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My brother and I biked over to Woolwich and had a really good view from the roadside as there weren't that many people there. Have any of you taken the lift down into the Thames tunnel at Woolwich? There's this dude of a lift operator who basically lives in his nice wood-panelled lift with a stack of books and mags and reggea and dub on the stereo - it's the coolest lift I've ever been in.

i think my brother got some pictures so I'll post them as soon as he gets them of his camera (assuming they're not just a blur :)

skidding wears them out pretty fast though compared to a less gummy tire.

that's a good point - I'm having a bit of trouble getting my brake mounted on the fork so I think I'm going to have to learn how to skid :) so what's a more gummy tyre?

ouch. did he stop or drive off?

think on the bright side, now you get to build a new one

Probably a bit soon for that!
(I mean to think on the bright side - never too soon to build a new one of course)

Does anyone have a nice silvery seatpost going spare, 27.2 mm diameter?
I quite fancy one of those nitto single bolt posts but it might take a while to find one so in the meantime I need something to sit on (no crude jokes please).

yes, and most of a transmission too, but it's going nowhere without a back wheel.
i'll have to bring the geared bike if we do the prologue ride tomorrow :-)

more than you could possibly want to know about anodising:
http://www.bikepro.com/products/metals/alum.shtml

is it really that much off though? even 1 or 2mm will look quite off to the eye if you squint down the chain because of foreshortening. 5mm would show a really obvious angle looked at from above, not just when you squint down the chain.

True, it's difficult to be sure, but when I sight along the chainring, the line clearly intersects with lockring thread, not the sprocket thread. Anyway, I'll wait till I get some wheels sorted out before I do anything (hub is currently rimless) - at least then I can cycle it to frame builder to have it checked properly!

clearly they've just inflated him with that tank of prax oxifarm, whatever that is.

he must have a valve on his forehead.

I think my frame might be slightly bent.

I measured my chainline front and back as best I could: it's between 42 mm and 42.5 mm at the front which I measured 2 ways. Firstly, using a metal ruler, I held one end against what looked like the centre of the seat tube and read off against the centre of the chainring. Secondly, which involves less guess work I think, I measured from the chainring side of the seattube by butting the ruler up against it (28mm), and then from the far side of the seattube using a flat surface held against both the tube and the end of the ruler (57mm). Chainline = (28+57)/2 = 42.5mm. It would be better to measure the diameter of the seat tube but I don't have a vernier caliper. It should be 57-28=29mm.

At the back, the spacing is 120mm while the cog centre is 19mm in, so the chainline is 120/2 - 19 = 41mm.

So in theory, it's out by 1 or 2mm. But when I check it by eye, sighting along the chainring, it's much more, 4 or 5mm. So does this mean my frame is bent? Or maybe just the track ends? Does anyone know a good way to check?

I'm having some trouble with chainline too. I was wondering how much of it is to do with how far the crank is pushed on to the BB taper. I tightened the bolt fairly hard but I've no idea how you're supposed to know when it's 'right'. Is there any
chance of stripping the thread or should I just go as hard as I can with an adjustable spanner that's about 170mm long?

It would be cool to get some printed up as stickers too.
I've got some stickers of whales and a tapir that came with the Guardian a while back but to be honest they're a bit lame.

Those Specialized ones that look as little like cycling shoes as possible! Sonoma I think they're called - they used to do them with laces but I think they've gone over to velcro now. I had to take a stanley knife to the sole to get the cleats in though as the Frog cleats are a little wider than SPDs.

there certainly is - my friend and i misspent a couple of days doing this a few years ago. The thing is you have to get the anodizing off before the polish will have any effect. We did it using wet-and-dry paper, starting off with a medium grade and going down to the finest. Apparently, a good dousing with oven cleaner can give you a head start but I haven't tried that. Once you've got down to the bare metal with a smooth finish and sanded out as many scratches and gouges as you can, then it's just a matter of plenty of elbow grease with the brasso and a supply of those soft yellow polishing rags.

You can end up with a mirror finish and of course any logos etched in the surface will have a disappeared.

The bare metal is softer than the original anodizing though, so you'll have to re-polish and occasionally re-sand to keep them looking perfect.

I don't know about Streetwise but the chick in Dark Angel (jessica alba) is a bike messenger and she's always going around foiling things.

i swear by speedplay frogs - they're double sided but with no moving parts on the pedal itself (apart from the axle, obviously). I was having knee trouble with SPDs but it was cured by switching to the frogs as they give you lots of free float (ie with no sprung force to hold your foot it a particular position). They're pretty light too, the cleat is walkable, and there's a grease port. Very satisfying to squirt new grease in and see all the filthy gunk coming out the other end. The only downside is that they're a bit pricey.

sorry to hear about your bike provenrad - that's a real bummer. that back wheel sounds pretty distinctive - I wonder if the thieves are smart enough to spot unusual looking parts and swap them out for something more conventional? I'll look out for it anyway.

I wish I could draw it for you

The police should have composite artists for bikes ... you know, 'wheels a little closer together,
moustache handlebars..'

don't give up on brick lane though - if at least one person goes in the morning and then pops into one the internet cafes at the top of the lane, he/she can let us all know what suspicious looking bikes there.

Campag give the same warning about their road hubs, but I had a 28 spoke radial front wheel on a c. 1990 campag hub, and it was fine for years. When it did go (in about 1999) it was crack in the flange around one of the spoke holes, so I think you have to accept that risk when you build radial. I would guess that with a 32 hole high flange, you'll be fine for ages (as long as you're not too porky!)

yeah! - how's that arm today?

But those suzue hubs are nice - their aluminium ones look nicer IMO, very well finished, but I guess the carbon ones must save a fair amount of weight. I wonder how those carbon flanges stand up to spoke stress?

Suzue went out of business last December so now might be a good time to pick some up.

velocity boy That first one, I'm not sure what the value in it is. And I prefer more spaciousness, if it's something that you can find at a click (by looking at the thread) then why not just do that?

It's not so much when the discussion was started that I tend to be interested in but whether itss a recently started discussion or an old one that's been resurrected. Maybe there's a way to indicate new threads using the background colour, similar to the way that threads with unread posts also have a different background colour?

scott not scot ...and all because of the damn CAPSLOCKGATE incident!!!!.....

lol.
"I was not lying. I said things that later on seemed to be untrue." -- Nixon on Watergate.

there are some nice
tommasini chrome forks going on ebay at the moment but they're 50 quid 'buy it now'.

hi smeear (good to meet you and the hat in person yesterday!)
I wouldn't mind a Mr. Hat to call my own, but perhaps if you get too many requests, maybe it would make sense to share the pattern and get us to sew our own?

do they have the cogs too? i quite fancy one of them. the phil woods are nice too but I'm hoping the EAI might be less ball-breakingly expensive.

just a couple of suggestions:

1. it would be nice if, on the discussions list page, it state when the discussion was started as well as who started it.

2. when you click on a multi-page discussion, it should link to the last page of the discussion rather than the first.

is that sort of thing customisable under the current system?

well there's a bill posted on the front door so it looks like EVERYONE is invited.

btw - hot bikes at brick lane today:
anyone lost a genesis flyer, flat bars?