Recent content by Uncle Grumpy

Probably something a lot of people wonder about, to be honest. I noted the industry went from: 3x9 2x10 1x11 The industry seemed to lose a chainring and add a rear sprocket. As such, I really thought 0x12 would have been the next logical step. Anyway, over the years I have run the following...

Beautiful weld, beautiful frame. Shame about the crack. I shed a tear... Need to find a ti welder local-ish to me (Sydney, Australia). [Not going to mention the brand, because this isn't reflective of their work and I don't want to imply I'm not happy with anything about the company. I'm...

For a minute there I thought this months theme was "blue bikes with purple accents".

Excellent project! What are you using for chain tension? I assume "close enough combination + horizontal dropouts to pick up the slack"? And you do realise the backgrounds of your photos offer hours of enjoyment - tell us to focus all you want, but the distractions are too... ummm...

What a shame. Oh well, grind it out to take away any stress riser, sand it with increasing grits of wet and dry paper until smoooooth, install them on a bike, drink enough to forget what has happened and stay away from "gnarly sends". They will still have 127.3% more metal volume than a set of...

You may have just restored some of my faith in humanity.

Is there a TL : DR version? This is 2025. Nobody has the time to read that kind of stuff anymore, we need the 2 line summary... with links to the product on Ali Express. And it needs a catchier clickbait title like... 15 reasons AI is making humanity more stupid than it already is - number 7...

You have to forgive the mechanic for any errors - he is actually a carpenter if his workshop is anything to go by. My god, the more I look, the more I pick up on dumb errors. Is this one of those "Our illustrator has made 100 deliberate errors. How many can you pick?" type of games? One...

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Oh I don't know. The sort of species that is happy to build a weapon that can wipe out civilisation in 30 minutes, plus every living thing with it and render the planet uninhabitable for millennia is hardly the sort of species worth respecting and wanting to protect. To hell with humans. When...

I had a creaking crank once. Only when pedalling and did it both in and out of the saddle. Pulled the crank and BB, meticulously cleaned and greased the BB threads. Reinstalled it. Still there. Pulled the pedals, meticulously cleaned and greased the threads. Reinstalled them. Still there...

That's because Google'a algorithm is based on all the other stuff you've looked up. That browser history is skewing the results. Ask me how I know...

Do not use one of those adapters above - they are for converting a quill steerer to take a treadless type stem. They are useful for opening up the options for a quill fork to take a 2 bolt clamp stem (which are hard to find in quill) or a 31.8mm stem to take modern bars, but you really need a...

As usual, Sheldon has the answer... https://www.sheldonbrown.com/cribsheet-headsets.html 26tpi is an East German or Raleigh standard. Being a Carlton, I'd go with Raleigh, which is basically JIS except for the threads. Bloody kids in shops these days would think "Sheldon Brown" is a "colour...

Lizard, by Vanguard. They also made cantilever brakes and were mostly aimed at the BMX market. I have a pair of the cable hangers in green somewhere. Unfortunately not the place I thought they were so can't provide a photo. I also had the brakes but I think I swapped them for something...