blimey 3 bikes? I've got about 20…

yup a kilo for me, if this carries on in a year I'll be 52kilos lighter…..

Ohh go on subject us…

and then ending up in the pub together!

What happened to freedom of choice? I like wearing a lid, it adds to my collection of gear that shows I have no idea, but what you do with your head is your choice.

It seems the OP wants to carry out a sampling exercise to find out what current trends/opinions are so he can place himself somewhere on the trend/opinion scale according to whether he is strictly conformist, mediocre, strongly non conformist or just plain eccentric.

Anyway it's important for people to have accidents and hurt their head so that the doctors have people to practise on, and we have more significant numbers for the statistics. Ideally half the cycling population would wear helmets and half wouldn't, and for a real double blind study we would need half the non cycling population to wear helmets too.

My friend owns and runs this place Morocco Blue[/url] she has loads of local knowledge and awesome cave house and a great sense of humour.

BT uggh we had speed issues, it was faster to use the cheapo talk talk residential lien in the flat upstairs from the office, we changed to pipex, nearly as bad..

brant – Premier Member

aren't you losing a market share by excluding stumpies?

14in sales are less than 5% of the market. Plus long travel hard tails for short people suffer from the fact that the bars and headtube end up so high (the height at the front of a bike is largely independant of the size of the frame, as it's mostly made up of fork + wheel.

We'll roll one out at some point, but that's why we didn't initially.

Brant would you elaborate a bit more? I don't think I have understood you. I have a 14 inch 456 with fox van 32's, I find the bar height great, I use a very short stem. I'm happy to admit that my riding position might be all wrong as I don't know what's right, and everyone says it looks like a jump bike.. I would really appreciate if you could explain what the bar/head tube issue is? What problems it causes?

My sony video camera has li-ions and the batts last about 5 mins..

this is interesting http://www.batteryuniversity.com/partone-15.htm

I have a fizik gobi on one bike, amazingly comfortable, but the flexy bit at the back has started to break away after less than a year, still comfy but now ugly. Got an SDG bel air on the other bike, very comfy, to early to tell on the lifetime tho..

Ok I want to get this clear.

I personally would not powder coat a Santa Cruz frame; this is due to my knowledge of metallurgy & heat treatment and what a technical person at Santa Cruz told me about powder coating of Santa Cruz frames in 2007.

As far as Whyte, orange or any other manufacturer I haven't got any experience of how they do heat treatment or powder coating, needless to say if they carry out similar practices as Santa Cruz then I wouldn't recommend you have them powder coated either. According to the literature on the Whyte website they make their frames from 6061 T6 – same as Santa Cruz, I couldn't find any info about Orange but its a sporting bet they use the same material, most manufactures do. If any firms other than Santa Cruz do post weld heat treatment, which is essential to keep the props of 6061-t6 , is another matter entirely. As ScienceOfficer correctly states, it depends on what type of heat treatment was applied in the first place. I would add other dependencies too such as what material its is, and how the powder coating was or is going to be done

Whilst I am happy to impart any knowledge on here to help people avoid any problems, I personally am not interested in flame war or a pi$$ing contest, which is what this looks like its turning into. If anyone here wants to know more, my email is in my profile, I'm happy to go into detail.

Brant
Not currently.

Any reason, I mean I know lots of people are tall these days, better nutrition and all, but aren't you losing a market share by excluding stumpies? Lots of Welsh and Irish peeps like hardtails too. :cry:

cynic-al – Member

That's muy thinking, they're not going to leave it in the oven for any longer than necessary.

IMO if this was really a significant issue, ALL the manufacturers would be screaming about it in warranty terms. But they're not!

cynic-Al, lets hope they didn't, but as I said before there is no way to be sure what they did.

As far as manufacturers making noises or not I don't think its an issue as most peeps don't powder coat until a frame is older, or if they buy one 2nd hand. I am sure that if you bought a brand new frame, and next day powder coated it shocking pink down the local engineering shop, if it broke and you sent it back they would tell you you invalidated the warranty. Any decent metallurgist/materials scientist/failure expert would have an easy time ripping to shreds any warranty claim in court if it came to it.

There isnt anything smaller than a 16 is there? I'm 5ft 5 and I reckon it'll be too big for me..

ps – powder coating steels is fine..

cynic -al, might be ok, they may have heated it up for only 15 mins you never know…

joolburger, 60 is what I paid, are you in devon? did we go to the same place?

just talk to SC usa, Jungle the uk importers are just that..

I cant remember the exact temp I need to look it up in my hong kong book of kung foo back in the office, I'll tell you tomorrow. From memory its solution treat at 550 for 24 hrs, quench, then age at 150c for 8 hrs, if you go to 9 hrs its over aged. I know of an aluminium frame that was accidentally left in the heater at the powder coaters over night at 150c. My point here is that a heat treatment plant is a carefully controlled environment, a powder coating outfit is not a place where they are likely to know anything about metallurgy.

It'l be fine, Manufacturers powdercoat from the factory, A paint booth goes up to 80 degrees too when done in 2k, Obv there are lower temps you can use round 70s the norm

Ahh rich-6 withe greatest respect, can I tell you I love you in advance? Let me assure you, yours is a common misconception, but with 6000 series Al alloys temps over 130c are not a good idea, no it wont be fine, they frequently powdercoat as part of the heat treatment process, at 150 ish degrees its called ageing, and its done to very close control, if you over age you risk embrittling the frame and risk failure in use.

Don't do it, and if you ever see a frame for sale that has new paint make careful enquiries about how it was painted – if it was powder coated, don't buy it.

there are a number of ways that the tenancy contract could be brought to an end in this situ.
1) if tenant is damaging property
2) if tenant is in arrears
3) if tenant is carrying out illegal activities
4) if tenant abandons property

1) and 3) can normally be solved quickly in court – seek legal advice pronto.
For 2) to be effective they have to be 2 month in arrears before application can be made to court, but then its pretty quick.
If its number 4 then its just a case of being sure they have abandoned, ie, no rent paid, stuff moved out, take fotos and be really sure they have abandoned then just change the locks fix up and re -rent.

do not powder coat your heckler the process goes to 130c or even more some to 180c, this has the potential to muck up the careful post welding heat treatment carried out by santa cruz. ask them to spray it 2 pack instead.

Yep lots of the dh runs have "chicken runs", but then I have been overtaken by 14 year old kids on sarcen hardtails getting 10ft of air so I often say "Its not the wand, its the wizard waving it"

Hmm, I cant say I have ever felt it but all my roadie mates spit on sealed bearings for precisely that reason, also friction is proportional to load so it may well be something you only notice at higher speeds or only on the bike. Like I said I prefer sealed…

If you look at high end road bike wheels most of them use cup and cone because you can set them up to spin faster, and for roadies esp racers this is key.

Also if you stay on top of maintenance then they will last a very long time.. But when they wear out the case hardening in the cup gets pitted and unless you can get replacement cups (you could in the eighties) then the hub is wrecked.

If you are slack and lazy (like me) or dont have the facilities or tools (not like me, lots of room and loads of kit) then cartridge bearings are a godsend, like other posters have said when they wear out they don't wreck the hub (mostly).

I think the best bit about this is the fact that they can get you home without wrecking the hub, if a cup/cone goes wrong on the road if you carry on riding then the hub is dead..

Last year I replaced my original pro2 bearings which had gone graunchy after only 9 months or ownership with some SKF ones from a local bearing supplier – about 25 quid for a set front and rear – 7 bearings. The rears are shagged again so despite agreeing that good quality skf or other would be best I've decide to try some cheap ones. I have just received a full rear pro 2 set for 5.99 plus 1.20 postage from this ebay seller bearing pit stop[/url] I'll let you know how long they last but he was super fast next day delivery and 5.99 for 5 bearings is super cheap.

Cool, no caustic in nitromors then good to know. If I had a tin I would have known.
I used to use caustic soda to strip motorcycle parts before rattle can spray jobs when I was a teen moped freek, only because I had a free supply of it and I thought that was the stuff in nitromors…. :-) Imagine 25 years of ignorance fixed on STW in a couple of hours.

Could be wrong I thought nitromors contained caustic soda…

yup got a weber fits my croozer niceley we used from about 3 months old till she got too big for it. Go for it man.

nitromors is alkali so after lots of flushing with water, a vinegar rinse would do it nicely.

yup wife is still novice despite riding regulrly for 15 years and loves morzine, do it!

if it doesnt work a solution would be to download pdfcreator[/url] which installs as a printer driver – so then you print the encrypted pdf to a fresh un-encrytped pdf…

Normally anywhere on the last decent ride I had. The next day in the office I get flashbacks and little reveries of good views or nice little jumps I pulled off. Currently a part of me is stuck on the Lustleigh Cleave route we did yesterday.

Taking a bike on a plane is ok. I've done bristol to geneva for morzine loads of times with easyslut, they give you lots of kgs for your bike I think tis 30, so you fill the bike box up with loads of crap…
Fitting the bike box/bag in the transfer vehicle can be interesting, best to organise transfers first and let them know what luggage you will have. Out of interest where are you staying?

If I ahd £150 I would really like one of those wingnut mps alpha packs.. I have massive problems with rucksacks and this looks just the ticket.

try this forum cag[/url] full of useful info on how to beat private and public parking fines.

Wife is feeding newborn and child no 1 "Daddy your boobs are nearly as big as mummies, why don't they make any milk?" I should point out that mummy has an ample d cup…

I think if you want to do this successfully you need to be able to get deals on groupsets etc, because most bikes offered as fullbuilds are normally cheaper than if a mere mortal bought the frame and all the bits and put them together. If its the same price as the average punter can do it just be trolling crc/wiggle etc for all the bits then I reckon most people would just do that.
I discovered this when I wanted to build an on one 456 with lots of top spec parts, it worked out cheaper to by an orange p7 pro with full thomson upgrade kit (about 1500 in 2008 for 2008 model) and then buy the 456 frame- by about 500 quid!! Honest. Grips in black please…

Its called the ductile to brittle transition and is a problem with some steels and some stainless steels, but not with aluminium alloys. I used to know a lot more about this but I'm going senile at 38 so I need to consult my textbooks to be really accurate and these are in the office.
The basics are that a metal which is normally ductile and will give bit under load and will take a fair bit of energy (force) before it breaks. If you cool it below its DBTT the it will fracture in brittle manner like glass, and will not take much energy to do so. Higher quality steels undergo their transition at lower temps like -50celsius or lower and lesser quality or milder steels get it at higher temps which can be near zero or in some cases even higher.

Dogs do fine in sheds, this is not cruelty.