No idea if it’s been mentioned on here before but Mr inbetween on Disney is one of the best series on TV (in my opinion) if you like gritty but funny Aussie stuff. oh and the series ‘Wayne’ which is free on YouTube is well worth a watch

We used these lot a few years ago  https://rentacarsalgar.com/

Would use again as they meet you off the plane and you can pay cash when you get the car (or you could a few years ago), no deposit or card on file, and you just leave the keys in the boot when you drop the car off, couldn’t be simpler.

Going with the local firms seems to be the way to go in Menorca

I’ve had dominions for a year or so now, I’ve previously had hope V4s, Shimano and Code rsc’s, I always thought the codes were brilliant brakes once set up correctly but the Dominions are simply better in everyway.

Solid, consistent, low maintenance, piece of p1ss to bleed and align etc etc
Once they’re set up they just work, they’re a bit more grabby than codes but have a good modulation and very light lever pull.
I’ve now got three sets and won’t consider any other brakes.

Only minor points are they can be a bit noisy when wet (sintered pads) and getting hold of genuine spare parts is almost impossible.

Just recieved mine, the rears I ordered both came with olives and barbs, the olive is in the lever already and the hose just has a black insert in the barb that needs pulling out then you just need to pull out the red stopper in the lever and insert hose until it stops and tighten the nut, if you dont need to cut the hose you shouldnt need to bleed them.
(the last set I fitted didnt need bleeding even when I cut the hose)
If you cut the hose getting the barb out might be a pain though………..

I’ve got the Hayes matchmakers and only use one on the left side for my dropper, I’ve found I need to run the brakes a bit closer to the grips than the codes/hope/shimano I’ve used in the past, the Hayes matchmaker then puts the shifter too close to my thumb when riding. (all personal preferance obviously)
I settled on using a sram discreet clamp for my shifter, I’d prefer it all to be on the same clamp but have been running it like that for a awhile now and cant really say it bothers me.

The other thing with the Hayes matchmakers is they come in a gloss finish (I guess to match the original A4 brakes) but the lever is a matt finish, so may be an issue if asthetics are your thing, the gloss finish also chips off very easily!

Oh and a few other things, the 2 sets or dominions I’ve got, both had rattly pads, I fixed this by bending the pad spring clips out a bit more and putting a tiny amount of copper grease on the edges of the pad backing plates (obviously be very careful not to get any on the pad material/rotors)

Also, sram 20mm adaptors dont work with the dominion calipers, unless you take a file to them, magura and hope do though..

And lastly, they’re designed to work with thicker rotors than the usual sram/shimano stuff, I use Sram HS2 rotors and they work really well, they did work with the older style srams but the lever throw is a bit more.

These are easily my favourite brakes, been running them for awhile now and they’re faultless….
BUT, trying to source spare parts is almost impossible, hotlines the importer is no use and will try to sell you lifeline hose kits which are a smaller bore than the original and not recommened by Hayes, I actually managed to get Hayes europe to send me an original hose kit but if I need another it maybe a struggle.
Also, trying to find spare olives and inserts (these use the newer 2 piece ones) is virtually impossible. the ebay sourced 1 piece ones are too small a diameter and will leak.

Saying all that though, I have just ordered 2 new rear sets (the levers arent front/rear specific) for spares as I can’t see me running any other brake now….

I just received a new frame from a the Bike Stable in Grimsby, took five days for them to ship but it was free postage and they use a local guy who delivers motorbikes around the Uk, he picked it up from the shop the previous night and delivered it straight to me in Berkshire for 9am the following morning, non of this processing hub or tracking number malarky, just straight from shop to van to me, with a text from the driver telling me what time he’d drop it off, its definitely the way to go….

Andrewreay, Thanks for the info, I’ll send Sram an email and see what the come back with.

I’ve been looking at ordering a Sram X01 AXS upgrade kit from them, has anyone been stung with import charges etc? Also, correct me if I’m wrong but I’m pretty sure I can get it warrantied here in the UK if need be (I’ve previously warrantied a reverb here in the UK which I bought from Germany) anyone any knowledge of this?

Dark on Netflix, nothing can touch that for complicated, awesome series and I reckon one of the best on netflix but I think its impossible to make it through all 3 seasons whilst knowing what the hell is going on

Deity speedway or one up

I’ve had a performance X2 which I previously swapped out for a factory version, it made a big difference to how the bike rode.
The performance X2 is specced on a fair few bikes, for the doubters here’s one for sale (not mine) https://www.pinkbike.com/buysell/3181977/

Got This for sale at the moment, can be reduced down to a 50mm stroke with a spacer

I’ve ridden a trance (115mm) and they do ride like they have a fair bit more travel, I recently bought a 2021 Trance X which is probably more suitable for his needs, I also own a 29er Reign and took both to BPW on a recent trip, I’ve now decided to sell the Reign as the Trance X is very capable downhill and didn’t feel out of its depth on any of the black runs, but it also climbs on another level, as an all rounder that can hit most downhills with confidence its hard to beat

Could be air in the lowers. If the fork doesn’t compress much when you let air out its most likely the cause. Easily done with a rebuild, and will make the fork feel too stiff.
Try the old zip tie trick of pushing the flat end of one between the wiper seals and the stanchion and see if you hear a hiss of escaping air.

Deity Speedway bars, best bars I’ve had, I find the sweep, rise etc spot on for me, they’re also really good at damping vibrations, better than the Race Face Next R’s I used to swear by

I’ve recently moved back to hopes (tech 3/v4) from sram code rsc’s and and I don’t understand people who say they lack power. Once set up and bedded in correctly (using sintered pads) they are easily as powerful as the codes.
I’ve found though that setup is key to getting the best out of them. Follow the hope videos and your can’t go wrong.
Admittedly they make a bit more noise when wet but with the power, feel and ease of bleeding/servicing I’m sticking with the hopes.

I’ve been trading for some time now and have a few stocks for long term but mainly do fairly short term trades, buying on any downturns and selling soon after.
This has done me quite well over the years and I’ve had a few recent stocks that have done exceptionally well over the last few months. The recent trend has been pharma’s that have any sniff of a covid treatment (that and gold exploration!)
People are getting carried away on sentiment and pilling into the aim listed stocks without looking at balance sheets etc, 600% to 1000% short term spikes have been common, only to see them crash down once reality kicks in. I’ve made a small fortune by taking the gamble and buying up penny shares once any covid news comes out and selling a week later.

At the moment though I’m about 80% cash in my trading ISA, the covid crash and bounce is over, I personally think there’s a huge crash coming with the impending recession/depression. There’s a lot more suffering to come for the markets yet and I’m keeping cash handy to make the most of it.

Most likely trapped air in the lower legs, Cycling up and down will take a long time, due to the amount of air.
Do the old zip tie trick of putting one down between the fork stanchion and dust wiper seal, you’ll hear air escape. excess air gets trapped in there when the lowers are put back on after a service, pretty much everytime I’ve serviced lyriks/pikes I’ve needed to do this.
I normally only have to do it once then they’ll be fine until the next service.

Try your local bike shops, I just got a couple for £10 each from one near me, they had them kicking about in the workshop.

I’ve had two Mondeo 2.5t’s both estates, fast cars when remaped (bluefin), can fit tons of stuff in them and make for great motorway cruisers, used to average 31ish mpg, boot it and they drink a lot.

Beware cracked cylinder liners though, pretty common on them, symptoms are similar to blown head gasket, I think there may have been various after market fixes for them, but if youb hear them ticking and any white smoke walk away

I’ve made the switch to Revit, most firms now insist on it over AutoCAD, I work in civils/structural and to be honest it’s not the best tool for the job, particularly when it comes to anything that ‘twists’, like curved bridge decks etc. There’s work arounds like using dynamo etc but that’s a whole different thing again that takes some learning.
For grid based buildings revits a great tool.

I do actually prefer using it now though, as the control you have over 3D models is much greater than anything AutoCAD can manage.

It does take some learning, there’s no UCS as such, you can’t insert objects to given co-ords and everything is object based rather than on layers. Revit was bought by Autodesk years ago and hasn’t really been changed a great deal over the years, there’s not that many similarities with AutoCAD.

I’ve been lucky and work alongside some very experienced users who can point me in the right direction, there’s a lot of different ways to get the same result with Revit, it can be tricky figuring out the most efficient and effective way without guidance from experienced users.

Same issue here with my recently purchased mx8 cassette, clicking in 3rd and sounds efin awful under heavy load, I was starting to think I’d bent my mech hanger. Guess it’s just dodgy manufacturing. Think I’ll get an xt ordered up tomorrow

Not sure what size wheels your after but I’m selling my xm1501’s, only had 6 months light use Ad here

I recently went perm from contracting for 15+ years. Contractings not what it used to be. IR35 changes, dividend tax etc all make it quite a bit less lucrative and with the disaster that is brexit looming, being a contractor on a week’s notice isn’t where I’d want to be.

Evans are doing 2019 RC2 lyriks for £549 here

Interesting site showing how MP’s voted on various issues in parliament

Lets start with Rees Mogg, the savour of the leavers

https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/24926/jacob_rees-mogg/north_east_somerset/votes

The blokes an utter **nt

I’ve had several Mondeo estates, the last one (08 plate, 2.0 tdci) managed 170k miles trouble free miles, 120k of those by me (all on original clutch etc, even managed to get 100k or of the front pads).

<span style=”font-size: 0.8rem;”>i Only got rid of it as the dmf started rattling and would have cost more to replace than the car was worth.</span>

I serviced it myself after 90k at a cost of £40 per service and it averaged 50mpg over the time I had it.

Don’t believe the 2.2 is better on fuel, I had one for awhile and it couldn’t get anything better than 40mpg.

Latest 2.0 Titanium X (12 plate) isn’t quite as good as the 08 plate on fuel but have now done 20k in it and it’s proving just as reliable as the previous one.

As for size. I don’t think I could live with anything smaller. I’m always amazed by how much stuff you can get in the back. Once drove to Austria with 3 bikes (with wheels, bars off) all in the boot with the load cover pulled over, and 3 of us and luggage.

I ride Swinley pretty much every week as its on my doorstep, I rarely ride much of the official stuff, a lot of the old stuff is still there and the off piste still has a fair bit of big stuff, as much as a lot on this thread say it’s all too easy, boring etc, there are still some 20ft+ gaps and one or two decent (over 6ft) drops about.

I wouldn’t even say its that hard to find, Camel trail has a few half decent size features on it / near it and most people that ride swinley even occasionally know where it is. One particular 23ft gap (has been measured) is pretty much ridden past by almost everyone who rides the red trails, they just don’t look in the right direction when going past it to see it.

Don’t be put off by what a lot of people on here tell you, sure, if you stick to the official stuff it can be a bit dull in places, but even that has a few sneaky double etc that most don’t see (even if the trail team do their best to flatten anything and everything that’s slightly fun) It’s just more of a place you can session the same sections/ features a few times rather than long jump filled decents

Get married in the winter and haggle.

We saved a fortune on our wedding by originally booking it for November (winter weddings are normally cheaper) and also the fact it was 2013 which meant a lot of couples didn’t want to get married that year due to it being deemed unlucky.

I then managed to change the date to the last summer day available (August) and kept the same winter price, the venue were also doing a deal of £2013 off for summer weddings that year, which I also cheekily managed to get them to apply, making our deal more than 50% cheaper than it should have been for a wedding at the venue that time of year.

This was at a nice, normally expensive venue in Ascot/Sunningdale with 5 hotel rooms included and another 20 at reduced rate for guests, all catering and sole use of the venue, plus breakfast the next day

With a total of 50 day guests and another 60 evening the lot came in at under 5.5k

Also saved a fortune on the cake by buying cupcakes from waitrosse (they do/did them to order £1 each) and using a £10 cake from sainsburys on top

Mother in-law paid for the dress which saved us another load

Oh and ask for cash as gifts, we discovered people are mega generous at weddings, we ended up with over 5k as gifts which pretty much paid for the venue.

Good Luck

Had canecreek double barrels, various rockshox, fox and even marzocchi over the years, the best by far is the fox x2. Been on one for over a year now, outperforms all the others, plus the set up guide from fox is almost bang on. Failing that get a fox dhx rc4 coil, bit heavier bit just works…

Has anyone on here got a crconception kit to hand? I’d like to get the pike kit measurements, (spring length and also the lower leg rod length too) if it’s not too much trouble.
Just want to compare with my lyrik kit.

Cheers

I have a set of Lyriks which I converted to coils using a crconception kit, I’ve actually decided to go back to air, a lot has to do with the fact my lyriks are a bit creaky in the uppers and will probably get warrantied at some point (be a bit tricky with a coil in there) and also I’m actually quite happy with the air shock on the Lyrik.

Anyhow, the upshot of this is that I now have a coil kit to get rid of so if anyone is interested in getting a kit cheap let me know, the kit is for a 160mm lyrik I’m sure it will be fine in the pike, the only thing I can see different to Richards instructional pics is that it has a white spacer under the air cap rather than an insert.

My weight is around 12.3 stone, which with the kit gave me approx 23-25% sag.
The only thing you may need is a fresh sheet of acetate to go inside the stantion although the existing one could most likely be used again.

I’ve had various estates over the years and have always come back to the good old mondeo.

The Octavia was a nice car but lacked kit (even the newer zetec mondeo has better kit than the higher range octavia) and space and I did have a few problems, it was actually one of the least reliable cars I’ve owned.

I had an Avensis on loan for a week too, I actually quite liked it but it did lack space compared to the mondeo, I think it was more to do with the shape of the boot than actual space though, some things just wouldn’t fit through the boot opening where they do in the mondeo.

I’m currently looking to replace my current mondeo (09 plate) with another newer one, as I just can’t really fault it, mines now got 160k on it (120k done by me) and (touch wood) has given me zero issues.

I know a few people who work for fishers, the biggest issue they seem to have is the fact that bike shops generally take for ever to send in or return customers goods, letting fishers take the wrap for it.

I had to return a reverb awhile ago and used a local bike shop to return it as I needed the warranty claim number, the shop wouldn’t agree to me just giving it to my mate who works for fishers and deals with the reverb warrantys, they prefered to keep it saying they’d get it off the next day.
Anyhow, over a week later my mate contacted me saying they still hadn’t recieved it, when I spoke with the bike shop they told me they dropped it in three days previous and Fishers were to blame, when I said I’ve spoken with fishers they then changed their story to they posted it and it must have been delayed.
Two days later I get a phone call from my mate saying the shop have just dropped it in, the funkers still stuck to the lost in post story even when I went to collect the replacement.

In the two weeks the seatpost was gone, fishers had it for one and a bit days before the new one went out and the shop had it for the remainder.

Don’t believe everything the shop tells you.

I once traded in a mondeo Ghia x for a 3.0 litre sport x type, the most regrettable car decision I’ve ever made, basically all the ford bits on it worked fine and all the jag bits (transfer box and other mega expensive bits) failed.
I recently saw my old mondeo too, still going strong after 7 years with the owner telling me he’s never serviced it, the jag lasted a few months…
Get a mondeo, it’s a better car.

I’m 5’10 and a bit and originally bought a large, then downsized to a medium soon after, the large is LARGE, huge wheelbase, I had it set up with a 35mm stem but put a 50mm on the medium and it was a much better fit for, I also found the front didn’t wash out anywhere near as much as with the large due to that fact it was much easier to get my weight in the right place in fast corners.

I think getting the right size when your 5’9-5’11 on most bikes is pretty hard these days as you fall right in most manufacturers overlap of sizes.

With the patrol I’d say go large if you like steady and stable and don’t mind the extra effort when it’s in the air or go medium if you want something more flickable (the medium still has a fairly big wheelbase).

Medium Reign on the other hand fits like a glove

All personal preferences of course…

Wouldn’t really class the Reign as dull, it’s probably the funnest bike I’ve owned, just tune the shock to suit….
My reigns bearings have already outlasted by 3 times the life of the bearings in my old patrol and the shock mounts are showing no sign of wear either.

As for paint, find me a bike with decent paint these days, they’re a rare thing, mines normally too dirty to notice anyhow but seems to be holding up ok.

As BigJim said, they are both awesome bikes, the Reign is just that bit more awesome for me

No worries, well in that case get it bought!!
I know a few happy transition owners who swear by the brand, unfortunatly my experiance has put me off getting another one, I’ve got no complaints with the Reign over the last year though, easiest bike I’ve ever owned to get on with.
The lifetime warranty on the Giant should give you peace of mind too.

I may have just been unlucky and it was one of the early orange frames, plus windwave sorted me out fairly quickly with a replacement front triangle but they weren’t interested in the worn bearings, although I have heard others managed to get them warrantied too.

It’s definitley worth you looking at the pinkbike forum http://www.pinkbike.com/forum/listcomments/?threadid=164496
There’s a few reports of cracked carbon frames too, but then again there is on the equally extensive giant reign thread too….

Personally I dont think the weight saving is worth the extra cost over aluminium on either model.

Get the alu Reign, with the money you save over the carbon wack a fox X2 on it (got one on mine, awesome shock for the bike) and you’ll never look back…..