Cycling UK Forum

Dragging it back to the question the OP actually asked...
105 is good. Praxis Works Alba X is good and would also be compatible. Factoring in the cost of the Praxis M30 bottom bracket (and the installation tool), brings the price to somewhere around your £200 mark.
The FSA Gossamer Pro chainset would also be OK - again, factoring in a new FSA MegaExo bottom bracket would bring it well within your budget.
Both are available in 50/34 and 52/36 options with 172.5mm crank arms.

Re. chainring bolts: this one of two places on a bike where I always recommend using threadlock fluid. (The other is on mudguard eyelet bolts if they haven't been provided with a Nyloc nut.)

Run4fun69 wrote: ↑19 Aug 2024, 12:50pm Hi I have one on my phone. Looks like 4/5mm so guess I'm good for a bit.

Am I best off braking more with rear wheel? Or front? Or equal?
Best regards

Yeah, they're not dead yet but it is time to start thinking about getting some replacements so they're to hand when you need them.

OK, looks like a standard (if somewhat old) Shimano caliper brake. I can see a retaining screw so it appears to be the type where the metal "shoe" and the rubber pad are separate: you can replace the rubber pad section without removing the shoe.

There are good instructions for changing the pads here on the Park Tools website (in both written and video form).

An example: this set includes one new pair of shoes and two pairs of rubber pads. https://www.merlincycles.com/clarks-cps ... 59623.html

Clarks are a perfectly respectable brand, by the way. (And British, huzzah.) Kool Stop are more expensive but highly-rated. Shimano's own pads are... OK. (I favour Elvedes white pads but they're quite hard to find and they do wear down quickly.)

Make sure you're getting Shimano-compatible pads, not Campagnolo-compatible. And that looks like an alloy rim so you don't want "carbon" brake pads, which are designed to work on carbon rims.

Run4fun69 wrote: ↑19 Aug 2024, 10:51am Will this wear my rim brakes fast?

Faster than if you don't use the brakes! It's all relative. Very broadly speaking you should be looking at a number of months' wear from a pair, but it depends how many miles you're doing, how bad the weather is, how dirty the roads are and how soft the brake pads are. Soft brake pads wear more quickly, but hard brake pads can be less effective and will start to wear the wheel rim away (a much slower process but more expensive to replace).

How many mm left when I should change?

Many brake pads have slots cut into them, supposedly to help with clearing water and muck from the rim when you brake. As a rule of thumb, replace the pads when you can no longer see those slots. More generally, I'd be thinking about replacement when there's less than 2 mm of braking surface left. Bear in mind that pad wear can be uneven so it could end up more worn at the top than the bottom, or more worn at the front than the back. Something to look out for.

Are all rim brake pads interchangeable? I can't see what brand mine are?

Not all, but there's a fairly small number of basic designs, so there will probably be a range of options available that fit your brake - you don't have to buy replacement pads from the manufacturer of the brake itself. Post a photo of your brakes on here (the whole brake, not just the pad) and we can give you some pointers.

Is it a hydraulic or cable-operated brake? (From your biker avatar I'm guessing you know what a hydraulic brake looks like. )
Any visible damage to the cable/hose between the brake and the lever?
Normally for videos people stick it on YouTube or somewhere then link to it. If you can't provide the video then some photos would help, including a close-up of the brake calliper.
If it's less than a year old this sounds like something the shop should be sorting out under warranty.

Psamathe wrote: ↑5 Aug 2024, 2:17pm

AndyK wrote: ↑5 Aug 2024, 1:40pm

geomannie wrote: ↑3 Aug 2024, 8:21amA particular benefit of Plotaroute is that you can share routes with non members who do not need to sign up to view and download them.

... just as you can with the free version of RideWithGPS.

As well as with https://cycle.travel

Ian

That too, though I believe both RWGPS and Plotaroute offer more choice of export file formats to an "anonymous" user. Having said that, 99% of cyclists just download the GPX track file anyway.

geomannie wrote: ↑3 Aug 2024, 8:21amA particular benefit of Plotaroute is that you can share routes with non members who do not need to sign up to view and download them.

... just as you can with the free version of RideWithGPS.

Are you sure you're comparing like with like? It sounds as if you may have been on the Basic subscription, which is US$60 (about £47) annually, and are now looking at the next level up, Premium subscription, which is $80 (£62). I don't think there's any reason you can't stay on the Basic level if it does what you want.

Yes, it communicates via the Garmin Connect app on a smartphone (Android or iPhone) so it uses the phone's mobile data connection. According to Garmin, "LiveTrack data usage is very small, averaging about 3-4kb an hour during a tracking session." They may be understating it - and it is sensitive to how much information you're choosing to send - but that seems a reasonable figure based on my experience with the similar function on my Wahoo Elemnt device and Android app. I doubt it would use more than a few megabytes at most - a tiny fraction of one per cent of her monthly data allowance.

There's an obvious way to test it: go for a long ride with tracking enabled. Afterwards, look for "mobile data usage by app" (or similar) in the phone's settings and see how much data the Garmin Connect app used.

I'd be inclined just to run the cable enclosed in an outer all the way, clipping the outer to the hydraulic bosses in the normal way. Yes, there will be some increase in friction but with good quality cable and outer that shouldn't be too bad - many internally-routed-cable bikes work fine that way.

Brucey wrote: ↑30 Jul 2024, 11:29am if you want to replace a compression ring be aware that in most cases, it can be replaced with a much superior rubber part. Better yet, you can make the improved part easily using pieces of old inner tube. See my 'rubbodraulics' post for details.

Not in this case, I think. Those funny little holes are there for a reason. It has to match the shape of the headset spacers (see below) for the internal cable routing to work properly.

fastpedaller wrote: ↑16 Jul 2024, 8:55pm I bought one of the mini tool kits today. It's not something I'd usually consider, but at £4.99 It is pretty small but packed with good quality tools which have been designed well. I'm confident that it would be more use for a roadside breakdown than other mini tools I've seen.

It's probably well designed because somebody else designed it! It looks like a blatant rip-off of the venerable Topeak Alien II, right down to the two sections that clip together, the case and the (possibly now illegal?) locking knife blade. It's obviously based on an old design because it doesn't have a valve core tool, which every self-respecting new multitool has these days.
Having said that, the Alien II would set you back £35 or so, so if this one does the job for occasional use...

rareposter wrote: ↑13 Jul 2024, 10:37am All those articles read like AI-written fluff pieces. Like someone has typed "write some exciting copy about...." into ChatGPT and just published the stream of guff that is churned out with his name attached to it.

They all come across as a weekly homework task either written by AI or plagiarised - I'd go with the former.

Lots of "this could..." and "that may..." which advertisers use a lot when they want to make unverifiable claims without falling foul of advertising standards.

Also worth noting that "Seth" published more than 200 articles on that Medium profile in November 2023 alone. Even if he was plagiarisng, that's quite a work rate for no apparent reason. It's got ChatGPT stamped all over it.

A friend has an electronic referee's whistle attached to her handlebars. (Yes, such things exist, who knew?) It's surprisingly realistic and certainly gets people's attention.

Maybe she should start carrying yellow and red cards to show to anyone who ignores it...

Cugel wrote: ↑15 Jun 2024, 4:06pm However, all my bicycles, motored or otherwise, are whisper-quiet - apart from my own grunting and wheezing, of course.

You obviously don't have any bikes with Campagnolo or DT Swiss freehubs, then.. They are very definitely acoustic.

To the OP: Zero Friction Cycling.