Soop Dogg

Just giving the chain a wipe is no good if you want to keep it looking like this though:

I remove my chain on a weekly basis and clean it thoroughly with a couple of small brushes in a bowl of Gunk or Muc-Off degreaser. I clean all the cr@p off the cassette on the back wheel also before rinsing the degreaser off (boiling water does this especially well), relubing and refitting the chain. I use a ceramic lube which I've found to be the best I've used, and is only a little more expensive than most others. Dry lube like the teflon one you referred to is ok providing the bike isn't being used too much in the wet. In bad conditions it will wash off easier, but in the dry it has the advantage that dirt/dust etc doesn't stick to it as badly as with a wet lube. (Handy if you're riding lots of singletrack where it can be really dusty) Wet lube in dry, dusty conditions will attract all sorts of muck to stick to it, but it's the better one to use in bad weather. The ceramic lube that I use is a wet lube and I'll use it all winter. If you intend taking the chain off, get some PowerLinks first. Once fitted, this allows you to remove the chain without the use of a rivet extractor. (You can then split the chain by hand) Modern 9 and 10 speed chains are so narrow that refitting a rivet after having removed it will mean you stand a good chance of the link coming apart the first time you put it under real pressure, so PowerLinks are just about the only way to go if you ever want to remove the chain. For cleaning the bike, car shampoo is fine. The only bit I'd say is don't use a pressure washer on the bike as you might push some moisture under the fork dust-seals which may eventually damage the oil seals. A normal hose should be just fine.

Cycling Jackets

Why? A pinch too tight is better than not tight enough. Not exactly going to result in a disaster. As long as you don't get it on so tight (using a filter wrench/strap) that you can't get the thing off again. I actually have had a filter blow off when it wasn't tight enough on a car that I couldn't get a good enough grip on the filter. I won't be letting that happen again. 'Engineers tight' is about right. Just nip it - I guess most of us know from experience when it's really tight enough.

I have an android app called SpeedView that as well as a normal speedo-type display, also has a HUD mode, displaying the digits in a mirror-image so you can set the phone on the dashboard and it reflects off the windscreen like a Head-up Display. Seems pretty accurate too. Also includes a trip meter, altimeter and graphical speed trace.

This cracked me up... uFK-CahPYgI

Yup.

racist!!

Yeah - ok, so perhaps you'd get your £ back when you join the ends up. I just posted it as it came to my inbox. Have to admit, I didn't see this thread becoming a serious discussion about the £1 though.

Just got this in an email It Takes Just £1 on a boring Sunday Afternoon To Really Pi$$ Someone Off on Monday Morning!

Yeah - ok, fine. But he did pull at least a paragraph from wikipedia in post # 35 to back up his claims on medical science. I noted that there was a reference given on the evidence supporting the claims regarding the circumference of the planet, but no references on the rest of the 'evidence' provided - so I went looking to see where at least some of this 'evidence' came from and found some here. (Go to the second paragraph of the section entitled 'Islamic Middle Ages') So he may be qualified - good on him. But has he backed up "all his conclusions with examples, points & care" when at least some of his supporting evidence has been shown to be a cut & paste job from the Wikipedia site? I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions as to the degree of care demonstrated by this. As regards the whole debate about science vs religion, I'm abstaining from making any comment.

Are law-firms on the look out for people who can cut & paste articles from wikipedia these days? Cool!

Nope - 'BMW' has never been a combination used on a N.Ireland plate. In the past, they all used to have 3 letters - one of which was an 'I', followed by up to 4 numbers. More recently the 'I' has been changed to a 'Z'. There did used to be a similar BMW number going around Norwich a few years back. It had an italcised font and the lower case 'i' should actually have been an 'L', but the owner had changed it beyond recognition.

This is what I posted earlier. If you work it out, every 2-digit combination will be used once from 01 to 99 by the end of 2049. So there's no conspiracy of making more money as every combination is used and no combination is used more than once. I think it was a pretty good idea myself as it will last twice as long as the previous couple of systems.

They add '5' to the first digit on the second registration date of the year. So '09' became '59' and '10' becomes '60' '11' will become '61'

Don't worry, Peejay - I read your post.

The other thing I found when I considered buying this car 4 years ago was that it was MORE expensive to insure than a LHD model - because it had been modified from the original specification. As usual, many insurance companies refused to quote on a modified car. Nuts!

I know there's a few people here who see the Corvette as a decent replacement for the Supra, but are put off by them being LHD. Currently there's a RHD C5 available on Autotrader, albeit for £24,000 ono. I looked at this car about 4 years ago and almost bought it, but in the end got a newer, 50th Anniversary C5 convertible. Back then it was offered to me for £20k and was being sold by a chap in the Huntingdon area. £24k is too much money IMHO, but he does say 'offers in the region of', so someone may be able to get it for less. As far as I know it's the only RHD one in the UK, but bear in mind that doesn't make it worth any more, really. Most drivers of American cars won't buy one in RHD. Worth a look, I suppose. AUTOTRADER ADVERT

Yeah, that's probably a more important point.

":rolleyes:" indeed. If you watched the program you'd see that one of them (whilst injured in the middle of the road and being tended to by emergency services) was screaming something to her sister about them 'trying to steal your organs'. In which case it would seem that she at least was delusional and in running across the 3 lanes of traffic was attempting to save her own life, not end it and therefore not attempting to 'commit suicide'. PDQ

Get yourself on a cycle to work scheme with your employer if they offer it. You can save lots of money off the cost of a new bike and if you actually use it as your main way of getting to and from work, you can lose plenty of weight. I was 15st 13lbs earlierthis year. Started cycling to and from work at the start of May and am currently down to 14st 3lbs. I don't have any particular weight target - I just want to get to a level of fitness that I'm happy with and my weight will sort itself out. (Used to be a racing cyclist doing 10 miles in just over 22mins, so I have a fairly good idea of where I would like to be, fitness-wise now I'm mid 40's) I live about 7 miles from work, but I do tend to take the long routes home - I've covered anywhere from 7 miles to 34 miles on my way home.

Who said they were trying to commit suicide?

Like I'm going to click that one when I'm at work!

.......on a road where the car driver was entitled to expect the bike to be doing about 60 (ish) but the bike was travelling at the speed limit +100mph. Oh - and squeezing between a car and the solid white line is handing your own fate over to the stupid, inattentive car driver. A mate of mine did this a few years back when the driver of the car he was just about to pass decided it was time to overtake the car in front just as the white line finished. She didn't actually make contact with my mate's bike, but when he had to swerve violently, he lost the front. He carried along the road on his ar$e until he hit a lamp post with his chest at about 60mph. I happened across the scene about 2 mins later. Didn't even clock who it was until I took his helmet off to do mouth to mouth. That was a bit of a shock. He was still alive when they put him in the ambulance, but he died in hospital. It's alright blaming other motorists for not seeing you, but it doesn't help when you've ruptured every organ in your abdomen. If he'd been riding a bit more defensively - i.e. waiting for the white line to finish and then giving the car more room in case it moved to it's right - he might still be here today. And it's ok quoting all this b@lls about "Die for something or live for nothing" etc etc, but what choice do you give the poor sod coming the other way when you finally do lose it and end up going through their windscreen at an impact speed of over 150mph just because you were out honing your riding skills? I've seen that too, where a girl in her mid-20's (or at least bits of her) got punted from the passenger seat of her boyfriends car all the way to the boot by a motorcyclist coming through the window. The car driver was doing nothing wrong but lost his girlfriend just the same. I've done plenty of stupid things on the road in my life. I've probably ridden more miles on a bike than anyone on this forum, and more than many will ever do in their lifetimes, but riding/driving like a lunatic on the public road is something I'm in no way proud of and is something I've grown out of now, thanks. Keep it on the track.