Guttersnipe

I suspect you won't get much joy out the procedure Jacquers has linked to - that's designed to cut out squealing, not loss of power.You have both symptoms, which sounds to my crap home mechanic's ear like a classic case of rotor/pad contamination - you probably got some oil or grease on the rotor which will have gotten into the pads. Cleaning the rotor won't fix it, because the pad compound is all gunked up, and keeps depositing new muck at its interface with the rotor. The quick and easy fix is to clean the rotor, and install new pads. The cheaper, messier, fix for sintered pads is to pull them out and heat them up for a few minutes on a hotplate. Use an old frying pan, get it nice and warm, and put the pads in with the working surface facing up. They'll start to smoke and smell after a minute or two - take them off the heat when the smoke stops, 2 to 3 minutes later. I tried this recently on holiday, after a joburg shop delivered my new bike with precisely the symptoms you describe the day before I flew out of the country with it. Worked a treat. Sanding the pads down probably won't work, because the oil can work its way all the way through the compound.

Add a solo category and I'm in.

Tx. I got an email from Niner saying they are now shipping the Air 9 Carbon framesets, and I'd like to at least put a realistic price on the fantasy.

Tis the season to deplete global crabon fribbe stocks ... I'd try to ease the symptoms with a shot of cortisone, but don't want to get popped at the next of my frequent dope tests.

Anyone know which shops in Joburg stock Niner bikes? I am experiencing an itch, which none of the shops close to me seems able to scratch. I gather Coolheat are the distributors, so I suppose anyone could source from them, but I'd prefer to talk to a shop that is committed to the brand.

HED Ardennes. Nearly 200g lighter. Similar price. Wiiiide profile makes for a pretty floaty ride (albeit not quite as tubby like as the HED publicity suggests).

Thanks for all the suggestions. I think at the heart of my frustration is that I would be sold software that is so out of date you can't do the regular upgrades that sort out the seemingly infamous Tacx bugs. So first prize is to get Coolheat to swap out the software disc. Failing that - which really shouldn't happen - I'll partition the drive and run XP.

I'm getting fat and slow in my Johannesburg exile, so I thought I'd lock myself in a winter training binge with my fancy new tacx bushido. Because I'm a Mac guy, and I figured the VR software and real life videos would tax Parallels/Bootcamp too heavily, I bought a fast PC especially to run the thing. But it doesn't. Because the system, bought six weeks ago, was supplied by Coolheat with software that won't work on 64 bit windows 7, and so out of date that there is no upgrade path. Here's hoping they sort it out because right now I am weeping tears of extremely expensive frustration.

I'm surprised someone doesn't open up a business as an order aggregator and after sales service provider for CRC locally. A brave shop could even do it, with a workshop attached. Pick up your shipment there, return warranty items, get maintenance work done if you can't do it yourself. Seems like a better business model than fighting with distributors over stock, pricing, terms, and losing any customer who knows how to turn a wrench to CRC. Crucially, capital requirements would be very low, as you wouldn't be carrying much stock. If someone did that, it would peel away a large remaining slice of the customer base for your lbs - people who are nervous about working on their bikes, or who are worried about after-sales service.

Ha! I knew the skewers would annoy you. They annoy me. I've got lots of shimano steel ones scattered between various bikes and easily swapped in. To be fair, the stanchions on the R7 are 30mm, not 28mm, but I can't seem to love the thing. I'm intrigued that you reckon the spokes are fine - that's good to know. The rims are stans olympic, as you might have guessed from from the preceding. So a fresh fork would sort the stiffness, and while I am at it, I might as well go qr15, which hardly seems to add any weight, and is evidently stiffer even than a manly shimano skewer. Maxle lite seems a little less, well, light. That done, there is just the matter of the head angle - but I do like to fix problems in stages, so praps I'll leave off the new frame a little longer. Hey - you just saved me 25k. For now.pistadex2010-01-02 16:29:26

Thanks Johan, that is a useful answer. Here is the tedious background: I have a santa cruz blur xc which is great at going up hill, but due to both its geometry and my foolishness in building it up as light as possible (Manitou R7 MRD absolute, revolution spokes, kcnc skewers) doesn't flatter my skills on the way down quite as much as the old blur classic did. By all accounts the new carbon blur xc with its slacker head angle is more confident on the way down, and while its primarily designed around a 100mm fork, its apparently really fun with 120mm. It shares with my current bike a longer top tube than the old blur classic, which is a good thing, and you can build it up to 10.5kgs with no stupid-light parts. While I am sure a stiffer fork and more sensible wheels would help the handing on my current bike, I was considering indulging both my inner weight weenie and by inner hooligan by building over most of my parts onto a new frame. I thought 120mm would be good for more trailsy days, and I could take the fork down to 100mm for racing. I agree with you about travel adjust - I know most people don't use it much when they have it. I suspect the thing to do for now is rebuild my wheels with competition spokes, and get an f100 fork, maybe with a qr15 and see how that changes things. I have a reba on my 29er, and its currently set up at 80mm, perhaps I'll respace to 100mm it as an academic exercise next weekend.

Bateleur1's Midrand suggestion sounds best, if perhaps not fastest, although I am less likely to get lost on the old joburg road. Only question is which is more scary, lunch with my wife's relatives, or intercity commuting in Gauteng. I'm hoping if I arrive tired and smelly, possibly injured, they'll all ignore me...

I am trying to make up my mind about a new fork. I'd like one that I can run at 100mm for racey days, and 120mm for a slacker head angle/more travel when playing. I don't want the weight, complexity, and (reputedly) inferior suspension action of travel adjustment. I know its pretty easy to respace a Rockshox Reba from 80mm-100mm-120mm. Does the same apply to current Fox F-series forks?

I have a tiresome lunch obligation in pretoria tomorrow and am hoping to redeem it by riding there. I am fairly new to Gauteng and can see myself getting it very wrong. Can anyone suggest a relatively low death-index route from the Rosebank area to Lynwood?

I need a few bits and pieces to finish my slow gestating fixie project. Can anyone point me at a decent bike shop, and decent hardware shop, that stay open on Sundays, and aren't a million miles from Rosebank?