The post slipped on the first couple of rides, which meant I had to tighten the clamp and insert the post dry. Could quite possibly be slightly undersized. And obviously made of cheese.

Eh? I was following a route from the White Peak book!

Pictures as requested

Newly purchased layback Thomson now awaits. Ah well, “Always look on the bright side of life…”

As mentioned previously, the best bike upgrade I ever made was a good pair of wheels with Stans Arch rims run tubeless with good compatible strong tyres. For the first time in my 20 odd years of riding mountain bikes I can run 30-35psi in my rear tyre without fear of flatting, and its like having an FS! Wish I had done this before buying an FS and selling my Soul, only to sell the FS a year later and buy another Soul. Ah well, we all live and learn!

As far as I’m concerned my name is the best for googling as far as the world of biking goes. I invented the best bearing system for hubs which has been copied the world over. Unfortunately I also died recently. Also unfortunately I cannot afford any of my own products with my name on.

I think all this riotin’ ‘n’ lootin’ needs a tried and tested approach as seen in that fantastic film Zulu (although the mention of that film and the circumstances may get some people excited for the wrong reasons) Several lines of officers firing rubber bullets, one line kneel take aim and fire, next line step forward, kneel, aim, fire and so on. If the “natives” use some ingenious attempts to block said rubber bullets then lets not be afaird of using some more conventional techniques of water cannon, which can be “ratcheted” up by electrifying it with 50,000 volts. When all is said and done, the UK (or London) is NOT a police state. What we have here is a bunch or people used to gorging themselves at the teats of the state, but never feeding the state. Now the state has less food to eat and the milk is drying up. So the underclasses are revolting (pun intended) and this won’t be the last time this happens. Nowt to do with the babylon or the po-po. Best arm up, ‘pocalypse is a comin.

What frame is that?

I have re-claimed my Soul, after a brief 14mth affair with an FS.

I’d agree with you on the bivvy article. I have read the previous ones not out of an interest to do a bivvy, but more for the experience they convey to me. I know what sleeping outside would be like for me, 2-3 hours of fitful sleep on rock hard ground waking with god knows how many insect bites. And then go mountain biking? I’d rather go home and get some decent sleep.

Working night shifts, so I’m glad it’s raining:)

Don’t sell your Soul. Keep the frame, maybe somewhere nice on view, if not keep it nicely wrapped up in the loft or something. Ride your FS for about a year and then see articles in mags where somebody raves about how fantastic a Soul is to ride, even compared to 6″ FS bikes. At least then you won’t have to either try and locate a decent s/hand one off interweb or face forking out nearly £500 for a new one. Thats what I did. Don’t do what I did. The grass isn’t greener, its just a different type of grass. Don’t sell your Soul….so to speak.

I know what I would have done, Crocodile Dundee knife and gut the thing in front of him. Then say “I never do that”

Firstly I repeat what everybody else says on here, bad luck, great warranty service by Bromley Bikes etc. But will you know if it was a crack through warranty or a rock strike? It seems amazing to me that we are being sold products advertised as “all mountain” that after a whack with a rock (which are numerous on mountains are they not?)they are FUBARED? Is it just me that thinks this is odd?

Retro83, I don’t think most folk would jump a red light whilst driving a mechanically propelled vehicle, as it leaves you more vulnerable for fines & points, and if you do mess it up, esp in a car, you have no room for manouvre, unlike a bike or even a motorbike. In Sheffield there are a couple of junctions where a left turn lane has been put in to allow a safe turn against traffic proceeding with a green light. This is only possible due to there being space at that particular junction. I would hazard a guess that 85% of other traffic light controlled junctions just don’t have the space to do that.

Many years ago when I commuted in Edinburgh I remember being at a set of lights waiting to turn right, when on the other side a cyclist (wearing jeans and T-shirt, no helmet) looks across at me, (wearing Lycra and a helmet)and obviously thinks “Lycra tosser, I’ll show him”. He sprints off into the city centre, I can’t remember the road name, but it afforded a long view of the road as it descended down for about 1/4 mile. Near the bottom of the hill was stationary and slow moving traffic, with a queue of cars waiting to turn right into a junction. This fella canes down the inside all the way, while I hung back, thinking to myself “thats a bit dangerous, anybody could…” A car flashed a right turner and the guy slammed into the rear passenger door window, his legs were hanging out of the window. Needless to say he was a bit dazed. I stopped and made him sit down while somebody called an ambulance. I managed to get his name and where he worked, so when the ambulance arrived and rode to his workplace, some high street sports shop and told his manager who couldn’t be bothered to be honest and that was that. Best policy with these kind of folk is to let them learn the hard way, no amount of “advice” is going to work, all it does is cause the person giving the advice aggravation. I also don’t think that it goes onto justify motorists to act aggressively towards us. One act of stupidity won’t galvanise a bunch of law abiding sheep to attack another road user. Those motorists who do are just w*nkers anyway, it’s up to us to “Stay Frosty” when we are out there.

My experience of divorce is one from the “kids” perspective. My Mum is on her 4th marriage at the mo, the first being to my Dad. Granted he is rather “laid back” and he endured a right load of crap when other husbands arrived and baulked at paying for stepkids, which meant he was subjected to “kids access for money” and all that. At the time I was brainwashed by my Mum and eventually my Dad just left it alone, didn’t see him properly for years. Then when I was about 20 he called me up and after a few pub visits together I asked him what all that was about when I was a kid. He just replied calmly that they were both too young and stupid and it was “just what your mother is like” Ironically I have now found myself to be on the “disagreeing” side of my mother, and I cannot believe what a manipulating lying cow she is. So much so that I can fully understand what my Dad meant about her, without him having to fully explain. So I have little to nowt to do with my Mum, and my Dad is enjoying being a Grandad to two grandsons who think the world of him. The old saying “What goes around comes around” applies I think.

As above recently blinged with Magura Louise carbon brakes, because its worth it for the colour of the levers and calipers alone! No seriously very powerful brakes.

I don’t think it’s as simple as there being no oil. I think the West/NATO probably hoped that they could set an example with Gaddafi hoping that any other potential “crackdowns” would think twice. Now Syria is kicking off I think the main players in Libya are firstly looking at the bank balance and secondly, like the US, don’t want to be seen to be getting involved with “Muslim” countries (as there is enough criticism and backlash from Iraq and Afghanistan). Already Gaddafi calls what is happening to him to be a “Crusade” by the West. Syria is clearly backed up by Iran, who is also backed up by Russia. With those odds, who wouldn’t be cautious? In a way it is the rhetoric that the extreme Islamists have come out with about the West and their interfering ways and so on that is probably now meaning that they meet their doom at the hands of their own people. But isn’t that always the way in the Middle East? Peoples Front of Judea anyone?

I had the exact problem with SLX calipers, got through a few pairs of pads as I was convinced I had contaminated them somehow. When the front brake started to lose power and squeal just like the back when all it had done was hang up in the garage, I realised the calipers were knacked. Swapped them with deore ones and the problem went away immediately. I have since upgraded to brakes that allow replacement caliper parts as the SLX brakes were 18mths old before they died.

Al, you sure live up to your user name :) True test will be when a different fork is fitted. I’ll let you know.

Andy, there is no picture to show, there is no obvious shearing apart or misaligned crown/dropout etc. It’s all in the sound of cracking and the caliper becoming out of line, which is probably only slight at that but enough to cause drag due to the tolerances mentioned earlier.
I’ll more than likely go for a Salsa Cromoto fork to replace the carbon one, just for peace of mind, I’m not sure of the weight difference, but I imagine the real difference will be in the ride.

Cynic-al, I know what you are thinking, that any lateral movement should be matched with the movement of the disc as it is bolted to the hub which is aligned through the dropout on the axle. But if one side twists and not the other, then as disc pad clearance is what 1-2mm at best? then the pads drag on the disc. It is not a loose caliper bolt as suggested by somebody else, I have to loosen the caliper to realign it and the re-tighten it. Then after further cracking sounds, the caliper is out of alignment again.

Okay, I have e-mailed On-one on Monday (granted it was a bank holiday) and am going to wait until tomorrow before I call them as my work allows. The forks are 16 months old, I am 6’3″ and weigh in at 16 stone (and before anyone says, my last health evaluation stated I was carrying 1/2 stone of excess). I would state that the bike has been used mainly to commute and on smoother trails where an FS is over biked.
In reply to Grahams post, I would only assume that as the aluminium crown and droputs are bonded to the carbon, that either the bond at the crown or the dropouts (or both?) has failed, causing the sideways flex and the disc alignment issue.
As Andyl stated, the internet is a fantastic resource of real life reviews that aren’t swayed by product persuasion. I’m not suggesting that On-one have ever done that, they have a fantastic company with great offerings and I will not hesitate to use them again. But if I could have read a similar account to mine of using carbon forks 16 months ago, it may have made me think twice. All I read was glowing reviews from people of a similar weight as me.
I have posted my experience purely for people to discuss and compare. I’m not bitching about stuff breaking, I’ve been breaking bike parts since my pre-pubescent years and I’m now getting scarily close to the big four-o.

Molgrips, I agree there is nothing wrong with carbon, but how come the more expensive carbon forks have a rider weight limit?

Cynic-al, as in after rocking the bike back and forth, then wheeling it away the front disc was catching against the pads. The calipers have not needed any further re-alignment for the best part of a year.
What kind of experiment could you possibly want to do with a broken carbon fork? No actually, don’t answer that.

Mrs Soulwood reckons the Prince Andrews girls are straight out of the Cinderella story, with Cinders marrying the prince.

Titanium (shreaks) I though they were supposed to be bomb proof. Glad I never dropped a whole ton of money on a Ti frame now. Ah well if it is dead at least it died doing what it liked doing best…

It think the answer to your question is in the title, Random. I have just used stans strips on my mtb and my 29er. Tyres on the Mtb are Spesh Purgatory 2 Bliss ready and they went on like a breeze, trackpump inflated without breaking a sweat, no sealant from the side walls. Now my 29er has a captain on the front which is 2 bliss ready. What a faff to get it to inflate, had to resort to CO2 canisters despite being able to (just about) inflate the rear, a fast trak lk (which was not marked as 2 bliss ready) with a trackpump. WTF?

I use my 29er for commuting duties as well as riding tamer trails, so when the mud came I tried Captains but found them to be draggy after running crossmarks all summer. There were also too big and not wanting a mud specific tyre I tried some Schwalbe cross tyres. Smart Sam in 35c, very slim but incredibly good in that kind of seemingly bottomless boggy mud that you usually slide about in and collect several pounds of weight in with normal 2″ tyres. And they were good for commuting. But I don’t take my niner in rocky places, my FS is for that.

“Not by smashing random shop windows and screaming at random public sector workers.

Do you actually know what you’re on about?”

Certain people conveniently forget that police are public sector workers too. They are facing pay freezes/cuts and increase in pensions payments for less for longer. Can they go on a mass smash and grab through London?

On a slightly different note, I think the protestors are all a bit daft actually. If you want to bring down a system everyone knows you do it quietly and from within. Not by smashing random shop windows and screaming at random public sector workers. ElfinSafety likes to brag about using reasonable force against what he deems as illegal detention by police, but unfortunately what is reasonable force can sometimes be in the eye of the beholder, i.e how that person perceives the threat etc. People like Elfin are purely opposite numbers to the police that he so thoroughly dislikes, and as such are equally distasteful.

“Full employment = stagnation”

War! What is it good for? = Full employment

But what encouragement exists to make people put the right things in the right bin? I have several council issued and self bought bins for all manner of rubbish. My general waste bin is nowhere near 1/4 full when it is emptied on a weekly basis. My neighbour on the other hand has an overflowing bin every week, despite being a welfare scrounger, with little to do all day and never having worked a full day in her life. Do I get a reduced Council Tax bill for this? Do I get a warm feeling of “doing the right thing” in my belly? I admit I used to but not anymore. I frequently find myself throwing recyclable stuff in the general bin now as I can’t be ar$ed.

Candodavid, I read recently somewhere in a mag, an interview with an Orange top bod. He was asked about dual chainsets affecting pivot location on FS, something I hadn’t thought about. He replied that his frames were optimised using the current 22/32/44 setup to minimise pedal bob when climbing and using the new dual chainsets would upset this. Might be worth looking into?

Ahsat, I bought mine without demo’ing it. Went off all the rave reviews on t’internet and it is the first FS I have owned (and maybe the only one) I wanted the equivalent in the FS world that the Cotic Soul was in the HT world (I couldn’t afford a Hemlock as I would have to splash on new forks) I suppose thats why I get on with the DT shock being firmer, recently coming from a HT and my other bike is rigid.

It was so good that my mtb’ing other half rode it and then bought herself one the following day! Unfortunately she then got pneumonia and is recovering while the frame and new forks are in the loft :-( But it will soon be built and we will be Mr & Mrs Nicolai!

A few folk say that they fit an RP23 shock and it improves the bike. The way I see it is that the frame with a shock at full RRP is 2K. Thats not a cheap FS frame, and being a German firm with slight OCD issues (hand sight and finish every frame) I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t spec a shock that diminished the ride. I’ve ragged my CC in the middle and big rings while out of the saddle with the shock open and I was pleasantly surprised to see that the shock hardly moves.
I think the main issues with FS is not so much the shock but pivot location and stiffness of the frame, something that all the Nicolai’s do well IMHO.

One very muddy CC, run in 100mm F&R. Ahsat, if you are interested in getting one you will not be disappointed. I rode HT for years, in fact my bike before the CC was a Cotic (hence my username) and that was/is a fantastic bike that reignited my passion for mtb’ing. But the CC is even better, there are times when I handle it like I did my Soul, and I am amazed that I am riding an FS, I really don’t notice the rear end moving, except that all the corners arrive a lot faster!
As for the TT length, I’m 6’2″ with a long back, and am now running a 90mm stem and mid rise 711mm bars. It feels great, and thats comparing the TT length to the long soul frame. For me this was a rare total eclipse of the sun moment. The CC was at a bargain price from the distributors and I was lined up to work 5 bank holidays in a row with double time. I spent the overtime before it arrived and I don’t regret the purchase one bit.