Johan Bornman

Castrol LHM+ Hydaulic fluid. You can get the same product from Citroen and Rolls Royce dealers. They use it in their power steering. Audo A8 models also use this stuff. Whenever I need some, I just take some out of my Roll's power steering reservoir. It is on a motorplan, so it gets topped up every time it goes in for a service. PS - some models of Golf also use the same stuff but I don't know anyone who drives such a lesser car.

Nipples don't break in shear. There is no shear force on them after they have been tightened. Brass is an alloy of zinc and copper. Aluminium is aluminium. American Classic has a patent for a long-life aluminium nipple with good durability (but like all alu nipples, poor build properties).

Those Chainese rip-off Lock Shox are a problem. Try a bit of Squirt on the pivot points. That stuff apparently cures anything from the clap to dandruff.

How can you not like those discs? I'm thinking that finally someone has done something sensible about brake cooling. Those discs appear (I guessing here) to be of the new sandwiched stainless - aluminium - stainless type found on the latest XT and XTR discs. Shimano mooted those as better cooling because of alu's excellent heat conductivity. However, when you have a piece of alu inside a stainless sandwich, the heat cannot flow out other than at the very narry margin right around the edges. This would be negilible. However, what they seem to have done here is to make the alu part protrude significantly (those are the strange bits on the inside of the disc). This will allow for very effective air cooling and absolutely makes sense. I wonder if they came up with this idea only after someone called their bluff on the first bit of nonsense. As for their hubs, it is a shame. I can't believe they're sticking to their guns on their very, very poor hub design.

No

Sorry, I can't tell you since I've never encountered them. Howevr, roller/needle bearings perform very poorly in self-greased applications. They don't recycle grease as well as balls. They prefer to run in an oil bath. Further, any roller element that oscillates rather than roll, spells trouble. I think...experimentation will tell one day when I am big enough for my own full suspension bike - that nylon bushings wil be better.

They are nice and oversized, especially the odd one out on each wheel. A set front and rear is close to R1000, if not more, IIRC. They last long, the seals are good and Campag/Fulcrum know what they doing. However, submerge them and they will go the way of a drowned rat. No wheels should be submerged in water.

Nice wheels but the bearings are proprietary and hideously expensive - the most expensive wheel bearings on the market.

Ahem.... ;-)

Please don't, they are butt-ugly. Sorry Graeme.

Rabble-rousing, beer, seedy cities, bonhomie...I'm in.

Some people swear by them. The reason they swear by them is that they happened to stumble upon a saddle that doesn't hurt them. Most of us stumble across such a saddle in the pret-a-porter realm and never have to look at a bespoke solution. The question you have to ask yourself is this: What problem do they solve? I once asked Graeme that at an Argus expo and he was pretty annoyed with me. I accept that those saddles suit some people, but 99% of us find a pretty decent commercial saddle and have come to learn that the best saddle is the one that doesn't bite your arse. The rider is that with all saddles you have to do mileage before you harden up. Lay off for a season and make a comback and that same friendly saddle will bite once again.

Forget it. Not available. This is Shimano's downfall on wheels. Their XT and XTR wheels have such poor seals that people routinely ruin their bearings. The cup is part of the hub and once that is ruined, your wheels are scrap.

Absolutely normal, but undersirable. I say normal because this is simply how physics works. You don't say what rims, hubs and spokes you have on there but a hub-brake system works by appltying a compressive force to the disc, which applies torque to the hub, which tansmits torque from the left side to also some on the right side, from which both sides convert the torque to tension (both positive and negative) in the spokes, which is transmitted to the rim as torque, to the tyres as torque and to the road as a frictional force. It is a bit simple, but that's essentially what happens. In a rim brake such as on a roadbike, there is no torque involved, only compressive and tension forces in the rim, tyre and road. However, we're talking hub-brake here as in MTB. The hub is essentially a tube that transmits torque from the left side where it originates at the disc, to the right. It is not perfectly stiff, so not all the torque reaches the right side of the wheel. This has the effect that the spokes on the left side feel the braking force more than that on the ride and the wheel moves. Usually you'll not see this but, if the hub is sufficiently flimsy (think weight weeny rubbish), the rim is sufficiently light (think weight weenie fashion) and the spokes not enough (think weight weenie folly), then this will happen. As an aside, if the wheel is built with the pulling spokes (whilst braking) ont he wrong side of the flange, the pushing spokes could be moved into the path of the caliper. These conditions are only really possible with a big rotor and very hard braking and underspecc'd parts. Given the above conditions, it is perfectly normal.

No, that's not what I said. Read again. I said you SHOULD not.

No. To use your analogy, it is OK to select any gear and drive the car as long as you like in that gear. Try that with first gear for 30kms tomorrow and report back to us.

No

Red rims of course. There is no other way. Please note that my preference has nothing to do with the fact that I have a newly-built and never-used set of single-speed wheels with red rims and black Novatek hubs and black spokes in my workshop that someone had me build and then never collected.

RB and MTB BBs are identical for one difference: on the MTB BB the right hand thread is longer so that you can fit up to 5mm of spacers should the BB width require it. On the roadbike you'll safely get away wit only 2.5mm of spacers. If you have an Ultegra BB lying around and you have a MTB in need of one, put it on. It's like accepting a cornea for transplant. You don't ask if the donour was a good Christian or not. Edit: I forgot to add. There is ZERO difference (other than price) between XTR and even LX, for that matter, in BB adapter cups. I'm assuming we're talking 24mm Hollowtech Shimano here. We often have to take XTR simply 'cause that's all that's available on a given day. But LX/Deore/Whatever the low-end is is much better value for money.

A shock that knocks when returning to full length probably has a hardened rubber bumper. This is easily fixed by replacing it with a thick O-ring of suitable diameter. Do it yourself. 1) Remove the shock. 2) Remove all the air (or die) 3) Unscrew the air cannister. 4) Remove the bumper from the damper body and check if it is nice and soft. 5) Replace with anything suitable. 6) Add a little bit of Hypoid oil (5ml) to the air chamber and replace the air cannister. Voila!

C'mon TNT, you should know better than dishing out dodgy advice. The fact that it works doesn't make it good practise. By cross-chaining you are rubbing the chain, on the exit at the rear sprocket and enter at the front sprocket, on the sprocket sides. The fact that this happens under tension does three bad things. 1) It makes a noise. 2) It wears the sprockets, especially chainrings which are soft, on the side, which makes them thinner and more likely to then get pressure dents on the pressure face. 3) It prematurely wears the chain as well, since it's contact points are now not in line anymore and one side takes all the strain. The fact that modern bikes work in the cross chain position doesn't mean we should routinely ride there. Obviously if you don't care about equipment longevity, be my guest, but the rest of us will do the sensible thing.

You omitted one vital piece of information - the number of spokes in the wheel. You allude to 36, but the extra four could be spares....or not. The Stans tech department is manned by dimwits. Don't expect an intelligent answer from them. If you go onto their support forum you'll see me ask their techies straight, exact questions and I get answers that don't relate to the question at all. Stans' big problem is that they don't know what an ERD measurement is. ERD, or Effective Rim Diameter, is an imaginary point inside the rim (to the same on the opposite end) where the spokes should end. You can't see this pointand therefore can't measure it with a ruler or tape measure. You have to use a special tool. Stan's don't have one so they guess. Not one of their stickers on any of their rims is accurate. Not one. The best example is their Flow 29er rim where the claimed ERD is off by something like 100mm. Perhaps Ricky Bobby can post us a photo of the sticker on his rims and you'll see. An ERD that's off by 100mm will give you a spoke length error of just more than 50mm. Spoke measurement is a bit of a scientific art. The scientific part is that you start off with the formula for a line in space - see http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Calculus/Lines_and_Planes_in_Space - and then we apply some art to it to modify it. If you use the pure line in space length, then the spokes end up too long. This is because they stretch as they are tensioned and, the rim compresses. Therefore we have to round down. By how much? That's the question that experience will teach you. As a rule of thumb - on a large wheel built with Revolution/Lasesr spokes (thin 15mm spokes), you can round down by up to 3mm. On a small wheel (26") by up to 2mm. On a large wheel with 1.8m spokes, by up to 2.5mm and on a small wheel with the same spokes, up to 2mm. Nipple length NEVER compensates for poor spoke calculations. The problem with online spoke calculators (and Stans' stupid guesswork) is that you never know whether you are presented with the aboslute length or rounded-down length. A conscientious wheelbuilder won't allow a non-rounded down spoke to go into his wheels. This just complicates repair work later on.

Your shock is probably back from hospital by now. Oil leaking from one of those indicates that the O-rings that seal the rebound, compression and lockout lever from the oil inside the damper body, have failed. These are tiny mother of O-rings and difficult to replace. But it can be done. The damper will have to be opened, refilled, bled and compressed all over again and this could be a R900 job. On some shocks this never happens, on others it happens after just a few months, usually because of installation error.

There is no easy way to tell. In fact, no hard and fast way either. The travel they stipulate is actually quite arbritrary. If you remove the guts of the fork, you'll see that there is no 100mm or 120mm in there. Some gibve you only 90mm of effective travel, others a bit more. With experience you eventually get to guess pretty accurately. The advice to let all air out and then see what the travel is may help, but won't allow you to extend the fork fully since it will now suck against itself. Remove the air top cap with a 26mm socket. This will allow you to cycle the fork freely (if lockout is off). and get a measurement. You may well have a 120mm travel fork, but with the travel restricted to 100mm. In spite of all the above, a feeling of a hard fork usually has nothing to do with travel. A 60mm and 120mm should feel exactly the same for a given amount of travel. There may be something else wrong. When you extend the fork fully, have a careful look for gouges just under the seal where the usual sag position could hide them. If it is a new fork, it may have insufficient lubrication.

Speak to Tanya on 0741522756. She bought a Bootr frame for her son, believing that all the components will just move over, but it doesn't. She wants to sell that frame now.