No gpx to hand but I’m local so give me a PM about where you want to go

richmtb

For all its technical brilliance i never actually find Semenuk’s videos that exciting, he’s too good and makes stuff look easy, you don’t get the sense of jeopardy from the stunts he’s pulling.

I know what you mean. He’s an amazing rider but appears to be an emotionless robot who doesn’t have fun.

Might just be the way it’s filmed, but McCaskill and Akrigg in particular are so much more exciting

Few layers of gorilla tape, prick a small hole through at the valve hole and then force a tubeless valve through. Worked for me in the past as the seal on the valve locked onto the valve plus the mass of tape sealed it.

I’ve just replaced the bearings in my mid drive as it was knocking. Out it all back together and starts knocking again after a few miles…balls.

Checked it. Bearing is fine – the knocking is the motor falling out of the frame 😀

Depends on conditions. My commuter bike never gets washed and gets put away wet so chews through everything. But an XT HT2 BB lasted a year on it and is still going on my SS but that’s a lightly used good weather bike

My Jeffsy has the original Race Face BB (amazingly as it was a common failure) but that bike actually gets looked after 😂

Damper needs bleeding (so I’m told)

Retrodecals – excellent service

Depends what it is. I have a hankering for an old school linkage fork (amp, lawill etc) and a Super V with Headshox.

I’d avoid a Scott with a proprietary shock though 😉

I’d go for trials from a bike with a frame mounted bash guard

Get em gritty, get em hot, then wash with water

I tend to lightly sand brand new pads if they have a ‘glaze’

TJ

I did say it was semantics 😉

We need a control.

I’ll ride my commute for several months. Alternate between wearing a brightly coloured helmet and one disguised as a bobble hat.

Just need a GPS, a proximity sensor and data logger and we are good to go, oh and two otherwise identical helmets in different colours.

That shouldn’t be a problem with a new carbon frame

It shouldn’t, but I wouldn’t have a huge amount of faith in that 😉

Rubber_Buccaneer
Full Member
I’d rather have a fairly basic modern bike than even the most top end of ten year old bikes. There is little that hasn’t improved significantly and geometry is a big one

Id agree. My Jeffsy is bounds ahead my my hemlock and on paper has worse components (even taking into account the shorter travel)

Except for the brakes…but SRAM brakes are just awful anyway

I’ve got loads in my shed. Maybe I should start bottling it for eBay 😜

I’ve been trying to do the same thing (or a trials bike). Sadly BMXs are seemingly worth very little second hand

I see it as a bit opposite. Because I nearly always wear a lid that is my default riding style. I’m fairly aggressive in holding my position on the road but I’m careful in making sure I’m seen and acknowledged before crossing traffic or entering the traffic stream.

If I’m not wearing one then I’m definitely more tentative as I feel more exposed.

I’ll admit that is just semantics though…

Other road users? Can’t say I’m sold on the impact of my lack of lid on their behaviour. Generally if someone gets too close they aren’t paying attention and probably don’t even realise you are there, let alone if you are wearing a helmet or not.

However…this is a very VERY small sample set, and also will be highly influenced by the style of local traffic, the times I commute (generally outside of peak), the state of the road surface and the weather (I’ve come off twice on ice). It also goes back to the individual risk Vs average risk debate.

The Isle of Wight does not see the same demographic of driver as central London. I suspect they are generally older and blinder (it’s always cloudy for them for some reason), but slower and less aggressive 😉

locomotive
Full Member
Anyone else ever destroyed a cycle helmet in a crash, and in the subsequent assessment just been plain thankful for the fact you were wearing one?

Yes. A Mountain Dew edition Specialized Mountain Man at that…gutted

Also broke both collar bones and was knocked out – was out of it for about a week. The helmet disintegrated and dissipated the impact as designed to do.

tjagain
Full Member
MIps diminishes the rotational forces that can cause diffuse axon injury.

I know – is the study with modern helmets with MIPS (or similar)?

Several factor make it plausible that under some circumstances helmets can exacerbate injury. the increased size of the helmeted head, the increased weight, risk compensation, the actual mechanics of diffuse axon injury and so so on all well documented.

Is that with MIPS (or similar) or without?

tjagain
Full Member
Actually DezB I find that exactly happens – have you ever tried riding without a helmet? You get a better response from other road users.

I struggle to believe you could measure this – there are too many variables, too small a sample set and you have massive confirmation bias

Poly – I don’t think I have debated very well 🙂

I’m really not trying to argue this as I agree that helmets shouldn’t be mandatory.

But by making the statement that they aren’t necessary, I worry we throw the baby out with the bathwater and reduce the likelihood of them being used when they are definitely beneficial

TJ

And that’s fine. An individual is free to make that decision.

As I said above, my main concern is that this shouldn’t be helmets Vs other cycling safety measures – they are a safety measure in themselves and I think that gets lost in the debate.

TJ. Because the risk of me crashing on the road in a way that could result in overextension of my neck seems very low

The risk of falling in a way where I could hit my head (e.g. a low side) seems foreseeable.

Fair enough Bez 🙂

I should feel safe enough to ride without a helmet on the road. I don’t, so I wear one, and I’m so used to it I don’t see why anyone else wouldn’t – I just don’t see a downside…but yes that is a personal opinion.

Off road I will naturally always wear one.

I also don’t believe helmets should be mandatory as less barriers to cycling is a greater benefit

I think my main concern is that it’s hard to separate the debate about helmet use Vs cycling uptake and general population health / environmental benefit from the impact on an individual’s risk.

Yes they can make their own decision, but we as humans follow trends (armour and neck braces in DH and helmets in BMX are a good example of this).. if cycling is not seen as an activity were wearing a helmet is required, when do you wear one?

This is where my Dave Mirra comment came from. Absolutely CTE has nothing to do with a commuter, but potentially normalising not wearing a helmet in a world where the impacts of even mild brain trauma are now being fully understood doesn’t seem right… the two are intrinsically linked.

I want my son to feel comfortable wearing a helmet. Not feel pressured to not wear one as it’s not the done thing.

Currently in MTB helmets are ubiquitous amongst influential riders, but that isn’t the same across all sports and for mainly reasons of fashion (which I find moronic – Andy Anderson gets less work because he skates with a helmet, despite being one of the best skaters around).

Because I can recover from break or a graze, and a spinal injury is hard to armour up against. A helmet is easy and simple and provides protection to a part of my body that won’t heal and that i can protect with a simple measure.

It shouldn’t be helmets or other cycling safety measures. It should be cycling safety measures and looking at why people would rather not ride than wear a helmet, and look to remove those barriers.

Saying it’s fine not to wear one is problematic, especially for kids who won’t wear one when they really should do…

I didn’t say to normalise wearing them, I said don’t normalise not wearing them.

It’s a balance and I’m certainly not saying helmets make cycling safe

Making cycling safer by the measures TJ listed above are incredibly important..
But helmets shouldn’t be on the left – it shouldn’t be one or the other.. if you could have the same amount of riding but always wearing helmets, would people be statistically safer?

There is a difference between statistical studies of what poses the greater risk in terms of ‘overall’ injury/health compared to and individuals exposure to risk.

Given everything else being equal, I would rather bang my head on a hard surface wearing a helmet. I’ve done it and I have absolutely no doubt the helmet reduced the trauma – it physically had to as energy was expensed by it crumpling – therefore less energy was transferred to my brain.

TJ – I’m sorry, but that argument against wearing a helmet messing up your hair is laughably weak. My commute is min. 3 days a week and a 12 mile round trip. It’s just not a problem. Get to work, get changed, nip in the loo to make myself presentable. It takes 30 seconds to sort any helmet hair I have.

I think the core part of this that annoys me that we are seeing the damage that head injuries can cause, even when wearing a helmet (Dave Mirra being the example).

Wearing a helmet might not improve your safety on a bike in itself but reducing your exposure to head trauma itself can only be a good thing.

If helmets don’t help, why do you wear one when it’s relevant? How do you know when you are going to fall in a certain way?

I’ve never had any big crashes on the road, but any near misses I’ve had are due to someone not looking, so I don’t see how me wearing a helmet or a skull cap would make any difference. I know that if I’m being pitched over someone’s bonnet I’d rather have head protection.

Off road I’ve had 1 big crash in particular that destroyed the helmet, and at least one other that scratched it up badly. Both times its served its purpose and stopped further injury.

Ives also had a couple of branch strikes that would have gouged my head at the least.

A helmet should not be an excuse for not looking into poor road safety, but modern helmets are so light and comfortable there is no real excuse for not wearing one other than ‘i don’t want to wear one’.

I don’t buy they are a hindrance at all, and think that normalising that mindset that they are are a hindrance is quite dangerous.

.

Ominous creak being a loose dropout that took a second to tighten.

Although, I did start to remove a few links from a chain and spotted a crack in the frame in the process, so you win some…

I want to know what happened to all the cheap inbreds. 29er would be perfect frame for my ebike commuter when the rig frame eventually fails

Get asked a lot for friends and family. Don’t mind getting people back on their bikes and fiddling with bikes is therapeutic – most of the time. Generally get a pint out of it at the very least, and it’s nice to help people anyway.

General filth is bad, but cheap components that can’t be adjusted are mega frustrating, and why BSOs are actually such poor value.

Tourney mechs without a b tension spring are my latest annoyance. That and the Halfords that last ‘serviced’ it just breaking everything and fitted the ergon grips backwards and the bars upside down

I’ve got a cruiser that’s kept outside booked in. I have a feeling that one will require more than cables and a chain…

Gravel bikes, purely because of the marketing bollocks that goes with them.

Red bull are currently running a video of someone riding one down a section of very basic singletrack, not massively fast, as ‘making suspension gossip redundant’. It’s cringeworthy.

The bikes themselves are fine, I’d happily have one, but don’t kid yourself an XC bike wouldnt be a better tool for singletrack riding.

I’d def go cheaper and the spare battery.

Had this with a fox shock in the past. Like it needed a deeper needle on the schrader

Who’s ridiculing anyone?

This indicates that a facing tool locates on both sides but be interesting to know how much tolerance is in the ‘axle’ when you push the tool through the collars that locate on the BB threads. You could still have the same problem with a ‘faced’ BB, although I assume the tool should sort of ‘average out’ any error.

A BB thread will have some float but from my experience it doesn’t make a huge difference.

On an old hardtail of mine the BB was visibly off centre (cartridge so easy to spot) from the NDS as you threaded it through from the DS, which made the plastic sleeve very hard to fit and must have been putting a lot of stress on the threads. As it was a cartridge it didn’t really matter, but an external BB would have been different, as like you say, the shell deforms relatively easily.

Logs are a bad idea as they rot and collapse. The FC specifically hate this.

Building a base seems fine as long as the dirt is maintained. You don’t want someone effectively riding into a brick wall at speed 😉

Yes, but it’s only a temporary fix as the bearing will probably be damaged and fixing it will probably damage the seal

Carefully lift the seal out with a Stanley knife, blast out with gt85 or similar to get them spinning and then pack with grease and push the seal back on.

If it’s threaded then the facing probably won’t be the main issue (as the threads align the BB).

You can thread in each side until it just bottoms out on the frame and see if it’s square (is there a gap around it’s circumference?), but without a datum this doesn’t tell you if the BB faces are off or the threads aren’t perpendicular and/or aligned.

But easy enough to roughly check alignment on threaded as above

What BB is it. If it’s threaded it’s fairly easy to check alignment as you can thread in from one end without fully torquing it up and see how concentric the centre spacer is to the threads on the other side (or push the axle through.

Harder with pushfit as you need to press those in