Search results for query: *

Still not a cloud in the sky... different route today, 25.5 miles and a bit more up and down. Met a grand total of two cars on the back roads - even when I came to the bit where I cross the main trunk road and follow it for a few hundred yards the traffic miraculously disappeared!

Used as a village hall now, but was Nigg Free Church. I also see I've lost both bar end plugs, oops...

Lovely weather all week, did the same ride three times which isn't like me (prefer a little bit of variety) - it's a nice round 30 miles though and that suits the amount of time I can justify escaping out on the bike.

Lovely morning for a ride, started off thinking it might be a little chilly but quickly warmed up to 20degC. The wind has finally changed direction so it was mostly a tailwind home too... Nothing special about the scenery, except that (having cycled past here for decades) I only discovered...

Rare earth magnets from old hard disk drives are invaluable for retaining those tiny screws that are always determined to find some long grass to hide in as soon as they're removed.

Older-style windscreen wiper blades (ie not the flat blade type) have an easily-extracted narrow length of flexible stainless steel in them which is useful for many things, at a basic level including poking the gunk out of jockey wheels, derailleurs etc. Being flexible it's unlikely to scratch...

If we're including hairspray surely we have to include talcum powder for tubes? I'm still using the bottle of Slazenger talc my granny gave me for Christmas... she died over 20 years ago and I'm sure she gave me that bottle of talc about a decade before that!

A bike with a less pretty chainset but which you can ride is ten million times better than one with a beautiful but theoretical chainset you can't!

If it needs to be accessible remotely then you'll need some sort of Internet connection. You could use a 4/5G router with a data SIM to provide that (something along these lines https://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-Link-TL-MR100-Wireless-Supports-Encryptions/dp/B0DNY31JRD )

There appears to be nothing at all that the Chinese can't perform some cost-cutting measures on. It still kind of looks like a chain from certain angles - QC passed!

That's a cool sculpture(?) Pretty sure it'd give me vertigo though!

You don't happen to have the shim required to make it fit a 31.8 tube?

Love that bike - I find these old bikes really usable or practical, especially at this time of year. No derailleur gears to go wrong in the salty muck, sturdy tyres to cope with the potholed roads... all it's "missing" is the oil bath chaincase :)

My problem is that in my head it's still bog standard, along with stuff like 26" wheels. It's only when I discover that you can hardly buy tyres and tubes for 26" now (actually, tubes themselves are old hat apparently) that I realise I'm stuck about a quarter century behind the times!

Lovely bike... definitely wouldn't be losing the Maguras if it were me, they're great! Appreciate the hoses don't exactly fit the aesthetic though.

I saw there's a front mech for sale here https://www.retrobike.co.uk/threads/xtr-front-mech.490762/ - would that fit despite saying 34.9?

By looser, the cage itself is rattly - still shifts but somewhat more vaguely. I wondered if they relied on shims to get the sizing down, or whether they had come up with a clever multi-position clamp or something.. suppose that means if going for second hand I'd need to have a suitable shim...

I noticed my front derailleur seemed a bit "looser" than normal recently, and looking closer it appears like part of the casting has broken off at the pivot point on one side: Assuming this is the case(?), I need to source a replacement. Seat tube seems to be 31.8mm - a fair number of...

I really liked STX RC, looked very classy (particularly in the bronzed finish) and worked well. Pity the chainrings were an unusual design IIRC though.