If you don’t need a hood (or have the skills to attach a zip-off one from another coat) then military surplus Gore Tex is cost effective:

RAF £15:

Royal Navy £25:

http://www.britishmilitarysurplus.co.uk/shop/jackets.html amongst many others.

Weekends are for toys.

Will,can I ask you why you have changed from a 110mm drop to a 90mm? I have been waiting to buy one from yourself but surely 90mm is kinda going backwards? was there an issue with the longer drop? Cheers and keep up the good work

Hi they were never 110mm, I did consider getting some made with a 110mm drop, but that would restrict the number of frames they would fit – not everyone has enough seat post showing to allow for a 110mm drop. Maybe in future if sales go well I will get some 110mm ones in.

Hi all, Will@BigMassive.co.uk here. Just wanted to stop by to respond to a couple of things:

The TrailDrop uses a revised bushing material to combat the “sticky when wet” syndrome – you may note the bushing is “dark grey” in colour rather than black ( http://www.bigmassive.co.uk/traildrop-spares/ ). I supply all posts with a boot included to help keep the muck out, however to maximise the life of the bushing I advise they are given 5 mins attention after a wet ride. The boot can be cable tied at the very top (just under the clamp) with a thin tie to make sure it rises up with the post if yours is sticking.

The 90 degree cable entry previously supplied required a “thin” type inner cable. The last batch had the inner cable clamped at the lever end by grub screws. The combination of extra resistance from the 90 degree entry, the thin cable and the way it was clamped by grub screws on the lever led to a small number of customers snapping cables when out riding. I took the decision to warn customers with a remote with this particular combination (grub screw lever, 90 degree entry and thin cable) about the issue as soon as it was discovered and have now supplied a replacement remote unit based on a direct entry cable port and thicker inner. Most have not had a problem – but I hated the idea of people being stranded with a post stuck in position so I warned and sent out replacements as soon as I could get them (recent typhoon in Taiwan caused additional delay).

27.2 TrailDrop Dropper Seatpost By BigMassive.co.uk

If anyone has questions about TrailDrop posts don’t hesitate to drop me an email.

We did this in Jan/Feb.

Bought 60x 60cm beach plants on ebay (these were cheapest).

Delivered by DHL from somewhere in NI.

Quickly planted and they are growing like mad now :)

Bike24 are cheap for Deores, which are basically the same.

I wrap a strap about my roof carrier clamp – so if it did come loose, the bike would waggle about but couldn’t jump out of the arm.

I bought a lovely carbon road frame before xmas direct from China.

Now I see you can get a carbon road frame from Ribble for a very similar price. I would have bought from Ribble (somewhere to take it back!) if they were as cheap back then. The price you get direct from china for one frame must be double the price of buying a container of 50, hence why Ribble can do them for that price.

http://www.ribblecycles.co.uk/sp/road-track-bike/Road-Bike-Frames-Ribble-Evo-Pro-Carbon-Road-Frame/RIBBFRAR930

Can’t be long until someone offers the CX frames at direct prices but with UK support.

£350 starts to sound steep when its £200 – £250 for the road/mtb frames they knock out.

A603007152

Just noticed you posted the frame number. The first number is the year and second two are the month. The letter “A” signifies it was made in the A-Pro factory in Taiwan.

Therefore it was made March 1996.

Now do I get to say “I told you so”?

I would say 1995/6. I had one of the first new in ’94 and it came with black decals, the downtube logo was the older design although yours could have been replaced.

Orange will tell you for sure from the frame number.

Its not Tange prestige. Prior to the P7 Orange made an “Orange Prestige” made of Tange prestige. The P7 was its replacement and made of Orange’s own tubing blend (i.e. it was cheaper to buy in a generic tubeset of equivalent quality).

Great bike.

I think some are missing the point…. clearly it needs work!

An open source shifting mechanism is fantastic! Think about what Linux did for IT…. A closer example: MegaSquirt ECU for car engines allowing full control.

These are very early prototypes – imagine dedicated & neat servos being produced, your own custom software, multiple shifting maps for your unique combination of gears, the mech being poised for a downshift when the other sensors on the bike detect you are likely to downshift, perfect shifting every time….Ok thats maybe a while off, but the tools exist to build all this stuff.

one of the things that surprised me about Di2 was that it wasn’t wireless

Could you imagine if the protocol was hacked during the TDF!!!

Perfectly possible, but means you need batteries at each end. Small ones at the shifters and big ones at the mech. Perhaps they felt it was better to have the weight of the battery mounted centrally, requiring a wired solution.

Or perhaps they are saving that for Di3?

350z are the same. Get a rear puncture and you must put a front wheel on the back and the space saver on the front. Tyre foam carried at all times…

Its the limited slip diff – different size tyres would cause it to lock all the time and soon trash it.

Someone else is at it too:

http://www.diyshift.com/index.html

That is brilliant.

Love hacks like this….

Have one of these (£4.99):

http://www.planet-x-bikes.co.uk/i/q/BAPXSSB/planet_x_small_saddle_bag

Which fits this little pump in (£3.99):

http://www.planet-x-bikes.co.uk/i/q/TOPHGP04S/phaart_sbd_mini_pump

Along with a tube, puncture kit, levers, couple of allen keys and my house keys. Leaving my jersey pockets for food and iPhone and Montane Pertex jacket if the weather might be changeable.

I have a fascination for disused ancient roads too…

I did think about MTBing as many as I could, then I dragged my bike over the Maiden Way in Cumbria and thought better of it.

Some reading:

A Compendium of High Roads and Road Passes in Great Britain.
http://www.hodology.com/styled-6/index.html

The Old Roads of Britain.
http://www.hodology.com/styled-3/index.html

Land’s End to John O’Groats – Off-road by Mountain Bike
http://www.users.waitrose.com/~ianclare/lejogoffroadbymountainbike.htm

USE shims are 100mm long IIRC

Hi BeagleBoy – thanks for the note.

All pre-ordered TrailDrop seatposts will be packaged and sent out w/c 10th June. Stock will show on the website then for “normal” orders too.

Cheers, Will.

TrailDrop 27.2 dropper seatpost by bigmassive

Its a 2010 model, so no kashmina / big headtube / bolt through rear like the latest, but rear triangle cable routing aside it looks the same bike to me.

We had 20 of the feckers to get out when we moved to our new place. Luckily some years previous they had been topped to 8ft high so the first part of the job was done.

We wanted the lot out, stumps and all as it is a garden and we wanted a nice beech hedge instead.

Used a electric chainsaw to cut all branches off leaving 8ft trunks. Luckily the farmer across the way had a loader so he pushed and pulled the trunks accessible from the road out for us, pulled them straight out….

The others I used some wire stretchers to pull them over – one end to the top of one trunk, bottom of another and winch! Used an axe to hack away at the roots and they toppled over complete with stumps.

If you want the stumps out then don’t cut them off to ground level or you will be digging a lot and swearing a lot, 6-8ft of trunk gives you some leverage.

and queen60 for 60 off 350!

thanks all!

TrailDrop dropper seatpost 27.2 by bigmassive[/url]

Hi all, the latest TrailDrop (much larger batch this time) will be back in stock for ordering next week, and all those who pre-ordered will get theirs first.

There’s a couple of minor improvements in TrailDrop over the seatpost pictured above, and the (essential!) boot is included in the price.

Keep an eye on the website / sign up to notifications to hear more ;)

Would be great if those people who have a TrailDrop could post their experiences up here.

Cheers, Will

Raw ti and hand welded in the UK:

Oh and its for sale http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/20-rsp-550-titanium-frame-hand-made-in-the-uk-disc-v-welded-raw-finish

I could rarely be bothered to faff putting the seat down (compromising fun on the DH), and when I did I could never get it back in just the correct place afterwards quickly (annoying when pedalling).

Dropper post takes care of that nicely. If you rarely drop the seatpost as you don’t ride trails that warrant dropping the post, then you don’t need one.

I got Tim Gould’s autograph at a ‘cross race about 16 years ago.

Now where did I put it….

What makes an XTR an xtr?

No idea. If you close your eyes can you tell the difference between a deore and an XTR rear mech?

I would hope they use better bearings and better seals for the same or less weight, but I have never had both to compare.

Where are you getting it from?

Top spec XTR BB90 are only £17 here
http://www.rosebikes.co.uk/article/shimano-xtr-bottom-bracket-cups-hollowtech-ii-sm-bb90/aid:274227

All “MTB” ones will be fine, road (tiagra etc) use a different size axle.

Space Blanket
Fleece Top
Mars Bar
GPS enabled phone wrapped in cling film with app to show coordinates.

These things live in my Camelback.

Hi all, apologies the 30 day warranty posted was in error. A seatpost that lasts for 31 days is probably not fit for purpose. If you break it in normal use in 12 months I will fix it (excluding wear and tear / incorrect use). Beyond 12 months full spares are held and will be cheap. I will update the website to this effect.

After wet rides it gets sticky- it needs lubing intermittently

The bushing material in the TrailDrop is different in attempt to combat this. I routinely clean and grease mine every other wet ride as per service schedule – takes 5 mins max. The dirt boot is essential in the UK.

Once the cable tension is set up it works consistently, but if it goes out for any reason mid ride you can have a post that won’t go down or worse won’t stay up- easy to adjust with allen key though.

The latest TrailDrop has a fixed cable and inline cable adjuster to make this easy to adjust on the fly.

Need to have weight on the saddle when pushing the lever in order for it to disengage

This is a ‘feature’ of the mechanical design. The spring is pushing the inner post up against the pin. With this force it is difficult to pull the pin out. Weighting the saddle counters the spring force and allows the pin to come out easily. As you say, easy to get used to and other mechanical pin seatposts are the same.

Thanks to the owners of TrailDrops for posting up their experiences :)

Hi everyone.

Sorry for the confusion. I updated the website with stock. Unfortunately “daily” email shots aren’t instant enough. Seems Google Feedburner sends out updates at around 10pm. By 10pm you lot had cleared out the stock from the website, so the email was too late.

I will assemble a pre-order page once I’ve sent this batch out so those that were disappointed will get their seat post, hopefully within a month of today.

I will only buy in the amount of stock I can handle – I do not have a warehouse and employees (yet!?) so do not want to make sales I can’t fulfil in a reasonable time frame.

Thank you all for bearing with me on this. Watch out for the pre-order link in the email subscription.

Indeed the TrailDrop does require a regular clean and regrease (takes all of 5 minutes). I personally do mine approx every other wet mucky ride, a similar period to cleaning the chain. If / when the bushes wear they are very cheap and can be replaced in the same 5 minutes.

If you break a component we carry a full compliment of spares.

TrailDrops are very simple – 2 metal posts running on a plastic bushing with a sprung steel pin. There is little to go wrong, but if it does I will endeavour to sort it out.

Hi guys.

TrailDrop has a different remote cable arrangement (see pics on website), different bushing material and comes with a dirt boot included. They are supplied only in 27.2 with no shim supplied – multi fit shims are poor IMO and there’s to many sizes of shims to hold stock of at the moment, so you need to buy a shim elsewhere if you need (~£4 online).

TrailDrop posts are now in stock again online: TrailDrop 27.2 dropper seatpost by BigMassive.co.uk

Cheers.

Email and see how much they can get you a planet-x el guapo for.

I bet they can supply them for less than on-one :D

The Forca Vario (and a few others) is similar, the TrailDrop has some detail differences.

Folks: a new batch has landed. Sign up on the website to get notified when they are QC’d ready to send out.

Got mine (white/black frame) the other day (ordered march 19th)

Quality is OK, clearly not Oakley standard but the fit is great.

Lenses aren’t up to much, but I ordered a pair from visionary lenses in the states on ebay.

People hike the price up when they run out of stock so no-one buys them.

If you pull an ebay listing when out of stock, it drops out of your account.

This way when new stock comes in they just adjust the price ratehr than recreate the whole listing from scratch.

Machine mart
SJS cycles do an own brand one
Some guy sells them on ebay

All about £50 new and look to be the same one.

I’ve never tried one, but I almost bought a container full the other day from the manufacturer in China.

Otherwise get a used Elite, its what I just bought.

legal alien – we don’t do American style receiver hitches here in the UK unfortunately! They aren’t approved for towing AFAIK.

So we are stuck with the 2 bolt behind the ball type or the bodge onto the ball type of bike rack.

Oakley Jawbone replicas off dealextreme – ditch the lenses and get jawbone lenses from visonary lenses on ebay.