Well I’ve been reading that loads of people have had problems with the ipad and the camera connectivity as the new firmware reduced the power output to the usb or something? So many devices arent supported.
As my camera will be powered by its own battery I’m guessing that won’t be an issue?

Oh and to muddy the waters I’m just about to get a used iphone 4 of a friend, would this do what I want the garmin to do?

Thanks for the replies.
I am mainly wanting the garmin for its maps as I got horribly lost the other day in the peaks and I am moving to near the dales soon so I reckon I would love the maps function.
Yeh I was going to send the 310 back to garmin, its about 100 I think to have it fixed.

Saw a few in the flesh the other night, look very nice.
I was going to buy one off a buy on here, themilkybarkid I think his name on here is. Nice guy. I ended up buying his onone carbon race frame instead.
But he has one of the chinese 29ers at the moment in size large. Looks like a bargain for 230 or whatever they are.

hehe, I read this when it was published. It really is testiment to the fact that the BMJ will publish any old rubbish! Nice to see a piece about cycling though!

Get the cheapest, lightest and most minimal shoes you can find.
Start doing very small amount of running preferably on grassy or dirt surfaces.
Gradually build up your mileage.

I always say the same thing to people in these situations. I would personally recommend building the bike up yourself and source most if not all of the bits second hand.
Its easy to say, having built up many bikes (all road and TT so MTB are still proving tricky) but its the only way to really get what you want and generally works out much much more cost effective.

I am currently building up a carbon hardtail 29er, with reba forks, sram XX groupset and hope/stans wheels. I still have the odd part to source but at the moment its coming in at about £950. Half the parts are new from shops on sale and half are excellent condition second hand. The RRP of the build comes to over £3000.

If you don’t have the know how to do this I urge you to learn. It will also save you a load in LBS costs when bits go wrong. At the end of the day its all mechanical and most bits can be replaced.

great,
athough I don’t know whether I want to risk replacing the spacers as well only to need to get the TF kit as thats going to cost me a fair bit!

which bit are the spacers? The top hats?

Loco, I have replaced only the shock bushing, not the top hat pieces.
I’m going to check out the bottom bit, but there definitely seems to be some movement in the top connection as I can feel it.

sorry to bring this up again,
I’m going to get the TF tuned one. But on their guide of which size they only have anthem 07, does that mean 07 onwards?
It says I’m after a 12.7 M6x22 set.
Also I have a tool for removing/installing shock bushings, will this do the job for the heavy duty kit?
Thanks

Kuco – from my experience not really. Although its a difference type of noise. There is often more noise in the surrounding area but less transmitted noise to other rooms/downstairs. However this does depend on the surface your using them on. If you use them on a first floor and above of a house they can vibrate the floor and cause tremendous noise.
As I say I have had a bit of experience with this, I’ve own 6 turbos including a kurt kinetic and a cycleops fluid2, 4 sets of rollers including my current set which is a set of kreitlers.
The kreitlers are the quietest, but still can’t be used on a first floor because to be honest when you are putting more than 400w through something you are always going to get significant noise.

I once sent a turbo back because I thought it was getting noiser, turned out it was just me getting fitter, doh!

Njee you have mail.

Al, you are probably right but as half of the fun of this sport is feeling fast I like to think the in the head bit is quite important.

They are from Triton cycles I think!

disben,
I don’t know about no savings, I currently have the price as around 280. For the same build from Merlin it comes in around the 350 mark.

Zoota – thanks for the info that will help me loads. unfortunately I am not near essex otherwise I would have taken you up on the offer! Although if anyone is near Leicester and fancies lending me their truing stand that would be extremely helpful!

Thanks for the advice guys.
Its going to be Stans crest/olympic on DT revs spokes with hope pro2s in the middle (hopefully somewhere near the middle)

I’m looking forward to the challenge, I want to be able to fix/build everything on my bike. Ever since I got screwed by a bike shop on a awful service I have wanted to learn how to do everything.
Last week I changed shock bushings, some people said this was hard. It took 5 mins with a tool I picked up off ebay for £6!

cool thanks guys. I have always used the frame before but thought I might need something better to get them properly trued. At the end of the day it can always be dismantled and re-built!

I had ‘Oi lads its Lance Armstrong’ – I’m quite impressed he knew who lance armstrong was!

A mate of mine was riding his Cervelo P3, which has the rear wheel cutout into the seat tube. Some chavs pulled up next to him and the passenger said “Mate, why is your back wheel trying to catch your front wheel up?”

Another mate of mine noticed that the passenger in the car pulled up next to him was trying to take the stuff out of his back pockets, so he emptied the contents of this energy drink in the guys face. The guy was just stunned and the driver was pissing himself laughing!

I didn’t think this was such a stupid question, but hey ho.

My thinking is along the lines of what a few people have mentioned, what is the point in having a nice bike if you aren’t going to ride it.
I also like buying nice parts but as someone else mentioned about XT and XTR I do have the money to afford nice parts but I don’t have the money to keep replacing them!

See I have gone to this with the road bike, after my hack fell apart I started using my carbon road bike over winter. It got mudguards and was cleaned carefully and throughly after each ride, doesn’t seem to have done it any harm. Maybe I should just adopt the same principle with my mtb?

I stand corrected, they are cheaper than I thought!

See I’m surprised at all the people saying nespresso is good. My take on it having tried it is, the coffee is fairly standard. Not bad but not good.
I don’t see all the complaints about mess and faff, my coffee takes me approximately 6 mins to make in the morning (which is the machine heating up) Whilst I do other things. I have my coffee down now and have it just the way I like it. I get a new taste with different beans, or even sometimes a new packet of the same beans.
I have tried about 4-5 of the ‘different’ nespressos and they all taste the same to me, maybe I am missing something? The machines are more expensive if anything, you can actually get a half decent espresso machine for £50. PLus the expense?? Those nespresso capsules cost a fortune!!!

Avoid any of the pod systems/nespresso. They are rubbish and you will soon learn to realise that you want ‘real’ coffee.
You can’t go wrong with a Gaggia classic, but the other thing you will soon find out is in general a coffee machine is a coffee machine. As long as it provides the correct pressure and heat it has the potential to make a decent expresso.
However what you really need for a truly decent cup of coffee is a decent burr grinder. But thats a whole other topic!
Check out coffeegeek for some advice.

Ah I reckon your right, its probably the reducers, they went in a bit too easy and a fair amount of rust in there. fingers crossed not the frame.
Anybody happen to know where I can get some reducers from?

As the others have mentioned its good to try them in a narrow hallway or similar when you start so you have 2 sides to lean on.
Bear in mind most people take a good hour or 2 at least to pick them up so don’t give up! What generally happens is you feel you can’t ride them then suddenly it clicks and your away.

Also the faster you go the more stable you get, so be brave!

I got a set of rollers about 3 years ago, one of the best purchases I ever made. I sold my turbo as I now have a set of kreitler 2.25s which have tonnes of resistance so you can put out anything up to 1000 watts which is pretty much enough for any kind of training! They also don’t risk the warranty of your carbon frame.

I’m thinking about a dirty harry. They are significantly lighter than the lurcher – by 500 grams or so from what I remember.
They do seem a little plain, I do like a hint of decal in there. I might head up to the show room to have a look at one.

I tend to a carry a suture kit etc. with me on long MTB rides in the peaks etc.

I was thinking about this, but hearing the mixed reports on the superstar hubs I’m going to go with hope.

Anyone know the best price for a set of hope/stans crest? I was going to go with merlin and have them built with DT revolution spokes.

mboy – don’t know how to quote but your point on how much more time is lost on the ups if very important.
I don’t know how much work in terms of research has been done on the mountain biking side but there is plenty going on for timetrialling that has resulted in a complete change of tactic in terms of power output on hills/drags.
It used to be accepted that an even power output producing the highest power over the course of a race would produce the fastest time and although this is the case for completely flat time trials even the smallest drag can change this.
By putting out a bit more power up the hill and a bit less on the decent you will produce a faster time.

You loose more time slowing down on the hill to produce an even power and when you try and maintain this power on the decent you have to put out so much power to overcome wind resistance at that speed that considerable extra power is going in to produce very little extra speed.
So any variable that reduces your time spent on the up is going to have a considerable effect on your race performance even if the course isn’t that hilly.

Thats why I asked, I saw that there were 29er specific hubs with stronger flanges or something but wondered if they were necessary!

Second part of the question, if I got a set of DT swiss 29er wheels with m520 rims and wanted to change the rims over to stans crest am I going to be able to re-use the same spokes?

Having smashed my knee twice in the past 2 weeks I need some knee pads. Is there any need to get harder ones than say the fox launch?

anyone got the 661 rage?

I am in a very similar position to you, I fancied having a nice light race bike and settled on the whippet with a second hand mix off XX/XO pro2/crest wheels etc and sids on the front, came out at about 1200 I think. But then I spoke to a friend and tried his 29er and loved it. I’m a tall bloke so I don’t know whether that had anything to do with it. The other thing that appealed to me was having one bike that should cover all/most bases. He’s taken his to most of the welsh trail centres and had a great time. Yeh you might be slightly better off with a full suss but its not necessary. If I had gone for the whippet I would have had that and a giant anthem, so not really a full bouncy bike anyway. This way with the 29er I can sell the giant. For me at the moment I don’t have the space for multiple bikes so I like the idea of only having one.
I just hope I won’t regret getting a carbon framed 29er!

bmibaby charged us about £30 for the bike recently.
Ryanair a little more I think, in the region of 50.

If you’re only flying to nice it will likely be much much cheaper to got with the budget airlines and pay for the bike. BA for that flight will be triple the cost I expect. They are only worthwhile for long haul in my experience.

For your info, BMI have a weight allowence of 18kg for the bike+box. This isn’t much, BUT you can pool it with your other luggage, for which you get 22kg, so you get 40 in total.
They don’t have this info on their website, so lots of stress before going trying to get the bike as light as possible!

Theres not such thing as good tasting instant coffee!
Coffee is a bit like bikes, you try something a bit better than what you’re used to and you want it. You then can’t have anything worse because it feels rubbish. Then you trying something better and you want it, now the cafetiere coffee tastes rubbish. Before you know it you have a Gaggia and rancilio grinder and you buy your coffee from a man who tells you how many animals ate this coffee then crapped it out. Its a slippery slope, but I wouldn’t go back 😉

I’ve replaced a fair few spokes in my road wheels, is it much harder?

See I can’t build them myself so I have to factor that into the cost. I had a look at them and they are a little out of price range!
350 tops!

Oh, the other thing is these will be 29er wheels.

njee, where do you get those from/built?

much more fun in the wet, can’t stand it dusty. one section gets almost impossible due to mud but I went there a few weeks ago and that section was closed??? Anyone know why?