high roller 2 2.3 32PSIish front and rear.. a little bit higher than my normal 30 to try and ward off any risk of punctures.. i ran them with Schwalbe tubes.

3c front. normal rear.

no problems at all.

i did apallingly..!

lower back gave up on climb 2.. foot gave up on climb 3.. 8O

and trudged round like a snail and got passed by the worlds population (including the awesome nicolai tandem!) on every climb..!

i heard a few people talking about the cut off time..

I don’t think it meant 5:15 hours.. i think it meant 5:15PM? given that in the description it said ‘you can expect to spend about 5 hours riding’ or something like that?

and the prizes etc where supposed to be given out at 5:30?

despite it nearly killing me im already thinking about entering again next year… and hopefully my mate wont dislocate his shoulder just before the event next time and ill have someone to ride/suffer with!

id like to see her do well..

but shes said shes ridden 16 times in the last ten years..!!

I dont think she has a chance to be honest.. things have moved on quite a bit..

Palmer did comeback a few years ago.. I think he did 2 world cups? and struggled.. im pretty sure he didnt qualify for the main event in at least one of them if not both..

had issues with email too.. i was using a hotmail account which could have caused the problem somewhere..?

switched to my work email… which uses gmail and the lines of communication opened!

top quality work on the custom tune on my fox shock too.. :)

yup.. id save yourself the bother too and get them done at your local powder coaters..

it is possible to get a good finish at home..

but a powder coat will be much tougher and will be cheaper once youve bought

the paint stripper.. the primer.. the paint.. the laquer.. the wet n dry.. the rubbing compound..

and not forgetting waiting for the paint to properly harden afterwards..

i was in a similar boat with no home insurance cover..

none of the normal travel insurance companies i found would cover my bike over more than a couple of hundred quid as a normal piece of luggage… and most of the ‘extreme sports’ type cover doesnt cover equipment either.. i phoned round and asked loads of places..

the options i found where either..

a year long cycle specific insurance policy with cover abroad.. which is quite expensive!
Or
use snowcard and whack the equipment cover right up..

as i was travelling to New zealand for about a month or so..
the snowcard was mega expensive to cover the bike for the whole trip..

so i got two seperate periods of cover that insured me and the bike around the times of the flights..

and then a general insurance policy with a normal travel insurance company and extreme sports cover in the middle of the trip that just covered me.

yup i’ve been getting that too for a while on my android phone..

Airbone Micro Pump. (get them on ebay)

teeny little thing (fits in my little sadle bag..) thats really well made..

takes a while to pump up big tires but gets there eventually and is an ideal backup for CO2…

heres mine..

2005… (blimey its ten years old!)

the recently powder coated stealthbred.

i updated my teamname on the website after getting the email.. (and checked it!)

checked the start list.. and im an hour later than everyone else in the team.. and my teamname has vanished..!

someone else in our ‘team’ has no teamname in the start times list and has been given the same start time as everyone else in it..

most odd!

on the flipside..

ive been on one of these in the past too..

instructor asked the same question.. i kept quiet to see what people would say..

There was then a lot of anti-cyclist chatter and some of the other atendees seemed fairly angered by cyclists… the instructor glossed over most of it and very little of the positiveness seen in the course above occured.. im guessing because there where no identified ‘cyclists’

It was still a good course overall though and i think the vast majority of other road users whether they speed or not would benefit from going on one.

oh i like the look of that!

looked into 3 speed hubs and found the same issues with sealing
myself before i went 1 X 9 on my singlespeed…

i dont even think id need three gears really.. just my normal singlespeed gear ratio and then an easier climbing gear.. so that double speed idea sounds like a plan molgrips.. ;)

very interested to see how well it holds up..

no..

removing the air can doesn’t De-pressurise a shock fully..

there is still the nitrogen behind the IFP at lots (3-400) of PSI..

its the same with a coil shock in theory.. they’re also pressurised behind the IFP..

I think basically.. in the unlikely event that it gets inspected by RM..

and isnt in original sealed retail packaging.. your average overworked underpaid royal mail employee wont know what the heck it is.. and will spend nano seconds looking at it before deciding not to risk their job with it and will classify it as dangerous..

Just sent my shock to Loco with MyHermes via parcel2go.com

posted on friday.. arrived with Loco to work his magic on monday.. 8)

My Hardtail frame also needs a spacer / washer between the frames mech hanger and 10 speed XT mech itself.

It just spaces it out a little so it drops into the 11t cog properly.

i think its due to the mech hanger being a bit thinner than normal in my case.

Saddlebag user here too..

dodgy shoulder means a backpack causes me problems if i use one all the time..

I have a Deuter XS.. no tube.. I just use the park patches on local rides

for longer further afield rides i generally have to use a backpack to carry other stuff.. and just chuck a lightweight tube in there.

Long time dirt subscriber and lover here too.. but didn’t renew last Xmas as I wanted to wait until the gloves offer swapped to a t-shirt..

It never happened…

Got my copy from whsmiths a couple of days ago.. Other than the.. I’ve got the last copy..

the actual content in the mag is basically a two page spread saying.. dirt was flawed but amazing and changed mountain biking.. I’m going to miss it..

Then repeated a load of times in slightly different words from various charachters from the mtb world.. more of a whimper than a bang..

The way subscribers have been treated is awful. :(

would you not be better off just using chrome or mebbe firefox?

not sure what the chrome support/latest version is for XP but isnt it likely to be quicker and more up to date / secure than IE8?

LSN in Castleford is my stock answer to this..!

Great finish and pretty cheap..

had the front triangle of my missus’s heckler done at triple s and the finish isn’t as good.. chipped off in a few places.. wouldn’t go back there.

And it cost £50 for just the front triangle compared to £35 for a full frame at LSN..

have you tried a different chainring?

that seems to be the only thing you haven’t swapped over..

you could also try it with a spare granny ring if you have one?

just for the moving the chainline to the inside by a factor of loads type trial..

My on-one ringmaster 30t only stopped grumbling in the lowest gear with 3.2mm chainring bolt spacers and a RAD cage..

Another vote for LSN here..

top quality job… and only £35 for a hardtail frame.. :)

had my Rockhopper done there..

and my inbred..

and also had some alloy wheels done there.. :)

oooof :(

that majorly sucks.

Hope canyon sort you out… and quickly!

so they’ve put out a mounting system that’s now widely used by a fair few companies and is the go to mount on frames..?

and just as less people are going to need chainguides due to narrow wide.. they’re cracking down on other companies making similar stuff so they get the lions share of the market?

:wink:

Concor light saddle..

the old version.. have to keep trawling ebay to find new ones..

and onza ules grips..

cant wait for the lock on version to come out!

they look like they might do the job..

didnt realise 6/7/8 speed was the same size.. :oops:

cheers :)

nope.. no link with the chain.. :/

you can always use bits of the the bike itself as a ‘pole’ for the tarp

do a google image search for bike packing tarp..

should give you a good idea.. :)

*havent ever been bike packing myself.. yet.. its on the to do list though!

my Zee felt stretched to its limit even with just the 36T on a 1X system..

swapped to a medium XT which immediately felt loads better..

i’ve also experimented with chainline at the front too..

first moving the BB spacers to the non drive side.. which helped loads with the indexing in the lower gears

and i’ve now moved them back and got some 3.2mm chainring bolt spacers which moved the chainline inboard and put the crank back in the right place.

(the 30t chainring im running also needed some extra little crank hole spacers making to remove the play from the chainring bolts in the crank arm)

now got pretty much perfect indexing..

after that i have added a one up 42t, shimano 16t and a rad cage..

which all went on with no further issues. :)

the Lev didn’t ever come with an underseat lever did it?

I thought that was a different model…?

either way.. give Grant a call at http://www.southcoastsuspension.co.uk/%5B/url%5D

I’d go with a couple of big silent fans personally..

even a fan spinning really really slowly on the CPU heatsink makes a huge difference to getting rid of the heat..

the new grey noctua fan’s are my current faves..

one on a big tower heatsink
one in the PSU
and one as a case exhaust

mount with good quality soft rubber fan mounts

and then stick a manual fan controller on them to really tweak the noise / performance.. then you can turn the fans up if it gets warm in the room or you want to do something CPU intensive..

stick an SSD hard drive in it too as a boot drive and you should have a near as damnit silent PC..

ive also got a big normal mechanical hard drive in mine for storage.. but i use a program called revosleep to turn it off…

coil whine can be a problem (much less so nowadays..) but thats mostly luck of the draw with components..

the Zee has a back plate made of soft cheese… (it bent in a very minor spill..)
and i found it right at its limits of comfort on an 11-36

XT every time for me..
much more solid back plate and the medium cage copes better with an 11-36..

i’ve sold it already.. sorry..

have updated the FS thread.. :)

(there are some on ebay for about a tenner..)

comparing my Deore and XT levers.. it may be possible.. but id say probably not.. as they look like the mount inside the lever is different.

Its fairly easy to make an adjuster for the Zee’s though..

I did for my Deore’s..

Basically…

I unscrewed the adjuster from the lever..
a little circlip stops it from coming out fully but they both broke pretty easily in my levers as i unscrewed them.. ( It may be possible to get them out without breaking them..)

Then i made some adjusters by cutting some little rectangles of Aluminium..

drilled a slightly too small hole through the middle..

cut down a hex key that fits the adjuster..

tapped the hex key through the slightly too small hole so it stays in place..

then epoxied the hex key into the adjuster..

gave it a clean up and polish..

re-assembled everything..

job done.

they’ve been fine for a year of riding now. :)

Itd work.. it was just the play under load that concerned me.. the threads would dig into the crank arm tabs too..

And yeah it Would be tricky without a vice..

I threaded the 2 together partly then just used the dremel to cut them in the vice..

I managed to get two out of each long female bolt I had..

Yeah the spacers will fit over the sticky out bit..

But the sticky out bit needs to be in the hole in the crank arm so the ring can’t rotate back and forth slightly..

Because The bolt on the left doesn’t completely fill the hole in the crank arm..

If it where a normal chainring you would use longer versions of the bolt on the right to compensate.. but as that bolt is essentially now part of the chainring on the 30t the cut down bolt threaded on extends it for you and fills the space left in the crank arm tab..

I Cut the flange off the bolt on the right (that the chainring bolt tool engages into) so it was about same width as the crank arm tabs…

Then I just threaded it onto the chainring bolt on the left to the end to act as a spacer..

The only thing to remember when spacing the 30t out is you might space it out so the little bits that protrude from the chainring (that take the place of the inner chainring bolt) no longer engage in the crankarm..

I spaced my 30t chainring in 3.2 mm and had to cut some inner bolts to the same thickness as the crankarm tabs.. then thread thEm onto the bolts to remove the play..

If that makes sense..!

https://instagram.com/spodhopper/%5B/url%5D

mostly bike related…

you might recognise the pic from the 13th of December fr0sty125… ;)

I use the ‘wahoo fitness’ app when im on the turbo.. find it brilliant.. and it does export to strava too..

I use android but there is an iphone version

I do have a wahoo heart rate monitor, but the app connected perfectly fine with a runtastic speed/cadence sensor..

there are several easy to read screen layouts you can choose from too to see what data you need,

and the ‘burn / burst’ system they use is quite an easy indicator when you might not be in a fit state to work out which zone you should be in! :lol:

unabashed pimping of my last years video.. (included south island too..)

seems vimeo wont embed..

Id start in Auckland and maybe have half a day at woodhill if id been to the city before..

then head up the coromandel for a few days and cathedral cove..

then end up in Rotorua for a couple of days.. hit the luge and new skyline tracks then spend a day or two in the Whakarewarewa forest and hopefully get on the south star shuttles..

and end the days there in the polynesian Spa..