Cross continent racer.

I'd echo @Howard's thoughts and bleed them. Mine have done about a tenth of the mileage of yours, ffs!

I've done what, 7,000 miles since bled.

Lol okay so a service for the brakes.

@edscoble want to make some cash? Trust you to do it. Say 4 weeks time when I'm back in London.

Can do, we've already been doing a fair number of SRAM/Shimano/Di2 hydraulic already.

Shouldn't take more than a day depending on how busy we might be in 4 weeks time.

Shall I order extra pads while I'm at it?

'Adapted' my ISM attack. It's now saddle heaven. The padding was causing me chffing, so bye bye padding. They staple the padding on so I had to sand it and put tape on to try make it smooth. needs more sanding. Ugly but that's the theme with this bike, not breaking the theme now!

Perfect.

Interesting, might try that with my podium. Remover cover and padding and then cover with just vinyl/leather.

Yeah, maybe next day off I'll recover it. Need some material too really. Original leather is now wrong size.

I moved from tumblr to a real website.
Got some info and nice photos.

http://jamesmarkhayden.uk/

@hippy the saddle is fucking bliss. Nearly 1000 on it now and I love it.

If you get chaffing. I rate try a stripped one.

Good to hear dude.

I might give it a go one day but it's one to try in the off season for me.

Yeah, not 2 weeks out from a 24!

Gah, 2 weeks? Fucking hell. Great time to get another DVT. Oh well, better to go in fresh than fatigued I guess.

Maybe you need one of those motors. You'd only need to softpedal then and still take the comp record!

@edscoble
Going to bring you bike wednesday okay.

need you to look at front derailleur too, it's not sifting properly. When shifting into the little ring from big, instead of going onto little ring, if in a smaller end of cassette it will shift chain into the gap between big ring and little ring.

Also do you think it's worth taking a spare chain and just swapping onto a new chain after completing the un-paved 40km section from sesrtiere to suza?

Bring it over!

Replace chain before the ride.

Cool.

Yeah got a new chain waiting to go on.
Was more worried that it (the gravel and dust) would make the chain dirty and then it will run bad for the 1500 miles there after. Would take longer to clean than it would to replace with a new chain.

But you'd need to clean the rest of the drive train.

It'll depend on the weather, if it's wet then it'll be very, very mucky. If it's dry a quick wipe over and fresh lube is probably enough.

By drive train you mean cassette? Fair point.

So watch the weather before I leave.
Rain - take chain.
Sun - just wipe it and lube.

And chain rings and rear mech.

The Finestre is only un-paved for 8km?

There's an unpaved track that runs from the top of the Finestre, over two or three more passes then drops down into Sestriere. Maybe the route follows that?

Found it, good luck!

I rode the Raid Alpine in 1997 and that was an optional section. Two of us opted in and we did the last col of the day, the Vars, in the dark. Long day out.

I had a crash on the TNRC descending Whitedown before I rode the Finestre on the Saturday. No gravel obvs as my ribs were badly bruised.

This is in Susa looks very good.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nonsolobici-Susa/493199967457760?ref=br_rs

Nice climb vars.

You've ridden that pave section? Should be fun. I couldn't ride it when I went through sestriere in May as sestriere was covered in snow and there was no way I was going higher, road was totally closed.
On my timing schedule thats a work in progress I should arrive there maybe early -late evening. I'll push hard to get there while the suns up, or i'll lose time. Sunset is around 9pm, so will be dark by 10:30.