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Further price drops.

Also finished off the Graham Weigh, which is going out on its maiden test voyage today. Rear wheel hub is slightly elliptical so might need to replace that at some point, but we'll see how we get on. Running the classic Leeds ratio of 48/17, & weighing less than the Charge Plug by more than 1.5kg!

The Woodrup's changes have been a success! Even got @Tor a Mercatone-Uno-Scanavino cap from the York Cycle Rally on Saturday. Just need a Coca-Cola bidon now.

Does anyone know anyone who makes 12spd 110BCD 5 arm 2x chainrings? After 52/36T.

Seems that a lot of places haven't bothered updating their products since 10/11spd. I'm currently running 11spd TA Specialites Syrius chainrings, & they seem fine with 12spd drivechain, but was hoping to find something which explicitly specified 12spd compatibility with new ones. Either that, or am I unnecessarily concerned about running 11spd rings with 12spd? FD shifting has been fine tbh.

Edit: eventually found these from Praxis.

It's a decent suggestion & something I did consider earlier, but was put off by how hard it sounded. Turns out it's pretty simple to use OSM with some libs. Started some work on plotting the route on a map, will see how I can fit that into the splitting utils (showing current splits, allowing for editing on the map perhaps).

Cheers, & sure thing! Code isn't the neatest setup at the moment, mind - & build/dev process is a little shonky as I wanted to avoid using a huge framework for a small project.

Finally finished off the Woodrup with Campag. I think I managed to successfully repair the shifter but I don't entirely trust it, so ended up getting some other ones from eBay. The weather is totally horrendous so unfortunately not likely to see an outing this weekend, does need a little trial to sort out the gears & whatnot. Think it looks quite smart with the silver.

I've not ridden the route but agree with @ltc that is super hilly around there, particularly north of Scarborough. Hills are generally steep in the North York Moors & pretty much all of the valleys run north/south, so when the route goes sideways, beware! Top riding nonetheless.

Ah great to hear! Glad it's of use to someone other than me :)

How's the geometry for the zero-rake fork? Were you to fit a more conventionally-raked fork, would the handling be predictable?

Some price drops.

@t-v @ough thank you! What I'm mainly aiming for here is to share info on touring Vietnam as frankly info was hard to find before we went, if I'm not boring people also then that's a win.

After our rest day was the hottest day of the trip - however relief was on the horizon with the weather breaking that night, so we set off at 0530 on our eighth day of riding, with the aim of getting the bulk of the miles out of way before things got unbearable. It was still about 30C at that time though, so didn't offer much of a break from it, but by that point of the trip that felt cool. We were starting to leave the mountains now & the hill farming we'd got used to was giving way to rice paddies again, & the traffic increasing a little.

I stopped to regroup & refresh at one of the little shops which was filled with quite raucous & interested locals. Turns out it was a national holiday & despite the fact it were still early in the day, most of them were drunk on one of the local drinks - described to us earlier on the trip as happy water. As my friends arrived each was greeted with a shot of it (didn't actually taste that bad though). At first we were a bit flustered & it was exactly not what we'd wanted, but it turned out to be a fun experience once we'd cooled down. The best way to explain the trip is to simply show a map, & they were all fascinated with what we were doing.

That night the weather finally broke with a huge thunderstorm. We were woken up by the air con flicking off as the power went & leaving our windowless room to swelter. Thankfully our friends room had a balcony to go & experience the storm. Wild night, but the worst night's sleep of the entire trip in an airless room.

The last two days riding of the trip went by pretty quick. With cooler temperatures, a flatter landscape & fast dead-straight roads we absolutely flew into Hanoi. We spent the next two days wandering around the markets, cafes, bars & various sights. I bought a new camera lens for less than half the price in the UK (23mm f/1.4), alongside a lovely handmade print, & a friend found a lovely 70s Seiko for a good price - decent souvenirs. We were starting to feel ready to come home, but we had one last ride to do - to the airport.

In the absence of any public transport we could rely on to take a bike, we knew we'd have to ride. We found riding into Hanoi pretty crazy, but heading out to the airport on a Saturday night was the next level. I can only liken it to riding an alleycat for twenty miles in a tunnel of two-stroke fumes, the sort of ride where you constantly need to keep aware of everything. I kind of loved it, but glad it wasn't my every day!

At the airport we'd folded our cardboard bike boxes & stored them in left luggage. It wasn't cheap ~£40 for two weeks IIRC - but we expected finding a box & getting it to the airport to be hard. As our flight was at 0130 we got a lounge which meant we could have a shower before boarding - very much welcome after the ride in. A long journey back, but managed to survive without any jet lag, matching the way out - success!

In summation, Vietnam was a wild place to go, & a very enjoyable one. I expected it to be harder - with the language barrier, being vegetarian & unknown state of the roads - than it turned out to be. In the end, the things we didn't consider were the toughest - heatwave temperatures, absolutely no chance of camping anywhere, some food hygiene issues. I maintain that bikepacking across the bits which people skip is the best way of seeing & understanding a country.

Photos:

1. Laser sun rising above the rice paddies.
   
2. Kid with a sweet brkls fixie. Didn't do DAS on request though.
   
3. Train street. We waited a while but no train came, they only have a few a day & we weren't that bothered about waiting around for the shot.
   
4. Denizen of Hanoi on a rather nicely considered bike.
   
5. Packing up bikes outside Noi Bai. Riding into an airport is not understood by security, took a bit of convincing!
   

Whoops forgot to continue my Vietnam story, I'll pick up from where I left off as have other bike updates to cover.

It was on our fifth day of proper riding that the heat really started to hit us. Had an oddly clear morning - normally were hazy due to the mugginess - which we can probably put down to the warmth. Had a climb first thing which was blissfully quiet, but we soon got caught up with moped riders which grew tiresome quite quickly. At one rest stop on a hairpin it was absolutely heaving with western tourists on bikes all across the road, making it quite hard for the HGV to squeeze through (though of course it did).

In the afternoon we left the loop & the drop in tourists on mopeds gave us great delight. The area we were now in was a sharp contrast to what we'd left - certainly feeling a lot poorer. Houses would be made of bits of wood, people were wearing donated clothes & lots working in the fields in the heat. The temperature became a real battle for us at this point, & with it being 38C in the shade, a two & a half mile climb had me waiting at the top for almost an hour. Thank goodness for the availability of refreshments basically everywhere. We took the opportunity to do a shorter day in terms of distance, but the heat meant that it still took longer than some of the hillier days.

Continuing the theme, the next day was another scorcher. We set off early to try & beat it but respite didn't last long. The night before we'd replanned our route a little to avoid heading into a desolate looking area, as with the temperatures we figured it could be pretty dangerous - one of us was showing signs of heat stroke towards the end of the previous day. Of course, with routes planned off-the-cuff relying on Komoot, it ended up having a 10% gravel climb in the middle. I quite enjoyed this tbh (great descent), but not everyone is such a fan of the rough stuff. We lost one of our friends for over two hours & started to get pretty worried - trying in vain to ask a local moped rider if he's seen him (quite the language barrier). Eventually he did turn up though, he'd gone into what he described as battery saving mode & had decided to take it slowly & walk to keep his body temp down. Probably a more sensible approach than mine which was to ride hard until I found a shop to cool down in.

That night we struggled to find food - all the places we found were judged a little too high risk, or simply didn't have anything which they specified on their menus (a common theme). All went to bed a little hungry & uncomfortably hot due to poor air con. We knew that the next day would be easier on the miles though, so it gave us some respite.

A week into our trip, we had a frankly painful thirty miles to cover to Ba Bể nature reserve -where we'd be having a rest day. The temperatures had risen again & I don't think anyone was enjoying riding at this point. We did however find an air conditioned café & discovered the local iced coffee was pretty good - was quite hard to leave that place. To avoid more miles, we got a boat across the lake to our hotel which also offered some slightly cooler breeze off the water - amazing. We'd spend the next day cruising around the lake on a boat, exploring a huge cave, visiting a temple & generally chilling (though not in a literal sense) - always nice to have a little bit of time off the bike on a trip to get a feel for an area, & it was a beautiful nature park.

Photos:

1. An example of one of the poorer shops we visited. The line between where people lived & did business all across the country was very blurred. Even in Hanoi you'd go to the bathroom in a bar & there'd be someeone's toothbrush in there. In this place their bed was in the corner, just behind their shop's shelves, with a scraggy chicken wandering about. Still had Wi-Fi though.
   
2. Rubbish being burnt at the side of the road. A common sight, & consistent with their air pollution concerns (seemingly none).
   
3. Windy gravel descent from our ad-hoc route.
   
4. Exploring caves by boat.
   
5. First temple we'd seen. We saw surprisingly little religion in the north, my (uninformed) theory being that the collectivism of communism kind of takes that role in society.
   

Got a somewhat battered but generally functional Sony RX100M3 which I no longer use. It suffers a little from the sticky shutter issue. Any idea what a reasonable price would be for it? Great little camera, have just moved onto using my X-E4 for most stuff these days.

Yeah, I was tempted to shave off the bit which caught on the inside of the shifter & superglue a cable in, not the most ideal but it would work. Thanks for the suggestions.

In the end, found a pretty much new set of identical shifters on eBay for £70 so just going to swap.

My 2016 CdF fits 40mm max, don't know if it's changed much.

Problem is that the bit which holds the cable has splayed out a bit, so rubs on the interior of the shifter. It's pretty tough plastic, but am concerned about trying to bend it back/cut off the splayed bit as it could snap & no longer hold the cable adequately, hmm.

I'll keep my eye on eBay for a new one. A bit of a minefield figuring out what I need replacementwise as designs for the shifter have changed over the years & I can't figure out what year this is.

I'm up in Leeds, Kirkstall specifically.

£50 posted.

Been a while since we've had an update here.

Finally got around to starting to sort out the Graham Weigh so we can go on a his & hers GW ride. Just need to figure out some cranks. BB is good but I don't have the tool to remove it, so after some square taper track cranks (not sure which taper it is).

LH shifter on the Woodrup broke (got snapped/somehow became splayed at the brake pivot, odd), so I've donated the Potenza groupset from my Land Shark. It always did need a silver groupset. Having an issue with the shifting mechanism on the RH shifter but hopefully can resolve that.

Thanks people, will be heading to the post office today. Added another chain & cassette as I find more 10 speed bits. Reason for moving this on is that in our household we're serial shifter breakers & the Force shifters on my partner's Woodrup finally gave up the ghost the other week (shifter snapped at the brake lever pivot).

Thanks babe.

Ratchet ring in my 11 speed Potenza Ergopower RH shifter is bust where it holds the cable, any idea where I can find a replacement, or am I looking at getting a whole new shifter? A quick Google tells me that this part isn't available unfortunately.

Bump for price drops.

Have a set of (used) R8020 shifters for sale here if that helps. Could split it up if necessary as pretty much each part has an issue with it (other than the RH shifter).

Edit: my bad, mixed up R8070 & R8020.