reasonable attitude like that…

WHAT A SODDING CORRUPT AGE WE ARE LIVING IN?

To be fair, it’s probably no more corrupt that at any other point in history, I can’t understand why people seem to think things were better at some unidentified time prior to now.

You want to go easy going tooled up to mess with ‘proper’ criminals, unless you are also a proper hard nut. Whilst criminals may be just ‘fencing’ some stolen goods and may not want to use violence (getting sent down is bad for business), they probably have their fingers in several ventures and the use of violence is probably higher up their options menu than other folk. I only ever met a couple of ordinary joe’s when I worked in forensic mental health, where they had a one off incident/ situation that had got out of control resulting in them residing at HMP. The ones I saw struggled to come to terms with the changes in their lives, and the down right brutal life that prison can be at times. Much as I applaud anyone taking proactive steps to recover a nicked bike, going with an offensive weapon is plain dumb, it’s just a bike ffs.

Would lend any of my bikes to anyone I know and trusted, on the basis of you bend you mend. If for any reason I didn’t think they wouldn’t look after it or sort any issues I wouldn’t. My brother took my pride and joy Parlee Z4 to the Dolomites this summer; he had a blast, I was happy I aided in him having fun, win win to me!

It seems odd that your body keeps telling you it wants food, then stores it as fat. I’m similar, in that I have to eat about every 4 hours, and this includes waking in the night to eat. But I couldn’t put weight on for love nor money; I have even tried augmenting my diet with body builder type weight gain products, but nothing, my body just burns what I throw at it, exercising or not. This is not a gloat, I would rather have some more meat on my bones. But back to my original comment, have you had a chat to your GP about it?

I was feeling a little cramped on my soul so replaced my in-line Thomson with a layback nukeproof, and I think it’s a piece of shite.  I have never had an issue with a seatpost before, they just hold my saddle in position it’s not usually that hard.  But the Nukeproof post slips down the frame, in one ride this removed all the height markings on about an inch of the post, and was pretty irritating.  Whilst this could be a frame issue it’s the third seatpost I’ve ran in the frame, and the two have been fine. To get the salsa qr to hold it up, you needed the strength of the hulk!  I’m now running it with a bolted seatclamp and carbon fitting paste and this seems to be working.  It’s not been that keen to hold saddle rails that tight either, with the saddle slipping back each ride.  This is now also done up with the strength of the hulk and some carbon fitting paste, and I’ll find out if this works tonight.  I also found I had to cut down the front clamp bolt as it was gouging away at the bottom of my saddle, I like my saddles to be flat, neither point up or down.  I have been genuinely surprised that a seatpost could be such a pain.

Should fit any shimano hub, I do remember some talk of how heavy they were, given they were built chunky. So if weight is an issue for you…etc, etc.

Great stuff mate, too many folk would have walked away.

I’m shaking like a shitting dog

And I fully intend to try and use this phrase more!

Given the last few winters haven’t been kind, I’ve just replaced my aldi winter jacket, which has got me through the daily commute for the last two years, with another aldi winter jacket. I have a lovely assos one for best, but for the rough and tumble of the commute, the aldi one is the best 16quid’s I have spent. I do chuck my cheap tuck away aldi waterproof over it when it’s really hammering it down.

I can’t get with the ‘they’re all out to kill us’ attitude. I can’t say I have noticed my daily commute through manchester has got any more dangerous in the last 10 years. I have seen plenty of drivers make bad decisions and mistakes, and I would be lying if I said hadn’t done the same on the bike. Similarly, some drivers act like dicks, and so do some cyclists. I quite enjoy a bit of banter with some drivers, and won’t shy away from a heated exchange. Some folk seem to think any stranger on or off a bike could be a dangerous nutter out to get them; I’m no tough guy, but I can’t see the point in choosing to live in fear of the world.

I can’t really see any reason to ditch carbon for steel; I have two race bikes one is carbon, but the other is an 04 alu principia. I did pick up a ti frame to replace the principia, but found the later more ‘snappy’ and just felt better for racing. I think a lot of folk overlook alu frames, but a well made one holds it’s own with decent carbon frames and is lighter than steel.

Waterproof shorts over lycra on the mtb in the worst of winter. Baggies over lycra on my road commute to work as i work with loads of totty, it’s purely a vanity thing. I did give them a choice by catwalking my athletic* figure around work in full lycra, and they chose baggies.

*some may say scrawny.

Fair due’s, ta.

Cheers Andyl, but my back is fine. I’m more worried about the post having the appropriate range of positions (?) to allow my saddle not to be trying to ‘enter’ me if I want it securely clamped.

Scruff – next time just ring your mate and see what he is planning to wear before you set off! 😉

You could always price it at the amount you want, and stick it in the classifieds.

Cannock……dangerous ahahaha……some parts of the trail are bumpy and should be closed….ahahahaha,…haha.

This has made my Sunday morning, the op and his mate are my new favourite idiots. Biking, hey, it’s not for everyone.

http://www.brightspoke.com/t/bike-stem-calculator.html

I have 4 road bikes for various functions; 2 are 55cm frames, 1 56cm and 1 54cm. As far as I’m concerned all fit like a glove; I’m a high mileage rider who also races so like to think if they didn’t fit I would notice. I have found that serious injuries etc can also change how you feel on a bike and you may need to change a few things on the bike to accomdate recovery. If a pro fitting session makes you feel better or you are a pro, go for it.

Then they get admitted to hospital with weight loss/ dehydration. Great isnt it!

No it’s not great, especially when you then see ward staff doing exactly the same.

I’m launching my own project RIDEUp; for 2 million euro’s I reckon I could reduce the number of fat mtb’ers by 37% over 3 years, and have change to fit stairlift access to a cafe. I would note these figures are entirely pulled from my ass, which seems good enough to call facts given the general standard of this debate.

Well done DS, keep up the good work!

I ride from quiet roads into the centre of manchester each day on my commute, about 14 miles each way on a road bike, 25mm tyres and drops. Each to their own, but I can’t see why I would want flat bars.

After the weather I’ve just ridden through to get to work, I can’t see Lance wanting to ‘mash up’ my commute….

Rode mine with a u-turn 100-130, but generally found I left it at 100.

I think supplements are fine if you are not believing they are a substitute for actually training. Quite a few guys I have road raced with this season have been trying beta alanine, with mixed but generally positive reported results. It’s odd but their use of it doesn’t appear to have effected my performence against them despite them reporting how ‘strong’ they felt. But it does seem oddly contagious; I tend to start the season slowly, and wondered if loading on the stuff in the last 6 weeks of my winter training may help my start next year?!?!!