mountain_lion

Welcome Troutie! I have been following and admiring your work over the years. (yes, I am a lurker on mtbr...) Thys says I apparently inspired him to start building lights (see this thread) so I guess I am also partly resposible here... Any way, you were one of those who inspired me (Thanks!) so it looks like this is all your own doing after all! mountain_lion2009-07-31 14:24:26

Not all manufactures. Many only change the colour, fit a women's specific saddle and a shorter stem... i.e. except for the colour, nothing that you cannot do not do yourself.

Sorry to have to say that I had some PM enquiries in a similar as vain as BL from Thys. He started off "Hi ML, because of you, I have been inspired to build my own lights! I am not really that technical but I want to give it a bash anyway." I gave him some pointers, but then he wanted detail specs, info on drivers, advice on which is best here and there. The sort of thing you would expect a true DIYer to figure out for himself. Eventually I suggested that he rather ask his questions on the open forum (which he never did) or do his own Google work. When he posted Troutie-MTB's beam shot photos without a crediting him, I also smelt a rat and thus my post asking if he is now the SA agent. As BL has stated, anybody can produce MTB lights, all the info is out there. It is just the way that thys has gone about getting the info which leaves a bit of a sour taste with us DIYers. But well done to Thys for taking the idea and running with it...

Have a look at the Giants. I know they change the geometry on their WSD road bikes. Not sure about their MTBs. We get the Australian Giant spec in SA. Not sure if all models are available here though... http://www.giant-bicycles.com/en-AU/bikes/women/

Yes good drivers are expensive and once you go for multi channel even more so. To avoid linear dimming, you unfortunately have no choice but to use an expensive driver. LEDs in series with a bflex driver is probably the best affordable choice for a MTB light. Parallel with a bflex driver is not a good idea, as thys has explained. With constant voltage source, parallel is better, but not with constant current drive. With LEDs stick to constant current in series. I have not had one LED fail during use.

The flash lights which Brighter-lights and thys used make their housings from are (were?) available from Midas. I got 4 while they were on special for R80 and am also in the process of turning them into MTB lights. Going slowly due to time constraints...

Nice work, thysmeades! Are you now the SA agent for troutie-mtb of mtbr forum fame? http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?t=487467 http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?t=493687

To avoid completely hijacking the shock oil thread, I am starting a new one...

Thanks for the replies re wheel building, but lets start a new thread on that before completely hijacking this one...

BumpnGrind, You forgot to swap over the front brakes from the old to the new fork, but that should be obvious...

Both lights are in daily use. This is a DIY thread; I have shared my ideas. Production is over to you...

Make me an offer I can't refuse...

As I understand the term, the dish of a wheel refers to the off-set to allow for the cassette on the rear wheel. i.e. the rear rim is not centred on the hub. JB can correct me if I am wrong when he replies regarding to my chain line problem...

But why did you take the tyres off in the first place? You can top-up without removing the tyre. Only need to take the tyre off when replacing the tyre...

Do you stop and make use of the pedestrian crossing even when going straight? Must be very frustrating doing this all the time... I am not a legal expert, but should you be involved in a collision while riding on the wrong side of the road, you might be considered to be at fault irrespective of what the other party did. You are after all not complying with the law. This could have implications for insurance etc.

Main reason not to ride on the wrong side of the road is that other road users don't expect you to be there and thus are not looking for you there. This is especially true at intersections.

Thanks JB, did not think so. Any comment on the chain line problem? (hope my description is clear enough / make sense...)

Would like to know the difference in ride between Anthem and AnthemX. Please provide more details.

Thanks for the comment so far. I am also leaning towards replacing / upgrading BB & crank rather than new bike (although a new bike will be nice and scratch the itch... ) I am also still confused by the chain line issue. Never seen anything like it before. This started after I replaced the rear wheel (new XT hub and cassette). New wheel was built by LBS. Took it back to them several times, but they never got it right. So fixed it myself. Problem is that the largest cog on the cassette is further inwards on the new hub. Chain was running at a large angle inwards even on front granny ring, causing the chain to jump on the front. Fitting the BB without a spacer solved the alignment problem, but then the FD did not have sufficient travel to select the granny ring. Only solution I could find was to sand down the BB spacer. I suspect that if I now fit an external BB, the crank set will move even further outwards, and thus the chainline problem will occur again... Staying with internal Isis BB with existing crank is an option, but Cape mud gets in there so easily that even with regular opening and cleaning (as best as you can with these sealed BB units) it does not last long. Tedious job to do as well.

I have been riding a small Giant Anthem 2 since April 2007. Could not fit the Anthem 1 in the budget at the time, but in general I am very happy with this bike. Problems I had were good excuses to upgrade. The Giant shock did not last long (I am 85kg and hammer the downhills) so the suppliers offered an upgrade to Fox RP23 at a very good price, so now I have a decent shock on it. Rear wheel Formula hub did not stand up to the Stellenbosch mud and was replaced with XT last year and rims are now DRC. I struggled a bit to get the chain line right (XT hub seems to be a bit narrower than the Formula), but after sanding down the spacer ring on the Isis BB it is now working fine in the largest sprocket on the cassette. It is starting to sound like the BB might be next to go after this winter... I would prefer to change to outboard BB, but then the whole crank set needs replacement plus if there was chain line problems with the Isis BB, I can't see how the outboard BB will work on this frame. Can the "dishing" of the rear wheel also affect the chain line? Anybody upgraded a 2007 Anthem 2 to outboard BB? So now I am wonderinig if it might not be worth while upgrading to a new bike and sell the Anthem2 while it still has some 2nd hand value. Big question: new bike or upgrade existing? If new, what to get? I am a fun rider who does the odd 50km XC "race" over weekends. I enjoy single track at speed, especially the "technical" stuff although at 40+ I stay off the big jumps. Do I get a trail bike or do I stick to XC? If I can get a decent price for the Anthem2, R20-25K budget might just be possible for a new bike... Suggestions? mountain_lion2009-07-14 02:10:25

I grew up in Somerset-West. "Cloud bursts" like this often occurred, but flooding as shown in the pics seldom happened. Bad maintenance of the storm water system if you ask me...