The Troutlight is soon to take the UAE by storm, so anticipate lots more orders for the 2nd run as soon as everyone sees them out here :D

When looking into batteries late last year when looking to upgrade some lights, I investigated li-po cells. Seemed great, good value, light-weight, powerful, but then I read a bit into the dangers :?

A quick bit of googling, and this thread on an RC modelling forum showed just how dangerous they could be, Youtube has some nice li-po batteries catching fire too 8O

Personally, the last thing I want when crashing my bike, is for large amounts of poisonous gas to fire out of my battery pack, prior to it catching fire :oops:

The Ay-up lights use li-po batteries, but inside nice little hard plastic cases, but the soft packs I wouldn't touch with a barge-pole.

Hence why I decided to make some 18650 holders instead.

Interesting that the Fourth4 site says how great the Li-po cells are, but doesn't mention anything about the potential risks :evil:

Seem to have gone a bit off topic and ranty, sorry!

Cheers, Rich

I bought one of these, can't remember exactly which one, but it was probably the cheapest :lol:

Can zip-tie/velcro to the bars, very neat and compact, might be worth a look.

Cheers, Rich

How do the rules differ for a 2nd job?

I've sold a few of my battery holders, and my wife is keen for me to be all above board and pay tax etc.

As I'm already paying NI on my main job, do I still have to pay it again on a small 2nd income (pocket money really).

I see where dropoff is coming from with insurance, but I would expect that would mean that it wasn't worth my while trying to sell anything :(

Any thoughts appreciated.

Cheers, Rich

lets give it a go eh?

turboferret at gmail dot com

Cheers, Rich

Not necessarily quite so relevant now the new bike specific DealExtreme light is out, but if you are looking to extend the run-time of your P7 without needing to swap batteries over, you could add a Turboferret external kit.

Cheers, Rich

The difference between coasting in neutral and lifting off is the amount of fuel which the management system has to inject.

When coasting, the engine needs fuel to keep it turning over, albeit not very much, as it isn't doing any work.

When lifting off, the computer stops injecting any fuel, and the engine is turned over purely by the the drivetrain.

This is certainly the case in most modern fuel injected vehicles, although with carbs I suspect it won't be quite so dramatic.

Cheers, Rich

328i, because it's fast and practical, and lots of RWD fun.

But mainly because a mate was selling it for £200 :D

Cheers, Rich

b17, understood, maybe my bruise didn't count as a haematoma, but the way it grew and was a solid deep purple colour meant it was the biggest baddest mofo I've even had, and hope never to have again!

Cheers, Rich

I had an interesting injury a few years ago, racing DH and falling off catching my bars in my groin, just above where you have a load of glands.

Swelled up like a squash ball at the impact site, and I needed to have quite a bit of fluid drained off, as Id ruptured a vein. A week later I had what they described at the hospital as a secondary bleed, where the vein dribbled a load of blood into my thigh – I ahd a deep purple bruise that grew an inch a day until it was below the knee, and wrapped 75% around my thigh, From reading this thread that was a haematoma considerably worse than the one on the wikipedia page 8O

Was told to rest, but was between cars at the time, so commuting 54 miles a day for 2 weeks with it probably didn't do much good. Looked freaky as hell sticking out the bottom of some cycling shorts….

Cheers, Rich

Endura ones for my, quite probably the MT500.

Resisted for ages as I thought they looked ridiculous, but a convert now, and really like them.

The neoprene ones keep your feet warm as well as dry, the gore-tex type ones just keep your feet dry.

My neoprene ones mean that I can use the one pair of road shoes all year round without getting frozen toes.

Cheers, Rich

I've got a Dakine Split Roller, and it's excellent.

Couple internal compartments for organising stuff, but not too many to impede the usefulness of the bag.

Have it's smaller brother as hand luggage too.

Cheers, Rich

Just spoke to Matt (Mr Middleburn) on the phone to get the low down, who is currently in an airport somewhere in Europe.

The prototypes are currently being tested, and there should be some photos floating about shortly, as there were some on a display at Eurobike.

Should be available around the end of the year.

Been a bit of a wait for a big new product from Middleburn, hopefully it'll be worth the wait :D

Cheers, Rich

Mixture by the looks of it – CRC and Charge are Flash, others are ani gifs – right click and you can tell.

Cheers, Rich

For the record, I met my girlfriend when I was 24, and she was 18. She went off to Uni a few months after we met, and then to make life even more difficult, I started working abroad.

That was 6 years ago, we've been married for 2 :-)

Cheers, Rich

Val d'Isere is not within two hours of Geneva

Depends on how you're travelling :D

Point taken though, closer to 2 1/2 hours to Val d.

Cheers, Rich

Me and the missus have just booked a room in a chalet in Val d'Isere – £679 each, 4 star, half board. There are certainly cheaper places around, but we thought this was pretty good. Have a search on Iglu Ski if you're interested.

Val-d isn't everyone's cup of tea, but the Espace Killy is hard to fault in my opinion.

Must try Portes de Soleil in the future though, heard good things.

Cheers, Rich

Always happy to provide useless links :)

Things good here, although spending 75% of my time in Dubai – if it's under 40 degrees for biking, that's considered pleasant!

Battery holders still selling well, your pattens holding up beautifully :D

Cheers, Rich

Here seems to have it, although their stock availability isn't obvious…

Cheers, Rich

I have a mainly white snakeskin effect SLR on my Orange, it's awesome :D

Was even better when it matched my old white frame, but such is life :)

You could always use some tip-ex if it doesn't stay super white.

Cheers, Rich

I wouldn’t necessarily trust the Middleburn website to be 100% up to date – give Matt a ring and ask him, he’ll give you the low down.

Cheers, Rich

Middleburn cranks are now forged in Italy (used to be in Wales), but are machined and anodised etc in the UK, still pretty British though :)

Rings and hubs are all fully UK.

Cheers, Rich

Is it just for me, or has the DX website been down for everyone for a couple of days?

Waiting for some LED’s to come from them, and want to order a fair few other bits too.

Cheers, Rich

blatant excuse to show off my new toy :lol:

trail_rat, close with the name – well remembered :D

Glad to hear I was useful back in the day!

Cheers, Rich

However, remember not to fart too much

:D

You occasionally have a tiny bit of interference between the crank arm and the spider, but I can’t remember what combinations were a problem, and if it was only a couple of batches that were affected.

If you do have a problem 20 seconds with a file on the corner sorts it right out.

trail_rat is 99.99% correct :)

Cheers, Rich (ex Middleburn design gimp from about 8 years ago)

About the trains in Cae Du, they aren’t so quiet if you pitch your tent as close to the railway line as possible – possibly not my most sensible decision ever :D

The big stones for camp-fires are great until you manage to reverse over on with the car, not being as careful as you might, and wreck a tyre in the process :roll:

We woke up one night to some clattering, to find a hedgehog was finishing up the scraps in the pans we’d left outside, which was most amusing – we bought some cat food for him the next day :-)

Oh, it was an STW recommendation that I followed to stay there in the first place, so thanks guys!

Cheers, Rich

Might it have been from a car accident, and she gave an old address to avoid any prosecution/NCB.

Having said that, assuming the other party had the reg number, she’d be traceable through the DVLA, so perhaps not…

Cheers, Rich

The missus and I spent a couple of weeks camping in Wales last summer, and the nicest one we stayed at was Cae Du.

Close to a railway line, but not many trains, and right on the coast, picture doesn’t really do it justice.

Cheers, Rich

Could also try Impsport, used them a few times a few years ago, and stuff was very nice, still wearing some of it.

One thing to bear in mind, is most places will use one screen print to do all sizes. If you have a range of sizes of kit to be made, consider how things will match up between panels, as they might not work so well at the extreme ends of the size spectrum.

Cheers, Rich

Just to confuse matters, I’ve found the complete opposite – built up a Trek carbon frame (not sure which one) and I actually prefer my Langster :D

Maybe it’s because I was a lot fitter when I was riding my Specialised quite a bit, and after a few months of not much riding, and getting on the Trek, it’s more lack of fitness than the bike.

However, I find the aluminium frame a lot more responsive, and comfortable, the carbon frame is pretty harsh, and doesn’t seem to put the power down as directly.

Obviously one carbon frame can be worlds apart from another, but it’s certainly worth riding before buying.

Cheers, Rich

Utility suppliers are pretty rubbish – I was renting a place in Dorking, and it turned out that we didn’t actually have a gas supplier, even though we were using gas. Being terribly disorganised I didn’t start trying to sort this out until pretty soon before we were moving out, after reaching the conclusion that no particular supplier wanted any money from us, but that Transco weren’t happy.

Failed to reach any satisfactory conclusion with anyone, so handed the matter over to my landlord to continue with. The meter had never been properly registered, even though it had been in the past, and we got away with 1 years worth of gas FOC :D

Cheers, Rich

or, click the scroll wheel, if your scroll is clickable, I nearly always open links in new tabs, and end up with eleventy tabs open, not knowing what linked from where :)

Cheers, Rich

Map linky

Cheers, Rich

I use my iPod on my commute to work, but only use the left earphone, so my traffic side ear is free. I’d feel very isolated in a little musical bubble otherwise.

I love my RC31’s on my tinbred, and riding rigid has made me much quicker on my full-suss too.

The bumps on the descent of the XC course at Cwmcarn did get quite tedious, but that’s about the only occasion I have been riding with them that I was wishing I had suspension forks instead.

Cheers, Rich

You could be cheeky and see if you could get an extended test ride from somewhere local, or even take half a days holiday to ride into work and back during rush hour.

Infinity in Farnborough might be worth talking to.

I motorbike from Farnham to Leatherhead most days, and the motorbike is a godsend. When the traffic is fine, then it’s probably marginally quicker to just jump in the car dressed, and get out the other day ready to work, rather than getting changed. However, when the traffic is bad, and it only takes a minor snarl to have wide-reaching consequences, then I’m delighted to be carving through the jams on 2 wheels :-)

Once you get used to filtering through traffic though, you never want to go back!

I do normally cycle once a week, and ought to do it more, but I find a 60 mile round trip isn’t something I can do every day, clearly I need to MTFU :D

Cheers, Rich

Ski, you’ll be fine, and have a **** good laugh I’m sure.

Good thing about a 250 is it’s pretty difficult to completely trap yourself underneath the thing when inevitably you fall off, and the thing is on top of you, often burning your leg on the exhaust, and if you’re lucky, spilling petrol on you too :)

Getting trapped under my 750 off road was a regular occurrence, I’d often have to dig my way out :D

Cheers, Rich

Nettle stings always remind me of the first race of the year at Beastway, as the undergrowth wouldn’t have been beaten into submission by hundreds of bikers. Any overtaking on the narrow stuff would inevitably mean through the brambles and nettles, to the point that it’d be difficult to sleep that night!