New bike advice

Dave42W wrote:My bike does

Dave42W wrote:

My bike does not do the same number of commuter miles (my work is based from home) but it is ridden every day whatever the weather and has done over 3,500 miles in it’s first year.
Routine maintenance has been virtually zero. Certainly needs nothing at all doing most months (and I mean nothing: it does not get a wash, a light charging or a tyre pumped up).
The key secrets?
– Rohloff hub gears
– Gates Belt Drive
– Hope Hydraulic Disk Brakes
– Schmidt dynamo with front and rear lights
– 32mm Schwalbe Durano tyres

Other elements include a Hope BB with ceramic bearings.

To be sure it is not the world’s fastest bike (unless you include all those hours of cleaning/servicing when it easily wins). But it could be setup to be a lot faster by losing some of the racks (rear, front randoneer and low rider), metal long fenders with mudflaps, the Brooks saddle, no kickstand and possibly replacing the Jones Loop H-Bar with drop handlebars – in that guise I am confident it could compete with most cross bikes on most commutes and still not need servicing.

Oh and the real bonus is that 50% of the total cost was for items made in the UK.

See http://42bikes.warnock.me.uk/2013/11/30/reliability-is-not-boring/ which details all the maintenance needed over 12 months/

Love your Stoater plus, Dave.. Great to see a independent British company, building such awesome bikes.. I think, I shall have to get saving up after drooling over their website this morning.. Blown away by the quality and attention to detail… Not sure my wife will be quite as enthusiastic though !! 🙂

My bike does not do the same
My bike does not do the same number of commuter miles (my work is based from home) but it is ridden every day whatever the weather and has done over 3,500 miles in it’s first year.
Routine maintenance has been virtually zero. Certainly needs nothing at all doing most months (and I mean nothing: it does not get a wash, a light charging or a tyre pumped up).
The key secrets?
– Rohloff hub gears
– Gates Belt Drive
– Hope Hydraulic Disk Brakes
– Schmidt dynamo with front and rear lights
– 32mm Schwalbe Durano tyres

Other elements include a Hope BB with ceramic bearings.

To be sure it is not the world’s fastest bike (unless you include all those hours of cleaning/servicing when it easily wins). But it could be setup to be a lot faster by losing some of the racks (rear, front randoneer and low rider), metal long fenders with mudflaps, the Brooks saddle, no kickstand and possibly replacing the Jones Loop H-Bar with drop handlebars – in that guise I am confident it could compete with most cross bikes on most commutes and still not need servicing.

Oh and the real bonus is that 50% of the total cost was for items made in the UK.

See http://42bikes.warnock.me.uk/2013/11/30/reliability-is-not-boring/ which details all the maintenance needed over 12 months/

Why not have a look at the
Why not have a look at the Giant Revolt 1 which is almost a halfway house between a cyclocross and road bike….. It comes in under the £1000 Mark, which means it comes within the “ride to work scheme”, it has good traction, disc breaks, and is a very robust bike. Bullet proof….

If you keep breaking spokes
If you keep breaking spokes your wheel has not be trued correctly. The wheel may be round and not wobble so ‘true’ in the eyes of the unaware, but it will not have had any uneven stresses removed from it. A good wheel builder lightly trues the wheel, then pulls it around in various ways to remove the internal stresses, then the wheel gets trued again. This happens until all the uneven stresses are removed. Get someone who knows what they are doing to rebuild your wheel properly and you’ll be fine.

Aha. That makes a bit of a
Aha. That makes a bit of a difference. I’ll drop the conspiracy theory and my apologies if we’ve inadvertently dissed your grease monkey skills!

Mech one may have been over-torqued, but it’s probably bad luck.
Mech two might have lived longer with a weekly GT85ing to blast crap out of the pivots and keep it slippy.

At this time of year, the road crud can overwhelm the majority of cleaning and lubing efforts within days at your mileage. I had to stop into a shop for an emergency can of GT85 yesterday after my entire drivetrain started to misfire on the way to work.

Your problems are much more likely to be what’s on top of the road rather than the road itself, so other than to satisfy n+1, a CX bike is probably not the solution.

If pressed for a recommendation, I’d go for the Boardman CX Team at £900. Add full mudguards and some 32mm Schwalbe Marathon Supreme tyres and you have an awesome commuter bike that will eat crap road surfaces. I cruise comfortably at 20+ mph on these tyres, so don’t worry about the bigger tyre being slow.

Previous advice regarding cleaning and lubing regimes remain the same regardless of the bike.

johnny1986 wrote:I feel I may

johnny1986 wrote:

I feel I may not have explained the rear mech situation very well. I am currently on my third mech so have killed 2. The first died of mechanical failure when the metal around the main attachment bolt shattered and the mech flew forward into the spokes (shimano refused to accept responsibility however the UK suppliers did offer me a discount)

This happened to me with a Campag mech last year – 4 months old, the rear mech hangar broke off and the chain tension pulled it through the rear triangle into the spokes – I was going about 40km/ at the time on a dual carriageway, lost 8 spokes, wasn’t much fun! Stayed up though, somehow. Hope your incident wasn’t too bad. For me it took a month to get sorted with the supplier, but apparently some old boy in Campag had seen it happen twice before so they repaired my bike and threw in some new hoops (I wonder what I would have got had I been hurt). Originally Campag tried to argue that I must have adjusted the mech so badly that I changed gear and this pulled the mech into the spokes – err, no.

Anyway, I have a new Specialized Tricross (Tiagra) and it’s serving me very well so far – good riding position, predictable point and squirt front end and the disc brakes are excellent when it rains. Also the tiagra groupset hasn’t set me wrong once. I do regret not knowing about the Canyon that has been mentioned but I’d suggest giving the Tricross a try.