Any question answered...

Cheers for this - but it was definitely about their ability to tell the difference in frame materials (essentially, in my reading anyway, undermining a lot of the nonsense spoken in Bikeradar about the 'feel of the ride' of a bike etc) - I think the conclusion was that only tyres and contact points really make an appreciable difference to the feel of a ride...

Ah! Ok. Clearly a spot of wrong tree barking on my part. Hope you find what you are looking for.

But steel is real.

Cheers!

Really good at not breaking! But a lot of the chat around how a frame feels is pure emperor's new clothes.

I am looking at buying a cannondale caad10 but it has a nasty ding on the top tube. Does this look rideable? Or too dodge?

2 Attachments

Dodge. I am not a metallurgist.

Where can I get Mesquite smoked salt from in the uk?

I like the use of a biro for scale, but what's important is not the span of the dent but the radius of the bend. I'd ride that, but I certainly wouldn't buy it for much over scrap value.

There's a US magazine test from the 90s that had someone build a bunch of identical-looking frames from various Reynolds/Columbus/etc tubesets and had them test-ridden with the riders unable to distinguish between them. I can't for the life of me remember where I saw it though - I think it was on the author's website, which was 1996-vintage plain HTML.

That sounds like what I'm talking about! I definitely saw it on here somewhere but can't find it either...

And a test for longievity (sp?) as well? And the cannondale won?

I'm thinking of this one:
https://www.sheldonbrown.com/rinard/frame_fatigue_test.htm

But steel is real, like, really real.

I always use the Shimano resin ones. Pretty sure the model number is B01S, but double check that...

Result - don't think this is where I originally saw it, but have found a PDF here: http://stahlrahmen-bikes.de/wp-content/uploads/Stahlrahmen_Vergleich.pdf

The article's called 'The Magnificent 7'.

Amazing, thanks mate! I've definitely seen a more recent version of this testing steel/carbon/alu but this is a great starting point... mad google skills.

As a counterpoint, Jan Heine and the BQ crew did some blind testing of thin-walled tubing to test his theories about 'planing', which were written up in BQ; their conclusion was that you could tell a difference...

Whats the best thing to use for cutting brake cables and brake cable housing? Anything that I can pick up from Screwfix that will do the job nicely, or should I be looking at the specialist bike cable cutters?

Cannot fault Parktool CN10
http://www.parktool.com/product/professional-cable-and-housing-cutter-cn-10

Spendy, but faultless.
ETA - for a perfect finish to the outer cables, you'd prolly benefit from a Dremel or similar....

Parktool CN10

+1

ETA - for a perfect finish to the outer cables, you'd prolly benefit from a Dremel

+1 to that too

Thanks both. Cycle Surgery and Evans will both price match to Cycle Republic, who do the CN10's for £24, so I'll pop into one of them tomorrow and pick up a pair.

Don't think that I'll get a dremel past the accounts at the moment.

24's sounds good.
I think I paid somewhere in the 30's for mine.
Lack of Dremel isn't the end of the world....

I think I paid somewhere in the 30's

I think I paid well under 20, but that's because I'm old :)

Lack of Dremel is the end of the world

ftfy