Bought my HiLo from Wiggle at new year. A bit of bedding in and playing with the air pressure to begin with and it’s been perfect ever since. The remote cable is a bit naff and gets sticky very easily, a decent teflon gear cable makes it much better.
Best bit of kit I’ve bought in years.

The only wheels I’ve had built by a shop were the ones for the tandem – D321’s on Hope Big Un’s. Andy at Leisure Lakes in Breaston built them in about 1998, and I’ve never touched them with a spoke key since the day I fitted them, and they’re still on the tandem getting soundly thrashed.

Rob

Hate to see another rider in that condition, hope he makes it through.

Are there any mtb events that raise money for the air ambulance?

Back in the day (between 1993 & 2003) the NATS Off Road Tour of the Peaks raised over £21k, a large chunk of that when to the peak district MRT’s and the midlands air ambulances.

air ambulance, mountain rescue all these bodies get my 1 quid everytime they hold out a collection

Amen to that.

Rob

Tandemwarriers – I emailed the folk in charge of nevis range and they said they would try to put the tandem on if I let them know ahead of time

Cheers TJ. They just looked at us gobsmacked when we asked and mumbled something about having to use the cargo gondola.
There’s one 180 degree left hairpin on the boardwalk that a tandem physically won’t fit round, but other than that it’d be tough on the steep rock sections but a goer in the dry. I came off on the solo on the last boardwalk section after a wee bit of drizzle turned it into a skating rink, so I’d feel very iffy about the tandem unless it was nice & dry.

Rob

We’ve looked after 3 abandoned baby hoglets this winter. They were taken to our local vet after the parents were found dead. Been great seeing them grow, and how different their personalities were. Quite a sad moment when they were each released into their new gardens. Hopefully in return they’ll eat all the slugs that massacre anything we plant in the garden!

Cheers Alan, will pass on your best wishes.
Nope didn’t get the guys number, but when its gets techy there’s only one stoker I’d trust, and that’s my dear wife!!

Oooh, now that looks good.

Sandy & I called in at Glencoe on Monday on our way home from 10 Under, and were chatting with some of the guys about getting the tandem up on the chairlift. They reckoned it was a goer (unlike the less accommodating staff at Nevis Range), and after seeing that, it all looks comfortably tandemable.

Only hiccup is that Sandy is having her gall bladder removed tomorrow, so will be off the tandem for a few months. Certainly something for her to look forward too!!

Rob

Just back from this years 10 Under. Nessie is still closed due to storm damage, but certainly worth mixing the witches trail with some 10 Under sections.

Rob

Another vote for Sainsburys. Not had to claim for bikes, but they’ve been very good rebuilding our house which was wrecked by a fire last year.

Our MT100 had a very boring bottom pull Sachs one, nothing special or tandem specific.

Rob

Or alternatively, spend less time driving and head north to Arrochar and ride The Cobbler. Navigation is a doddle (leave car park, ride uphill. Stop when you reach the top at just under 3000ft, enjoy the staggering views, strap in for the ride back down). Finish with a beer at the Village Inn 🙂

Superb day out.

Rob

Just back from my first ‘training ride’ in months! Big competition for last place 🙂

Rob

Yep, eldest daughter is carrying it around Inverness, so we’ll be up there to watch her. It’ll be passing through Ft William on the weekend of the DH world cup.

I know its a hypothetical thread, but you don’t have to have a tandem specific LH crank, you can get away with a Heath-Robinson set-up.

On our tandem I’m running a Raceface Evolve crank at the front, fitted the wrong way round, and a normal square taper drive crank on the stokers LHS. We run SPD’s on the Ventana, so I had to strip the pedals and swap the axles round so the pedals stay in the correct orientation. A dab of threadlock on the cone & locknut.
Then a healthy dab of threadlock on the pedal threads and nice & tight onto the crank. I put a line of tippex across the crank & pedal axle so I can see if the thread starts to back-off, but after 18 months none have moved at all.

Continue brain-storming!

Rob

Rain? Sorry, hardly seen any here for a few weeks. Nice dry trails in the west of Scotland 🙂

Doesn’t happen often, so we have to be smug when we get the chance!!

My original Hope mechanical disc (circ 1995) used a floating caliper. Regularly got jammed up with Peak District grinding paste mud. Had some super tight tolerance sliders machined to see if that stopped the crap getting in. It did, but they then wouldn’t slide!

And following br’s post, my beloved Mazda 323f has floating front calipers, and the sliders seize every 6 months and need stripping and regreasing.

Give me dual pistons anytime please!

Had similar a few months ago. The 2p trick didn’t work, so ended up putting the 11 tooth sprocket & lockring on, then using a 3 leg gear puller.
Same problem as orangeboy, the outer freehub bearing had corroded onto the axle.
For bearings try simplybearings.co.uk

Rob

Good luck.
I always make a point of telling my pupils on their first lesson that they’ve got a big safety net called me and my dual controls, so you can’t hit anything, or crash into anything. Apart from roadies 😉

And there is no such thing as a stupid question! If it doesn’t make sense, ask. If it still doesn’t make sense, ask again. It’s not your job to understand it, its the instructors job to teach it in a way you can understand.

Enjoy, and let us know how you got on.

Cheers,
Rob

Hi endorphinix, that’ll be us you’re looking for! How’s things?
Email in profile if you want to get intouch.

Cheers,
Rob

Well we claim second place behind Magoo37, Sandy is 15 years older, and we’ve been married 12 years.

Rob

We stayed here here for 10 Under the Ben last year. Right by the Corran ferry, about 15 mins into Ft William. Very nice chalets.

Rob

Enters the willy waving contest and plays a trump card….

Roof….

🙂

I like your style DrP 🙂

Love the square hole milling.

Nice one team TJ. Agree with berm baby berm, we sessioned it over and over again last time we were at GT. Bloody brilliant!

Rob

Interesting reading.
We’re in the process of planning the new kitchen as our house gets rebuilt after being gutted by a fire. We want a nice red Ikea kitchen, the builders & architect are not impressed. I gather they prefer someone like Howdens to supply built carcases, rather than assemble flatpacks themselves.
The excellent Ikea 3d kitchen planner meant we’d designed and priced the kitchen 2 weeks before the professionals delivered their design (which was almost identical to ours) & quote. And Ikea works out £4k cheaper!

Bedmaker, whats the problem with that tap? We quite fancied that one!

Rob

As an ex welder & sheet metal worker from Rolls Royce, I loved it!
Loved seeing Guys first attempt at TIG – electrode blobbed, I remember doing that!
And that’s just how we’d ‘correct’ a tail bearing housing after welding the spokes on – a nice big ‘persuader’ and a bar. Nothing wrong with a bit of cold setting.
Remember metals are ‘elastic’, they will spring back under normal load. Cold setting pushes them past their elastic limit so they deform into the position you want. You’ve usually got the component held in a fixture and apply a force in a way it won’t see in use, hence the block under one dropout and hit the other one.

We were Alliance & Leicester so cloned into Santander. Online banking is the most user-friendly of the 3 banks I use (RBS & Lloyds TSB being the others).

Reassuringly they’re very hot on fraud.
About a year ago had a call early one morning to ask if I’d made a number of small purchases in the USA. As they suspected I hadn’t, so stopped the card and refunded the transactions immediately.

When we had the house fire in May, our usage of the credit card suddenly increased overnight (buying clothes etc). Again got a call to check if all was well as they’d noticed a sudden increase.

At Christmas I was checking our online statement and found 2 identical transactions for £299 at Dixons Online. Definitely not us so called them. Within 3 hours they’d traced the transaction to a VirginMedia account in Hampshire (rather than us being a Vodafone account in Scotland), stopped the card and refunded the money.

Rob

Can’t quite remember what year our 66’s are, must be about 2007. If they’re 36mm stanchions then I got seals from CRC a few months ago.

http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Models.aspx?ModelID=137

Rob

Nope, no ‘fibre grip’ supplied with mine. Not had it slip yet, fingers crossed.

We’re with Sainsburys finance, who are underwritten by lloyds. £28 per month for building & contents and 2 bikes, £2k and £5k.
Fortunately not had to test the cover for the bikes, but as our house burnt down in May and is currently being rebuilt, I can say that the building & contents service we’ve had has been superb.

Nice.
And yes, the descent is BRILLIANT!!!! If you’re up this way with the bike and fancy riding the Cobbler, shout up and you’ll have some riding buddies in minutes!

Rob

Bit late, but got mine from Wiggle just after Christmas and yep, both lever & remote kit in the box.
Love mine :-), might have to get another for the back of the tandem!

Phew, saw the title and thought you were going to ask if they came with a crown race………

Just to be pedantic, and so you can demonstrate an increased level of ‘anorak-ness’ when people admire your mounted blades, if they’ve got cooling holes they’ll be turbine blades rather than compressor blades.

Compressor blades are forward of the combustor so are in a cooler operating environment. Turbine blades extract energy from the exhaust gas path, so as you quite rightly say, operate in temperatures above the melting point of the material they are made from.

Rob

That’ll be because the guys that started Hope are ex RR guys!

Always makes me smile that their exploded diagrams still follow a lot of RR drawing convention. Another (probably quite sad) reason I like Hope kit, feels like I’m supporting old colleagues.

Bit early in the day to get sentimental!

Rob

Had a Citadel D lock for donkeys years. Forgot the key for it in November, so had to hacksaw it off so we could get the bikes off the back of the campervan at Glentress. Only took 2 blades, 3 blokes and 45 minutes to cut through it!

Joined RR from school as an apprentice in 1989, first a welder in Hucknall, then ended up as a Project Manager in Derby. Still miss the place, the people, and mostly the smell of burning Avtur from the test beds 🙂

Rob

A bit more tandem action, with Nancy the Ventana…..

Rob

It’s not essential until you’ve had one, then you don’t know how you lived without one.

I’d agree with that! Bought a HiLo for the P7 from Wiggle (£160 with a discount code) just after Christmas and after just 2 rides I’m completely sold.

I’ve decided I’m getting one but can’t decide between that new DSP big horn, KS i900L, or the hilo, reverb is out because i dont want remote

Mmmmm, have to be honest but IMHO (and after just 2 rides with a dropper post) I’m not sure you’d get the full benefit without a remote. When the trail drops away down a rocky gully and you think ‘oh bugger, could do with the seat down’, that’s not really the moment you want to be riding one-handed and fumbling for a lever under your saddle.

Rob