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RetroBike Thetford Meet – 13th February

Posted by on 15/02/2010 No comments

22 RetroBike riders braved the weather for the first official RetroBike Anglian Area meet on Saturday, lots of cool retro machinery on display and getting used properly.

I had a great time but my fitness is off (again) so the day ended with tired legs for me, the EWR rode like a dream and no technical issues and the SDG Ti Comp Kevlar was very comfortable. (In fact it looks so similar in profile to the Flite that I really must take some precise measurements to compare them).

Here are some pix from Saturday, all taken with my new Panasonic Lumix TZ6, there is many more pictures from me and other riders over at RetroBike in THIS THREAD

Nice Grello

Is it a Transformer? Is it a scaffolding experiment?….no its a Cockroach!

Orange Elite

Day Glo alert

Call Me The Breeze

Pork Pie

‘Ange’

Name those parts

Yeah right….

Honey, will you pass the lube?

Posted by on 12/02/2010 1 comment

Call me old fashioned or maybe even call me wrong  but I’ve been using GT85 to lube my bike chains since the early 90’s, somebody back then must have told me it was a good idea…

Anyway it seems things have moved on in the lube world quite a lot since then so its time to get with the times.

One of my riding buddies (Chris) talks highly of Rock ‘n’ Roll lubes, specifically Extreme Chain Lube which is some strange, gloopy blue stuff so I thought I’d give it a go so the Rohloff SLT-99 has had a nice bath in the stuff and tomorrow i’m off to some really shitty (mudwise…) forest down in Suffolk that has some nasty gritty sandy soil that really gets into the chain and mechs so this will be a good test!

Man sized, Extreme lubrication

So, once the chain had a birthday I gave the whole bike a check over and paid some attention to something that many people leave untouched….the saddle clamp.

If you think about it this is an important piece of kit, you have your ass sat on it for long periods of time but it gets blasted with crap off the trail and probably doesn’t get cleaned real well. So I stripped mine down, coated all the threads and brass inserts with Anti-Seize Compound, put a big bunch more on the rail clamps and put it all back together again….nice smooth bolts and no more creaking Ti rails

Cleaned and greased Syncros clamp

As the Flite Ti was taken off the bike to clean up the saddle clamp I figured I’d swap in the SDG Kevlar Ti Comp that I got from the USA, I’ve been curious about these (as mentioned in a previous post on here). To be honest the profile doesn’t look much different from a Flite but its gonna stay on for two big forest rides tomorrow so I’ll report back later…

Nice rails


So the bike is more or less ready for tomorrow, just gotta get some air in the tyres…..watch this space for a ride report over the next few days

Shot down in the night…

Posted by on 08/02/2010 No comments

Back on topic with a bike related blog post after all this Home Cinema stuff getting in the way, been trying to amass a bunch of stuff to sell recently but had to score these couple of items when they were dangled under my nose.

SDG Comp Ti Kevlar – I’ve always been a Ti Flite man but my curiosity has been aroused by my ‘virtual EWR buddy’ Utahdog‘s obsesession with these things so I thought I’d try one out. It arrived last week fresh from Florida but so far I’ve not had time to mount the thing and try it out, maybe this will get done for this coming weekends RetroBike forest ride.

Pic gratuitously stolen from Utahdog

Another thing I’ve had on my Hitlist for ages is an original 1st Generation Answer Alumilite DH bar and I had all but given up looking when one cropped up in Germany, complete with the all important ‘golden shims’. I had it mind this would look neat on my EWR but in hindsight it might not look so cool as its bare aluminium and everything else on the bike is currently black. These bars have the most amazing wall thickness and weigh an absolute ton

Home Theatre Makeover Project 3

Posted by on 07/02/2010 No comments

I didn’t really want to without studying all the documentation and pondering over it for a while (I’m a bit like that ) but I dived into this on Friday night and got everything lashed together then proceeded to run the Audyssey 2EQ ‘room calibration’ routine on the Onky.

Audyssey 2EQ is used to counter distortion created by walls, furniture, and other objects. This technology detects speaker distance, and then sets levels, delays, and crossovers, while also measuring room acoustics so your speaker system is set up for your specific room. Following from this while you are using the Onky to watch TV, movies etc it uses Audyssey Dynamic EQ to make constant correctional tweaks to the output.

Stunning technology but not if you overlook one small thing. If you are using a 5.1 system then you must ensure you wire up your rear speakers to the Surround Left and Surround Right outputs instead of the Surround Back Left and Surround Back Right Outputs (which would be the logical ones to use ), if you don’t do this then Audyssey 2EQ will throw a Speaker Detect Error which basically means you’re stuffed .
It took me several frustrating hours to find this out so basically I didn’t get the damn thing working until Saturday night. Everything is now roughly in place while I figure out where to actually put all the kit, here are some pix

Home Theatre Makeover Project 2

Posted by on 05/02/2010 No comments

Sorry to all the Retro/Vintage bike lovers for posting another techy/geeky article, I promise there will be much more bike related stuff in the coming months, I just had to post an update on this long term project

Last time I chatted about getting a bunch of new kit and last night I fetched some nice new shiny toys from my local TNT depot. An online Pro Audio store called A-1 Sound are running a brilliant promotion on Onkyo/KEF bundles at the moment and I couldn’t say no to an offer that saved me £680.00 on the retail price and got me nearly everything I need to complete my project.

I scored myself an Onkyo TX-SR607 AV Receiver, a set of KEF 3005SE K2 Speakers, 40 meters of Chord Campana Speaker Cable, a 3 meter QED Sub Cable, a Chord 1 meter Supershield HDMI Cable and 2 x pairs of KEF HT3001 Satellite Speaker Stands.

The Chord Campana cable isn’t anything too flash but it is 40 strand Oxygen Free Copper and its light and flexible so will suit my particular installation for the time being and be better than the copper bell wire i’ve been using

This little lot weighed in at 61kgs and filled the back of my car, to give you an idea of scale the KEF speaker box below is about the size of an under counter fridge

The Onky was way bigger than I expected it to be so the original plans for sitting it atop the Media Center are no more so I’m contemplating getting something cool fabricated out of Lexan Polycarbonate and standing him on that instead, guess it will kind of ruin the vibe a bit but maybe not as I need something to balance up that big fat sub that’s about the same size as my Media Center.

Sadly this weekend is not going to be giving me much free time but tonight I will be making a start on assembling the speaker stands and measuring up cable runs……will keep you posted of any developments but in the meantime, here’s some pix of my new babies


Boys Toys

Heavyweight speaker stands..

More outputs than you can shake a stick at

Individually sewn soft cloth bags and styrene sandwiches….top packing!!

My (not so) ‘little babies’

Big Daddy – The K2 Sub that my neighbour’s are gonna hate

Recycled ‘Dale – End of an era…

Posted by on 25/01/2010 1 comment

Buddha said ‘Everything changes, nothing remains without change’ and how right he was!

My Cannondale M1000 has been sat in the shed fixed to a Turbo Trainer for about 12 months now, I’ll never ride it on the trails again as it was too small and it’s bristling with expensive/desirable parts which is pointless on a Turbo Trainer so it’s time for it to go

This year I’m ‘thinning the herd’ and concentrating on stuff that I will actually ride and enjoy and all the other ‘junk’ that’s laying around is going to follow the same path eventually. I’ve got my eye’s on ‘something else’ (), that WILL get used and theoretically will be bags more fun (watch this space….)

My M1000 in its former glory


Mid way thru the strip


That 2p trick employed again to stop scratching the Pro Series bars

Home Theatre Makeover Project 1

Posted by on 22/01/2010 No comments

Apart from bikes I’ve always been a big fan of Microsoft Media Center and have been using it for years and years, in fact I’m still running MCE 2005, having avoided Vista Media Center at all costs. Technology improves however, particularly hardware and this year its time to totally rebuild my Media Center box with some serious horsepower

Currently I have an old Pentium IV with 2gb RAM, 160gb system disk for the OS and 4 x 1TB drives for media content (1Tb for Recorded TV (700 hours capacity), 1TB for DiVX/AVI movies, 1TB for TV Caps and 1TB for Music and Pictures), 1 DVD ROM, 1 X Plextor DVDRW, Card Reader, Gigabit Ethernet, Hauppauge TV-Nova PCI TV card and a 512MB HDMI out graphics card. This is hooked directly into a Samsung Series 9 46″ LCD TV and the sound runs into a fairly low rent 5.1 Surround Sound.

The stuff that’s gonna get changed is as follows:

Motherboard – Gigabyte GA-EX58-EXTREME which is an Intel Core-i7 X58-Express board with DDR3 RAM.
CPU – Intel® Core i7-920 Processor (8M Cache, 2.66 GHz)
RAM – Kingston KHX16000D3T1K3/6GX DDR3
TV Tuner – Hauppauge PCI Express Dual Tuner WinTV-HVR-2200 MC
AMP – Onkyo TX-SR 607 AV Receiver (Full 7.1 HD Audio/HDMI Outputs)
Speakers – Kef 3005SE K2’s in gloss black

Acquisition wise I already have the mobo and RAM and hopefully next week will have the KEF’s and Onkyo. Most likely I’ll use the Onky and KEF’s immediately on my current system until I splash for the i7 CPU, at which point I can rebuild my Media Center and reload it with Windows 7 Ultimate. I’ll post up some more pix when there’s a bit more progress but below is some of the kit that’s either coming or already in use at Billy Goat Towers.

KEF ‘Eggs’

Samsung Series 9 46″ LCD (LE46A956D1MXXU)

Onkyo TX-SR 607 – Front

Onkyo TX-SR 607 – Rear

The ‘Onk’ has plenty of future proofing built in, I can add two more satellite speakers and turn it into a 7.1 system or I could add these, plus a second sub and have a full 7.2 system (my neighbours would hate me though ). There’s several extra HDMI inputs here that could be used for Games Consoles, Blu-Ray players etc, it also handles Sirius Satellite Radio too and has fill support for all of the current HD Audio standards!

Abandon hope all ye who enter here

Posted by on 18/01/2010 1 comment

First proper Sunday ride since Xmas so I thought I’d make it a good one, headed out of town and across to Geddington to ride Clay Dick, then over to Fermyn Woods, then Aldwincle, Lyveden Way, Bear Gate Track and home.
Clay Dick is an old Byway that links Geddington to Brigstock and possibly the site of a Victorian Brickworks (hence the clay reference…). Anyway usually the top end is virtually unpassable, with the trees hanging so low over the trail that in some places you cannot even push a bike through……except this time the Byway had been ‘repaired’.

By ‘repair’ I mean they have bulldozed the whole thing flat, about 40 feet wide, ripping out all the trees, bushes, rabbit and foxholes and turning it into a mile of sticky wet clay that will take months to settle .
So I rode as much as I could until my EWR stopped working and my feet started to look like Swamp Thing and then I carried my bike for 3/4 a mile .

I fought my way to Brigstock and crossed thru Fermyn Woods which was another, barely rideable shitfest before aborting the ride near Sudborough

Wildlife count for the ride was still good, four or five Red Kites (all eluded my camera sadly), 5 fairly big deer in Fermyn Woods and six Llama’s…..yeah It’s true, although they could have been Alpaca, Clovius Hoofus isn’t my area of expertise

Nice beginnings


Mud stops Play…

Magura ‘Mud Magnets’…wheel locked

‘Repaired’ trail – The Long Walk

Mud Magnets Part 2

FUBAR EWR

 

Being upfront pays off…

Posted by on 07/01/2010 No comments

So you guys and girls all know the score….Xmas/Thanksgiving comes along, family and friends all do that “Hey, what do you want for a present?” thing, you Ummm and ahhh, suck air through your teeth…say “Hmmmm, I dunno” and weeks later unwrap something mundane like aftershave, nasty socks, wine you wouldn't pour on a skunk, a hideous sweatshirt….you get the idea

So this year I decided to be more assertive, I needed a bunch more bike and DIY tools so I assembled a wishlist of tools, added the exact Part Numbers, prices and web site addresses and stepped away, telling people to “Please be precise, or fallback on the skunk wine/socks route…”

Et Voila….it worked

Santa Claus brought me:






I'm one happy goat….everybody wins

World SPD Stamping Championships 2010

Posted by on 04/01/2010 No comments

For a year or so now my riding buddies have been extolling the virtues of SPD’s and trying to sell the idea to me, you see, I still live in the world of the Toeclip so I can’t see the sense. I never fall off my bike, never have much trouble ‘getting in’ to my toeclips and to be honest, in recent months I’ve gone back to flat pedals with no clips at all.

Yesterday was what turned out to be a large RetroBike meet at Thetford Forest, the largest lowland Pine Forest in Great Britain, down in deepest Suffolk with 22 riders attending. Also present in large quantities was snow and ice…..LOTS of it, which, much to my amusement, seems to be THE Achilles Heel of SPD pedals

The tranquil, picture postcard ‘snowscape’ scenery was shattered by the sound of dozens of MTB riders furiously stamping on their frozen/useless SPD’s, wobbling and dabbing the ground…hence the title of this blog post

Joking aside a great day was had by all during the two sub-zero rides we did yesterday……some pictures:

Chin Wag

Art Haus

Wobble Fun

Watching the ‘Bomber Kidz’

Snow Road

All Along The Watchtower

Iced Mech

Xntrick Machinery

Alien Sunset

More pictures and words can be found HERE