Any question answered...

If your other half had kindly given you the go-ahead to build up a silly summer commuter/fun crabon HHSB - what frame would you get? I’ve got a tres sensible fixed Genesis Day One for most commuting and training duties so this (other than a drilled fork to take a front brake) can be pretty fun and impractical. I’ve done NJS in the past, so would like something modern and maybe alu/carbon. Maybe Standert?

Maybe hire @dicki

https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/146326/?offset=150#comment14467118

You fix tubes sober?

https://www.lfgss.com/comments/14492226/

Regarding the corrosion in the above link, what product should I use to try and remove it so I can easily fit a new bearing on the axle?

Anusol Autosol?

@danstuff / @mdcc_tester - funnily enough I was telling someone else to get an RS6 (to ferry around their impending child) just before posting that question. I guess that serves me right!

Appreciate all the answers / suggestions. I think I might end up going down the hire van route for the sake of simplicity.

@danstuff / @mdcc_tester - funnily enough I was telling someone else to get an RS6 (to ferry around their impending child) just before posting that question. I guess that serves me right!

Good advice, it's a great car. Ruinously expensive to run though. The V10 version is, anyway.

it's a great toy

FTFY. A car is for transport; by that measure, there are very few circumstances in which an RS6 is better than a Skoda Octavia, certainly not enough to justify being four times as expensive.

YMMV. I drove an Octavia VRS recently, and a truly hateful experience it was too. Quite happy to pay the extra to avoid having to go through that again. Although given that the Octavia was a fairly new car with only a few 1000kms on the clock, and my RS6 is now 10 years old, I doubt the purchase price would be that different. Certainly not a factor of 4.

Anyway, cars can be toys too. The RS6 is, after all, the most practical and sensible car I own by a considerable margin. All of the others are either made of wood or lack windscreens.

Besides, 'great' and 'good VFM' are two different things. After all, things can, as any fule kno, be nice but pricey.

BA Avios question for which I can't seem to find a straight answer.

Are there restrictions on how you part pay for flights with Avios? And is there a way to work out how much you'd need to part pay for a flight?

For eg if I have 30,000 Avios and want to go somewhere that requires 60,000 Avios, then I have to pay the difference. But are there any catches and how do I find out the cost of the difference?

Cheers.

Whenever I've spent Avios in the past it's always been "x Avios", "y Avios plus £a", "z Avios plus £b", etc so it should be pretty obvious.

The only caveat to this is that Avios have all just been rejigged under the BA brand. I used to be able to hire a car from anywhere (i.e. Budget it Putney or Avis in Vauxhall) but now it seems I'm limited to just renting cars from airports. I haven't had a chance to whinge at Avios/BA about this yet.

(Luckily all of our Avios are eaten up every year by a single car hire from an airport as part of a skiing holiday.)

Cheers.

I was looking at the BA Amex as a way to potentially save some $s for an expensive flight in the future.

Basically I was trying to work out whether your Avios are worth less when part-paying, vs when they cover the whole trip.

Hollowtech 2 cranks: do road and MTB cranks have different length spindles? By the same token, do hollowtech 2 bottom brackets from road groupsets have a shorter plastic sleeve on them (than MTB BBs) so that they'll fit a 68mm wide BB shell without any spacers between the shell and cups?

Can't access my BA/Avios account from work but I'll check later and give some example prices if I remember.

do road and MTB cranks have different length spindles
do hollowtech 2 bottom brackets from road groupsets have a shorter plastic sleeve on them

Yes to both. Triple cranks have different spindle lengths too, spacers need to be inserted. If Shimano were sensible they reuse the MTB double spindles on the road triples, but I don't know for certain.

MTB are 73 (or 83 for downhill), 68 for road double.

Not too sure about the sleeve but the right side cup of a MTB 68/73 BB has a wider threaded section.

Cheers.

I was looking at the BA Amex as a way to potentially save some $s for an expensive flight in the future.

Basically I was trying to work out whether your Avios are worth less when part-paying, vs when they cover the whole trip.

I've used Avios to pay for flights - generally you'll part-pay, the Avios only flights tend to be rare and at odd times. You also get zero recognition for them in terms of tier points.

It's sometimes more efficient to use Avios to pay for the car hire, or the hotel - if of course you are booking everything together.

I tend to accumulate Avios from work flights, then spend them on holiday flights - £400 off business class tickets to Tenerife give you a per-passenger cost below RyanAir, but with complimentary champagne and 64kg of free luggage allowance.

The only real benefit of the BA Amex is the companion voucher. Otherwise get an Amex gold (free for the first year) where you'll get more points and then convert to Avios.

It is difficult to build up enough Avios on a credit card to really be worth it unless you're spending huge amounts. Flying (particularly not economy) is the best way of getting them.

Cheers all.

@aggi - I've got the platinum everyday, which is good for cashback. But yes, it's mainly for the companion 2-4-1 that I'm thinking about it.

We'd really like to go to Japan at some point, and I was wondering if it could be a way to afford a trip there next year.

To hit the companion voucher you need to spend 10k which = 35,500 Avios under the current offer. A quick check showed Tokyo as 60,000 Avios, so I was trying to work out whether it all stacks up, or if it'd actually end up cheaper just buying a cheaper ticket from a choice of airlines.

I'm pretty sure you can't use the companion voucher with part Avios/part paid flights, needs to be an Avios flight.

You're best to use them in premium seats to get full value, using it for economy often isn't a great deal. You also have to fly with BA which limits the options and BA economy is towards the lower end of the long-haul operators.

You need to spend £20k on the free card to get the companion voucher. It's a hefty spend and you may get more value spending that on another card.

Avios flights go quickly, particularly at popular times. If you're not booking a year in advance you'll struggle to get anything.

You can see the miles needed here https://www.britishairways.com/travel/avios-calculator/public/en_gb

In economy you'll still be needing £450 per person for a return to Japan in economy. It's not really worth it.

I got a fixie conversion (old steel road bike to fixie). I'm riding it with smaller cyclocross tires. I'm looking for a chain guard and full size alu/steel fenders. Does anyone know how I would accomplish that?

Cheers for that.

At the moment it looks like it's only 10k.

It would be quite a bit in advance.

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@jono84 used BA Amex card + avios to get a fully comped flight to Japan I think ?!

Ah, that's the paid for card. Not cheap, about £180 a year off the top of my head.

Free card is £20k and 1 avios per pound I think.