Recent content by hellmansam

Hey that looks good, wheredya get this stuff

It’s finally getting cool enough to want to ride again, I’d kept the tyres on my bike pumped up through summer but the rear on the Ripmo has always had a very slow leak so today I thought it high time I sorted it out. The Stans has deteriorated into brown slime, I cleaned the insert, inside of...

With Simon Crafar replacing Freddy Spencer as the chief steward or whatever it's called, we should see better consistency and transparency around penalties etc

Pumped the tyres up, chucked it in the car and went to my local trails, did the short loop, hadn't been for a ride in two months. Felt slow but my legs were stronger in the climbs than I expected, which was weird.

I've had a few decent get offs on road and off. Way back in the day we used to wear a half shell helmet and gloves, got gravel/road rash, bruised elbows and knees.. Nowadays I have IXS Flow knee and elbow pads, wouldn't wear them for a bike path ride, always on for a trail ride. Hardly know...

Yeah no contest there, Tassie would be my NZ 😬

That has helped keep the population and amount of visitors down, but is changing of late. At the current rate we will soon have too many people like the few east coast cities I've visited.

I used to be pretty free with an 8.5 mm drill bit ‘converting’ Presta rims to Schrader but don’t do it anymore. Never had a rim crack at the valve hole or any other adverse effects but am running carbon rims now and err on the side of caution. Opening the bead is easy enough that I don’t mind...

Retape the rim. The valve nut has never worked to stop leaking air on its own, for me . Do the soapy water test on the base of the valve first to see if that's the issue. I like to test the air tightness of the wheel by fitting the tyre with no sealant, pump it up to 50 psi leave it overnight...

Sometimes OEM stainless spokes are prone to doing that, I had to rebuild quite a few wheels on certain Shogun models sold by the shop I worked in, warranty repairs the distributor got billed for. Had it happen on my 2019 Fuel EX with the brake side of the rear wheel in the set of spokes loaded...

A few Shimano goodies turned up from Pushys today, most interesting to me are some shoes, a pair of GR9's ($90 on special) and a pair of GF6, not on special but the SHIMANO10 code helped. My old Giro Riddance shoes are my first pair of proper flat pedal shoes, I like them but couldn't find...

It's gunna vary depending on your eyesight correction needs - I started needing glasses for reading in my mid 40's, hardly used them for the first couple of years but now at 56 I wear multifocals all the time because it's easier than taking them on and off. I have to wear safety glasses at work...

Got some XT 165mm cranks from Bikeinn - dunno how I got around the geoblocking BS, couldn't find any in Oz though.a Had my first ride with them the other day and couldn't feel any difference pedalling torque wise but definitely reduced pedal strikes. Not the face plant type of pedal strike but...

Same - but I’m starting to make them lately !

I thought the rut I plowed was a bit photo worthy 😬 Forgot the more legit thing to post : first ride with 165mm cranks. Couldn’t feel much difference pedalling but definitely had less brushes with the ground and when going over log obstacles etc. 35mm rise bars (up from 20mm) felt good.