Any question answered...

Check Alex’s Cycle, I’ve seen black Nitto bits there in the past, but it is hit and miss.

Yep.

Seriously though, think i'm gonna take the hammer to it tomorrow.

Just had a quick look, it would appear they do have some but not all the parts I need. I think I will stick to the Ritchey bits now.

Thanks though.

Would a file work better?

It's less fun though, granted.

Use a curved file and you'll most probably just need to remove the bottom bit of the bridge. Looks much better too.

Syntace P6. Best seatpost there is.
They do nice stems too but their bars are oddly shaped.

Kalloy if you're on a budget.

polo bike?
to get the wheelbase shorter, or to use bigger tyres?
just pop a 650B in with a fat slick.

SimWorks stuff is made by Nitto and comes in black, Freshtripe sells them in the UK. Bit of a hipster tax on them though.

Think Rad Bikes who were on-here are also nitto simworks dealers. But Ritchey stuff is nice and not too pricey

by clashing I mean the hardware wouldnt make a copy of my current laptop hdd to the 750gb because they were different write speeds. I didnt think it was out of the question what I was trying so assumed the pos Apricorn ez Upgrade had fleeced me.

now I just wanna use the hdd up, I bought it for size (not speed, 16mb cache tho) the ps3 now needs moar size, and why not go 72x for the same price.

turns out its 8 years old.

I've never heard of data on one disk not transferring to another because they spin at different speeds.
Can't see any reason you'll have a problem, and if you had software that claimed that I'd write it off as bollocks.

Can't get my rear mech to shift into the largest cog. The barrel adjuster is unscrewed all the way out, bottom jockey wheel is about 2mm away from the spokes but it looks like the upper jockey wheel doesn't move across far enough. I can force it across by hand by pushing the mech and it'll stay on the right cog but it won't shift there using the shifter.

What's wrong: bent mech hangar, dodgy rear mech or something else I'm missing? groupset is a mix of 8-speed veloce/mirage with a 9-speed rear mech fwiw.

limit screw limiting mech travel or worn chain?

Hanger looks mega bent

If you move it closer via the b-screw it might be enough to get it to shift.

So I actually took the time to look at what was happening and it was the lower limit screw stopping the mech from travelling over far enough. 1/8th of a turn and it jumps into the biggest cog fine now.

Think that's just a camera lens effect making it look bent^ Sighting it with a plumb it's vertical and parallel to the cassette cogs.

Cheers everyone for the Nitto / Simworks suggestions, but my heart is now settled on the Ritchey kit now... :-)

Erm... I have a stupid question, which I have never really thought about as I have never had 1 x gears bike... so it's either 1 gear = no shifter or many gears = shifters on both side...

If the rear brake lever is on the left hand side, why does the shifter for rear gears on the right hand side? Is it becuase most part of the world in fact have the rear brake level on the right? Or am I missing something?

Most people are right handed perhaps? Front brake is most effective, rear derailleur is used much more often than front. Most used brake and shifter on stronger hand

If the rear brake lever is on the left hand side, why does the shifter for rear gears on the right hand side?

Euro style is left hand front brake & front derailleur, right hand rear brake & rear derailleur. Makes sense to me. Blame Brexit! Makes the front brake cabling neater as well (on side pull rim brake bikes).

Only argument 'against' it I can think of is that on motorcycles the right lever is the front brake. But I don't ride motorcycles so that's no problem for me.

Jan Heine has this to say about it:

Early bikes had only a rear brake. In France, this usually was a rim brake. The early brakes were not very powerful, so you needed lots of hand power to stop the bike. Most people are right-handed, and it made sense to control the single brake with the right hand. When front brakes were added to bikes sometime in the 20th century, this required adding a brake lever to the handlebars. In France, the right side was taken, so they mounted the extra lever on the left.

And that it's totally, utterly wrong.

+1 for Syntace P6

Left hand front braking ftw

Drive on the left, rh front brake. Drive on the right, LH front. Pretty standard around the world. Something to do with braking and signalling when turning across the lane.