What did you buy your ebike this week?

[RustyMTB]

You fool. It doesn't even look like an SLX 12 speed cassette.

 

[p3eps]

I needed something else in my basket to spend enough for free postage when ordering some purple bling for my daughter’s bike.
I saw this blue / black Camelbak Podium Chill bottle, and thought it’d go nicely with my bike. I also bought the dirt cap for it too. Well worth spending about £18 to save £5 on the delivery

 

[steve_sordy]

...................... Well worth spending about £18 to save £5 on the delivery

Man maths!

 

[Mik3F]

A Sram Eagle GX Axs upgrade kit and the upgrded rocker paddle for the shifter

Fitting on Saturday, just hope the outer cable comes out without having to drop the motor

 

[EMTBSEAN]

A Sram Eagle GX Axs upgrade kit and the upgrded rocker paddle for the shifter

Fitting on Saturday, just hope the outer cable comes out without having to drop the motor


View attachment 136301



View attachment 136302

What bike is it for mate

 

[Doomanic]

A new clomptometer;

I’m not really a Park Tools fanboy but my Lifeline deadblow hammer has gone AWOL and this was 17 quid on Amazon.

 

[Mik3F]

What bike is it for mate

Specialized Levo SL (2022)

 

[RustyMTB]

A new clomptometer;
View attachment 136330

I’m not really a Park Tools fanboy but my Lifeline deadblow hammer has gone AWOL and this was 17 quid on Amazon.

Ah, a Tapometer. Nice.

 

[Stihldog]

A new clomptometer;
View attachment 136330

I’m not really a Park Tools fanboy but my Lifeline deadblow hammer has gone AWOL and this was 17 quid on Amazon.

Nice find and good investment. Caution though …could be a dangerous tool if not used correctly.
Even though it may have a specific purpose, READ the instructions.



I like my Park Tool Hammer.

 

[Planemo]

The Rock hahahahahahaha

 

[darwink1]

Got a DSD Runt for the Zeb installed this week. Still have to play with pressures a bit but it feels good. Also got a poo brown Chromag trailmaster bolted on.

D

 

[Shjay]

Got a DSD runt in my Yari along with a Novy Splug in the other side

 

[A06]

Just got work bonus and it was recently my Bday so...Fox Rampage DH Helmet, RM OT Batter pack extender, Dynaplug Air kit, full replacement drivetrain (upgraded to Linkglide 11S).

 

[EMTBSEAN]

Specialized Levo SL (2022)

Oh ok, sorry but I can't comment on ease of fitting then.

 

[Mik3F]

Oh ok, sorry but I can't comment on ease of fitting then.

Its fitted, couldnt get the outer cable out fo the fram though, looks like it stuck so cut it off at both ends. Will get the LBS to remove it next time it gos to them for any work

 

[Arminius]

Nice find and good investment. Caution though …could be a dangerous tool if not used correctly.
Even though it may have a specific purpose, READ the instructions.

View attachment 136343

I like my Park Tool Hammer.

 

[Mcharza]

The Rock hahahahahahaha

The stone is intended for straightening the rim (alu).

 

[irie]

Bought 2 x Bosch 625Wh Vertical Powertube batteries for £425 each (less previous purchase vouchers = £405 each) from Merlin Cycles as upgrades to our 500Wh Trek Rail 5 batteries. Will go in and be recognised without having to mess with (non-Smart) software (confirmed by Bosch UK).

 

[steve_sordy]

The Rock hahahahahahaha

You may laugh at @Stihldog's inclusion of a rock in his hammer wall. But when I had a double up front, I bent some teeth on the bigger ring crossing over a boulder. I rested the ring on the boulder and hit the bent teeth with a smooth rock of about the size on Stihldog's display until the teeth were straight. One tooth broke off, and I filed it smooth with another stone. The ring shifted OK and lasted until the entire ring wore out. Unlike Stihldog, I tossed my neolithic tools when I'd done with them.

PS: The ancient Egyptians used handheld boulders that were naturally hard (something called Dolerite I believe) to cut out and shape the massive limestone blocks that formed the Pyramids. Also the needles (Cleopatra's Needle being the most famous). It is amazing what you can do with masses of cheap labour and have the time!

 

[Planemo]

Lol, wasn't taking the piss, I've partaken in many, many jerry-rigged solutions over the years including rocks, paving slabs in fact anything to hand that would do the job. I even once used an old 70's thick granite ashtray to batter the end of a 3' breaker bar to get a sump plug out (it worked) cos I didn't have any room under the car to get any leverage with my arms. Quite a common one is the use of 2 spanners locked end to end to get leverage in a tight space. Honestly I'll do anything to get the job done as despite having amassed quite a selection of tools theres always something you don't have

 

[Stihldog]

Unlike Stihldog, I tossed my neolithic tools when I'd done with them.

How could you?! Don’t you have children, grandchildren, great grandchildren? My impact tools displayed is only a portion of my collection, along with carpenters pouches and aprons.

Anyways, the perfect sized rock, about the size of a baked potato, is pretty darn handy. I like the idea that it could be used as a file also …thanks Steve.

Ancient tools are interesting. .

 

[JkdJEdi]

Its funny i bought a bleed kit as well but then I learned doing a gravity bleed was the easiest instead of the tubes and stuff. Theres a youtube vid from a santacruz team mechanic that shows how to do it.

Some nice tips in that video, I usually do the gravity, no I always do the gravity, don't own any bleed kits..lol.

 

[Arminius]

Can somebody delete this vid please. What a mess for a mechanic and for the environment…….

 

[OldnSlow]

Nice find and good investment. Caution though …could be a dangerous tool if not used correctly.
Even though it may have a specific purpose, READ the instructions.

View attachment 136343

I like my Park Tool Hammer.

 

[Arminius]

Good morning Gentle*wo*men,
For those that might not know, there is a webcam at this most famous zebra crossing and funny to watch what people still do there today:

LIVE NOW! Abbey Road Cam

Abbey Road Studios have been at the heart of the UK music industry since 1931 and have been home to countless landmark recordings and pioneering advances in recording techniques, equipment and technology.

www.earthcam.com

 

[EMTBSEAN]

You may laugh at @Stihldog's inclusion of a rock in his hammer wall. But when I had a double up front, I bent some teeth on the bigger ring crossing over a boulder. I rested the ring on the boulder and hit the bent teeth with a smooth rock of about the size on Stihldog's display until the teeth were straight. One tooth broke off, and I filed it smooth with another stone. The ring shifted OK and lasted until the entire ring wore out. Unlike Stihldog, I tossed my neolithic tools when I'd done with them.

View attachment 136432

PS: The ancient Egyptians used handheld boulders that were naturally hard (something called Dolerite I believe) to cut out and shape the massive limestone blocks that formed the Pyramids. Also the needles (Cleopatra's Needle being the most famous). It is amazing what you can do with masses of cheap labour and have the time!

What about Hatshepsut, she built (not personally) the biggest obelisk of all the Egyptians mate and not forgetting plenty of beer as well

 

[steve_sordy]

How could you?! Don’t you have children, grandchildren, great grandchildren? My impact tools displayed is only a portion of my collection, along with carpenters pouches and aprons.

Anyways, the perfect sized rock, about the size of a baked potato, is pretty darn handy. I like the idea that it could be used as a file also …thanks Steve.

Ancient tools are interesting. .

If you like old tools, I suspect that you will like "Moving Heavy Things" by Jan Adkins. It is basically how people moved stuff before engine power. How did they get those bells up in the church tower? How did they move the stones used to build the docks? It is not just levers and pulleys. Only 47 pages. Building the pyramids not included!

Moving Heavy Things

The almost forgotten craft of shifting large weights with brains instead of engines. Beginning with practical rules for moving like "Get the Ming vase out of the Room. All the way out," and "What goes up comes down heavier." This is a fascinating description of applied physics in the real world...

books.google.co.uk

 

[Arminius]

All fake news! Can our hammerman do this?

 

[steve_sordy]

What about Hatshepsut, she built (not personally) the biggest obelisk of all the Egyptians mate and not forgetting plenty of beer as well

I went on a guided tour of a wide variety of Egyptian temples, tombs and pyramids. We also went to one of the quarries to see how they excavated the blocks and the needles. There was one unfinished needle that was estimated to weigh about 1000 tonnes; if it had been completed and transported it would have been the largest of them all. Sadly, it was a step too far and it broke in half before they could release it from the ground. How would they have moved it around?

People bang on about the "mystery of the pyramids" meaning how they hell did they assemble 2 million 2-3 ton blocks with only manual labour, and so high up in the air? Well, I'm not going to answer that one, but will pose another much smaller scale puzzle instead:

My mate and I were in one of the museums in Cairo looking at carvings on blocks. There was this block of black granite about 3 feet square and 8 feet long. The faces were all highly polished and appeared to be perfectly flat and square (How did they do that, it's granite!!!). The faces were covered in crisply incised hieroglyphs, again all exquisitely done. But what captured my mate's interest was a hole about 8 inches deep, maybe 1/4 inch diameter. As far as we could tell with the naked eye it was a vertically cut hole, round and with parallel sides. Hard enough to do in granite with modern machine tools, but over 3000 years ago? At the bottom of the hole was a round spigot sticking upwards for about half an inch. My mate was a Fellow of the Institute of Quarrying and had forgotten more about rock than I even knew existed in the first place. I am an apprentice trained mechanical engineer and trained at a general engineering company and I know many, many ways to put holes in stuff. Between the two of us we reckoned that the cutting tool was a copper tube twirled by the hands of a craftsman, with a flood of watery fine grit between the copper and the granite. Copper because that was all they had then (iron didn't get to Egypt for at least another 1000 years). My mate reckons that granite is so hard that it would have taken many copper tools and many, many hours of twirling the tube; the craftsman probably used a bow with the string wrapped around the tube. The spigot would have been the granite that was left inside the tube where it had been broken off deliberately and then removed. And how did they make the copper tube?

So, we felt reasonably happy that although the man-hours involved for just one hole was mind boggling, at least we could see how it could have been done. Then we found a triangular hole! What!

We departed with the problem unsolved, the best we could come up with was acid erosion, or a total long shot - ultrasonic vibration of a triangular tool (how, how, how?)

Our Egyptian guide, a graduate of the Cairo School of Egyptology (something like that) could read all the markings and tell us who begat who and who descended from which heavens in what type of chariot, but he had no idea why the holes had to be so deep, nor how they got there. If I had not seen it, I would have said that it was impossible to do in those times.

 

[steve_sordy]

All fake news! Can our hammerman do this?

Brilliant! But I was waiting for one of those hammers to fall from the roof and hit him on the head!