Luke Rainbird

Yeah, ideally I'd have picked up something 130-140mm straight off the bat, but I got impatient after nothing turned up silly cheap within a week so ordered Yeti parts instead I might try and swap/sell&buy my way to an SB5 instead at some stage, but I'm not so keen on the way they look and as well all know, that's the most important factor with bikes... Soph still mentions that random ride we had at Cannock years ago with @forteh. Will have to do something similar in due course. I don't tend to get so far as Mansfield these days, but do occasionally visit Leicester (ish) with work and racing so it might be doable!

As much as I can't condone the lycra, the bike looks great, Ads. It's like when cars look quick standing still. Do you know the weight, looks a pretty svelt setup? Some exciting news for @Tom Booth to enjoy in mid-July, the Yeti build is starting to come together a bit now. Frame hardware arrived. Pivot and shock bolts, mech hanger, dogbone linkage: Found an unused set of MG-1s in the spares box: Had some play in the BB - the one which came in the frame didn't have the wavy washer and end cap/seals that new SRAM GXP BBs have, so I pinched them off the old bike to fill the gap and all spot on: The wheels in that photo are a set of Mavic XA I acquired FOC a couple of years ago. They had spacers to adapt to 148mm and the Yeti is 142mm, so for want of a quick fix I found some suitable steel tube to act as an axle, and the grinder span the spacer as a makeshift handheld lathe to part off some of the length: I'd picked up some MT7 levers and calipers back in the first lockdown. They came without hoses, but were dirt cheap so I figured I'd build them up eventually. 2 years on, I finally did. Only to find one lever had an issue rendering it useless. Ah well, still cheap just for the calipers to be honest! I've since swapped out for my SLX levers and gone Shigura. Waiting on a bleed cup to get a small amount of air out but they feel good so far. Set of Hope Fortus 26 wheels arrived yesterday - Got these for a good price, and a friend is buying the hubs off me. Spoke lengths work out such that I can lace the rims up to my existing Pro II EVO hubs just fine, and new cost of the wheels will be about £50 which is a win Some drivetrainy bits also arrived the past couple of days, albeit no photos of most of it. NX Eagle 12spd cassette (11-50t, so will fit my current HG freehub rather than needing an XD driver), NX shifter and mech, and a GX chain. Dug a few other bits out and mocked it all up to resemble a bike: It'll be more than I need by a long chalk, but if I can keep the weight down (should be ~30lb or so, all being well) and the frame is as efficient uphill as the early reviews suggseted, then it should be tolerable for my needs. Worst case, the frame and fork get sold and replaced with something in the 130mm region. The SB66 was a dream bike when it first came out, so it's nice to be able to build something similar either way, plus it'll give me an excuse to learn to jump and drop if nothing else!

Could these be the PowerPros of 2022?

Well, after having good intentions to pick up something more modern but suitable for the stuff we ride, it all went a bit wrong and I went full retard ordering bits to complete the incomplete Yeti SB6C frame I acquired a while back. Guess I'm building an enduro bike now

Nice one Mike. I was about to ask if that was a pass in the Black Mountains then saw your vid title. Fun roads around there, and a decent chippy at the southern end from memory too!

Nice one Tom, bike sounds great and that's a considerable drop in organic mass, congrats! I picked up a Whyte T130 for Soph 6 months ago and it's been great - currently looking for a c130mm 27.5" trail bike to replace my old 2010 Stumpy and struggling to find much that ticks the box as well as another T130 for the money. Don't really want to be "that" guy rocking up at the trail centre with matching His'n'hers setups though

I've only run Rainsports (3/5) on our daily Volvo for years and been very happy. If you were abusing the car often in the dry then they wear faster, but for general UK road use I've been very pleased. People run them at club racing level as an inter/wet tyre, so the performance can't be awful! The only other thing I'd run on it are Pilot Sports really, which are a little more dry-weather focused. Typically above your budget, though Costco have reasonably frequent deals on them which bring them into the right sort of range from memory.

"It's basically parkour on a bicycle and it's how babies are created" Sounds about right.

Cool to see Hans in there, and strong bloody work on the cargo bike @Ali C

You're on the wrong forum if you want to suggest bike brands/models don't matter, Frank...

As much as they're a horrible bunch of useless pricks, I'm back with Virgin Media again at the mo. 200Mb for £28/mo (and some cashback deal which will bring that down to sub £20pm overall). Speeds etc are great (usefull as we run too many devices simultaneously, inc. lots of file sharing via Drive and the like for YT stuff with Prawn) so provided you don't have to contact their customer services team (who are utterly incompetent) it's all good.

New drinking game. First post in any thread in over 12 months has to neck it. Drink up, Booth.

We ran into Daisy and her mum at Center Parcs a couple of weeks ago. Ella was fangirling

Another vote for Ryobi here. Might not be so durable/balls deep as some of the bigger industrial brands out there, but they're equally not so expensive and for general purpose home use I've been impressed by the few One+ bits I've got.

This. Totally ruins the look of an otherwise decent looking bike. Marin should have run with this one for the press release...

Didn't see it coming right now, but pleased for you all. I'll echo the thoughts of the guys above with a huge "thank you" for all you've done for trials over the years. I'll also throw in a "well done" for making a step towards simplifying your life and taking off some of the load to let you focus on other things - not an easy step in the slightest. The very best of luck to Ben and Charlie - big shoes to fill but I'm sure you'll all do a sterling job

Magnussen back in as Mazespin's replacement too. Will be interesting to see the team dynamic with Mick and Kevin.

I don't have anything to hand, but from memory it was literally called "RimDisc" or something similar. 25" multi-piece rim-mounted rotor which conveniently buckled every time your wheel went out of true

Yeah, it's less of a "first birthday" party and more of a "we kept the squishy thing alive for a whole year" party.

Lots of good chat already, so I won't try and add to that and water it down. Babies are pretty robust, and you guys will figure it out in your own way. They don't tend to remember the first few years anyway so there's plenty of time to get it sussed before they realise you don't have a clue what you're doing. We used to do this shit in caves, you'll be fine.

Yeah. I've put a bit in over the past 6 weeks or so, but not nearly so much as I would if I didn't have darn responsibilities Still, the bits I've been drip feeding in each time it drops have brought my average unit cost down pretty nicely, so despite ETH being down over 40% in that period, I'm only around 14% down in the same period, and that's not factoring in the fact I have been switching between currencies a bit to take advantage of differentials in movements, which should offset that a bit more too. Not playing with much money, but it's my new car fund so it'd be nice if it saw a bit of a recovery.

Less Biden by the sounds of it, and more the Fed/general Central banks raising rates, and financial markets doing what financial markets do. Crypto as a hedge isn't working while things appear more correlated, and general market fear is causing literally everything to drop. Still, those discounts, if you think it'll come back again.

Really pleased for you man, that's great news. Congrats!

Usually they're negatively correlated, and one can be used as a hedge against the other. Until that resets it's unlikely to pick up for a little while. I'd recently started to dabble again - if it was good enough to buy last year, it's definitely good enough to buy at a discount now!

That's cool - I've not seen the study or any supporting info, only Ads' post (Which shows how easily a few figures can me misinterpreted and spread though, I suppose!)