BuffsVintageBikes

Thanks, do you not find it restrictive at all i.e. your leg hitting up against it on each stroke or do you carry it over your back and also, how quickly can you get to it if it's under your jersey? I used to carry my dinkum 9mm in a shoulder holster but found it too heavy and my weapon started to rust very quickly from all the sweat so I stopped that and bought myself a Guardian Angel pepper gun. The Pro is it's nice and light so can be carried in a jersey pocket, the Cons are it only carries 2 shots, doesn't make a loud noise and can be thrown away once discharged, so I'm looking at another practical alternative now.

That pistol is almost half a kg, how do you carry it on your person?

Absolutely, it's right up there with my favourite groupset of all time, both beautiful and functional 🤙

De Rosa SLX - They don't get much better than this 🤙 I picked up this frame from a year or two ago from @Hennie 15 in a shocking condition. It had been hit by a car and the rear triangle was totally out of alignment and the seat stays badly bent. During my frame building course with David Mecer, I had a chat to him about the possibilities of resurrecting this classic to its former glory. He suggested I bring it in and he and his trusty sidekick Rolf would have a go at cold setting the frame before resorting to a torch and new tubing. I picked up a full Dura-Ace 7400, 8 speed groupset here on Bikehub and this is the finished result... zero tubes replaced and a perfectly aligned frame. Oh the shear joy of steel bikes 😊 One ride on this bike and you'll understand why Ugo De Rosa is classed as the best frame builder of his generation (RIP). It does everything just flawlessly, stiff where it needs to be and yet super complaint on the rough stuff. It's the bike I wished I race in the 90's, a little red rocket ship 🤩

LOL... good luck with that 🤙

Very interesting stats, thanks 🤙

I'm not sure I agree with you Nick, I think the guys that pitch up at multi-day stage races make up a small percentage of the "average" mountain bikers in the country. Most are just content to rip up their local trails and leave the racing to the racing snakes. It would be an interesting statistic to measure though.

Means absolutely nothing to the average MTB rider who's MTB doesn't even cost that much 😲 Niche market products sadly, look and work great but admired from a distance 😊

You could get David Mercer to custom build you a steel gravel fork for a similar price.

Bottelary Hills normally holds up pretty well to storm damage so I think there's a good chance it will go ahead. I rode their Fish Eagle trail on Sunday morning just before the storm hit and it had just been cleaned up beautifully by the trail crew and was riding soooo good.

How's my spray job holding up @Walie I am? That was the first professional spray job I tackled on a friends bike. It was still supposed to get a Candy Red over the top of that maroon but Hennie liked that base coat colour so much he decided to stay with it.

So that's what ignorance sounds like. Organizers cancel 2 days before a race and you assume nothing much has been done? Really?

I was very keen to race the event as well but sadly it was also the price that put me off, mostly because it also wasn't the only race I was doing this month. To pitch a fairly new gravel race at a price higher than the Cape Town Cycle Tour entry (that includes full road closure) is being very optimistic IMHO.

Hey Chris, this is going to sound terribly windgat but I've always said that if my friends with dropper posts can drop me on any technical descent then I'll fit one to my bike... and that hasn't happened yet 😊 I'm not sure if it's my riding style or just years of riding with a standard post but I just never find the seat to be in my way or to hit me in the butt while descending. For the extra weight and cost, those few seconds someone gains in the descent get wiped out on the climbs very quickly. I totally understand it for Enduro riding or Downhill but on an XC bike I'm not convinced it's a necessity.

Both... and also bananas & nuts & potatoes 😊

I've also seen a mates front tubeless pop off the front rim during a training ride, it's the main reason I don't ride with them, I got a bit nervous after witnessing that 😲

Geepers, that could have ended very badly. Glad that helmet did its job 🤙

Little story for context... Some time last year I snapped my Anthems frame (dual susp) and it wasn't insured or covered under warranty so I replaced it with a new Orbea Oiz (dual), lovely bike. The parts off the Anthem were lying in a box so I needed to do something with them. I managed to pick up an old alum 29er Silverback hardtail frame from neighbour with the intention to build it up and then sell it on because I don't ride hardtails anymore (or so I thought) or need another bike. Once I'd built it up I needed to go test it out of course. Big mistake, I loved the ride the bike gave, so much so that it became my training bike and the Oiz my race day bike. Then last week I went and pulled the trigger on a Scale carbon hardtail that was on sale here on Bikehub. Hardtail 29ers are very different to old 26ers, they're less harsh on the old bones and climb rather nicely as well. I don't think you'll regret starting out on one.

1800m of climbing in 60km's... looks like a great race to miss 😆

60km PPA Event for the XCM series

Raced there a month ago and the trails were great 🤙

Gorgeous, I've got a set of them on my Neo-retro Colnago as well 🤙

Sadly I'm going to have to sit this one out now as we have a family wedding on the Saturday 😔 I'm so over this Cape winter.

I would not advise chemical dipping on a full suspension frame unless the people doing it are extremely careful with how much material gets removed. I've seen instances where the brazing has been eaten off steel frames because they were in the tank too long and the cable guides have fallen off during the process. Bare in mind Alu is even softer. You could see your bearing guides getting slightly larger if you don't somehow protect them when dipping. My advise to you would be to have the frame vapour blasted at Dennes Engineering. Make sure to use duct tape in all your bearing recesses or leave old bearings in the frame and replace them afterwards. VB is far less aggressive on Alu and gives a great finish for primer.

As someone who paints his own bikes I can tell you that the cost in spraying a carbon frame comes in the preparation time of the frame. Where you can chemically dip or bead blast a steel or alu frame, you can't do that with carbon. You can possibly blast it with nut shell if you have someone that can do that carefully but 9 times out of 10 the only way to strip it is with sandpaper. That alone is 6-8hr job so there goes R2K out the window... before you even get to Primer. Painting is a seriously labour intensive job.