I was actually expecting to be contacted by 15 different Taiwanese bike manufacturers, who'd engage in a bidding war. The game plan was that I'd be offered as many bikes as I could take at a cost of 50p each on 90 day credit terms.

I'd realise a 10000% margin on each bike, and use my fortune to become one of the Dragons on the telly. I'd become famous for deciding whether to invest or not from downstairs with Evan Davies, without actually listening to or seeing any of the pitches – because the pitch in the middle of the show is always the good pitch. I'd have Noel Edmonds upstairs acting as my agent, with that red phone of his.

After building my reputation, I'd retire to Scunthorpe, and churn out books on absolutely every area of business, pointing out the fairly obvious. Like Porter does.

Once I'd get bored of that, I'd publish a scandalous autobiography, claiming that there is a pleasant side to Deborah Meaden. And how Peter Jones would go ballistic on a daily basis over Edmond's shirts.

Or on the other hand, I might have had a few thoughts and wondered what the viability of a very small bicycle firm might be, without wanting to invest a huge amount of time.

If I'd had an incredible idea, I wouldn't be asking about it on here either.

A quick shufti at minimum order quantities suggests that "dipping a toe in" wouldn't be a viable strategy.

a competitor cycle import business

It wouldn't be in the same sector as any of the guys I can think of who post on here. Not a mountain bike, and not a Roadrat type thing either.

Cheers.

Custom frames are nice, but dying markets are rarely the place to be 😆
I could see a place for custom carbon, and it's not like it's real rocket science stuff anymore.

Hmm. I'd be looking to sell at around the £300 pricepoint. Preferably cheaper.

It's clearly possible as the likes of Decathlon turn out reasonable bikes for not far above £100, but they'll obviously operate on big volumes.

The original post wasn't hugely detailed, but I've written business plans before and so have some idea of what's involved. I'm lucky enough that I'm in a position where I'd be able to self fund to some extent, have access to free storage and do the day to day work involved myself. As a result, start up costs are pretty minimal, and so the minimum volume that I'd need to shift is also pretty small.

As I see it, if I can order in relatively small numbers, then I can "dip a toe in the water" without exposing myself to much risk. Bikes have an innate value, and you could just offload your stock on eBay if it wasn't going well.

However, start putting in loads of legwork visiting trade shows to see products and speak to manufacturers will very quickly raise the start up costs. Which then raises the volume you've got to shift, which means bigger orders, and that of course means a bigger initial investment. So I'd like some idea if the initial model would work, hence the question on volumes asked on a bike forum where quite a few bike co. gaffers hang about…

Podge, I'd be looking at buying direct from OEMs, preferably as built as possible before being put into the box. Probably fairly basic steel frames.

You want a hydraulic hose firm, you do – they normally work for construction & agriculture. Pirtek are one of the big ones.

Gabriel Reece

Jesus christ. She looks like she could tear the average bloke limb from limb!

1) You will need to key everything. Think 1200 grit sandpaper or a grey scotchbrite pad. That kind of grade of abrasive will just take the shine off.

3) Conservatory? Anywhere warmish really to get all the solvents out of the paint. Even just in the house. Don't put it on top of a radiator though – the paint will probably stick when it gets hot.

The Moneysavingexpert has a phone buying site comparison service. There's a fair bit of difference, and Mazuma aren't normally the best for prices.

Bondhus make the Park ones. The Bondhus tools are identical.

I've never liked him, or his squad of paid for mates who clap all the time. I can't see why he should still be on the radio after he murdered all those prostitutes.

Googling that email address suggests that you've been doing pretty much the same thing on the CTC website in the past. I can't work out what you're up to.

I suspect if you try to get a kid to learn three languages simultaneously, you stand a strong chance of them doing badly at all of them. Do badly at English and you'll struggle through your education.

But I'm not a speech therapist.

😆

Didn't something get published recently that said stretching before exercise was no use?

Granted, flexibility in general is handy to have.

Sent us a load of doctors and people willing to put in some graft. In the next decade we'll probably become more closely linked to India as an economy, due to the relatively small psychic distance between us.

Not sure if it will go back to old classib cotterless crankset etc

Modern cranks are cotterless (square taper or splined). The old style are cottered – ie, they have cotter pins.

I really wouldn't bother with wet and dry. Chrome is tough but you can eventually wear it down. The vast majority of what you see as rust spots is actually staining – the rust seems to come from tiny pinholes in the chroming.

I've actually used a pan scourer and WD on 1950s chromed bike parts and it works perfectly, and costs nowt.

The easiest way to get rust off stuff is to use WD40 / GT85 / TF2 / Any other spray with letters and numbers, and a green pan scourer or wire wool. Usually that will clean chrome up fine.

The BB will be a proper cup and cone job, I can't remember what tool I used to undo the one on a 1950s bike I picked up, think there was a lockring and a pin wrench involved.

You will also probably have cottered cranks – Sheldon Brown has an article on these.

You can still get quill type headsets, but you may be able to clean up the chrome, put some new grease and balls in and be on your way.

I liked the history of the bike bits. The bit about him building his "dream bike" almost got in the way. Do you really need to get your wheels built by one particular guy in the US, out of fairly common bits?

As others have said, the bit were a bit incongruous. All nice kit individually, but it didn't really seem to hang together as a bike.

Yes. I don't really watch music videos, and every time I see them, I'm pretty amazed at what's broadcast.

I also find what's rated as a 12A pretty incredible too. Casino Royale was an incredibly violent film. Speaking as someone who's had his fair share of fights and seen a fair few violent films, the fight scene in the toilets at the beginning of Casino Royale is very graphic and pretty realistic. I didn't enjoy it at all, and if I'd taken a kid to see the film, I'd have been very angry. Ten or twenty years ago the film would easily have been an 18.

If you mist on several light costs, you get a nice flat / orange peel finish, depending on how heavy the coats were.

I assume the parts you're painting will be aluminium. So you to do it properly, you need etch primer (u-pol make it in rattle cans, they're a nice red colour). My advice would be to remove any existing paint, etch prime, then spray a very light mist coat of colour. Once your mist coat hast flashed off, your top coats have something to stick to, which helps reduce runs. Again, spray your top coats relatively lightly, as I assume you'll be using rattle cans.

Rattle can paint is very thin as an aerosol doesn't have much power. Because of this, you'll need to do several coats, but being very careful not to put too much on and let it run. Don't be surprised if you can still see the primer colour through your first top-coat.

The other issue is that any coating is certainly going alter the size of the components a fair bit. I'd advise practicing on something like an old beer can to get the hang of it.

When it's all done, stick everything in your airing cupboard for a week to get properly dry, or the paint will rip off as soon as you use the bits.

Some films do it – a lot of landscape photographers have massive stashes of Fuji Velvia, which really overdoes or brings out the colours, depending on your point of view.

Cast iron pan as hot as possible, on the biggest burner you have.

I suggest the Health'n'Safety fanatics who'd rather be safe than sorry have a look at this:

http://fatallyflawed.org.uk/%5B/url%5D

The site demonstrates numerous failure modes for these devices. The safest system is built into MK sockets, and requires all three shutters to be triggered at once – ie, by a plug and by nothing else.

Look mastiles fanylion, unless your kids are making you cups of tea as soon as they can walk, and start cooking pretty soon after, you're molly coddling them. Once they get up to 6 or 7, they'll be strong enough to work a trolley jack, and you can set them on changing the car oil. Once they've proven they can do that competently, you can let them do the discs and pads.

Some people…

But it's current that does you, not the voltage. So the US supply must be able to jolt out twice as much current.

But I reckon it'll still short to earth, not to the blokes in the pool. Not a sparky though.

That was pretty much my thought too. I'm not sure it's a real problem.

Did Raleigh ever make that many decent bikes? All the good stuff seems to be Carlton.

I'm ooop Norf.

You must bear in mind that we are talking about my girlfriend. She wants a bike that looks nice and stops well. To some extent, looks take precedence over function 😆

In other words, it basically has to be a classic Pashley Princess / Raleigh Cameo type frame for her to be happy. The thing that I'm wondering about is the potential for an old Raleigh to end up costing as much as a new Pashley by the time you've sorted it out…

I'm 50/50 as to whether this is someone taking the mickey from Mumsnet or something.

Here are a few basics:

Fixies as a rule are overpriced.
Bicycles are very simple things – things like brake failure can be avoided through some basic care and servicing. Things like changing the cables once in while.
Second hand "racer" type bikes are often very cheap and a good way to get around, as they're not horribly likely to get nicked.
Ratty old mountain bikes are similar – nobody's going to nick a mountain bike with rigid forks, V-brakes and commuting tyres.
Bikes are very simple (I know I'm repeating myself). Buy a book on bicycle maintenance and you can make sure your bike is safe and works well for very little outlay. There is only one proviso – buy something really cheap, and no amount of work will make it into a safe bike, as the parts are such poor quality that they're not fit for the job.

Edinburgh Bike Co-op (they have branches outside of Edinburgh too) and Decathlon both sell decent bikes for what you want. The Decathlon B'Twin Riverside 3 looks ideal, costs £199, has a rack, dynamo lights, lots of gears and proper brakes. I believe Decathlon also have good warranties and servicing.

Ridgeback also make some decent bikes in this price range.

You won't be able to pick up anything new with drop bars that is any good on the cheap. Decathlon's cheapest road bike is £270. Racing bike brake levers and shifters are just too expensive.

I had something similar – it was caused by a trapped nerve. Phsyio and a change in posture fixed it.

There were some figures released a while ago with a full breakdown of accident causes. The leading cause was inattention.

As PP has said, for the committed speeder, cameras are no bother at all. Statics get slowed down for, and once a mobile camera's been spotted, you know the rest of the county is probably clear.

The people who I know who get nicked by cameras a fair bit are generally fairly uninterested drivers. Half of my mate's family have been repeatedly nicked by the same mobile camera, in the same place about half a mile from their house. My mum now does an emergency stop for every camera. How the hell do you do that unless you're not paying any attention?

By far the biggest behavior change I've seen is the reaction to the signs that display your speed. They make much more difference to traffic speed than a camera does.

I really can't understand the logic behind road pricing – if we want to charge people for travelling about, pump up the fuel duty. Miles travelled is pretty proportional to fuel use, with inbuilt penalties for speeding and going to town at peak time. Road charging needs a load more infrastructure, and opens a massive can of worms on the privacy front.

Condensor driers use more juice, make the place feel a bit clammy and take a long time to dry stuff. Ours is pretty decent (cheap Indesit), but my Mum's expensive Bosch couldn't dry a shirt in an hour!

I can see how a washer drier would be good – if you're out at work and can set it up so your clothes are drying just as you get home. If someone's in, and you've a lot of washing to get through, a washer and a vented drier will get through it quicker and use less leccy.

Really? How and where?

Sounds good. I'm absolutely fed up of documentaries where the presenter, who often knows a bit about the field, asks an expert stupid scripted questions.

Gordon Murray has ripped chunks out of the Veyron a few times. He reckons they dropped a massive clanger when they said "We're going to built a car that does 400kph and it'll look like this".

There's a reason why almost all really fast road cars share their shape with things like the McLaren F1 & LeMans prototypes. It's the best shape for the job.

I reckon it's pretty easy to see how the Veyron costs 5 million to make. Almost every other supercar manufacturer has either a fairly standard configuration of engine, or buys one in and hots it up. The Veyron has an engine which is unique to the car – not just different heads, but a different block. The thing's not aerodynamically brilliant, so it needs lots of radiators. And there's an astonishing amount of technology involved in keeping it on the ground. But ultimately, the big problem with making a Veyron is that it's scratch built. Almost everything had to be developed for that car, so all the set up costs are pushed into the price.

That said, get something like a McLaren F1 or an Ultima, and you'd get it going as fast with considerably less horses.

It's always struck me as a scam.