Cycling UK Forum

But that's 4m to take 50,000 car trips worth of people a day, and presumably a mix of cyclists and pedestrians. Obviously they won't be all in the same place given the length but consider that the daily cycle flow on the Bristol-bath path (mostly 3m plus verges) is in the very low 4 figures and that gets very uncomfortably busy in the morning peak.

I don't think it's unfair to point out that the aspirations of the path could be higher, particularly for something calling itself an autobahn for which the car equivalent would be 2x 13.95m of surfacing, not a 6m rural road.

Guess that depends if it's 4m surfaced plus some verge at the side so part of the cyclist can overhang. Eg the Bristol-bath path is mostly 3m + verges and sightly squeezy overtakes are done. It's far from ideal though and really should be aiming for more if it's going to be worthy of the 'autobahn' label.

If you have the space and money, probably yes. The only exceptions would be 1) if your primary recreational use is touring, in which case a tourer could double up as a commuter bike quite easily as it tends to have similar features (i.e. fenders and racks, wide gearing, relatively relaxed geometry), they're also usually able to take few knocks and have a low thief attraction rating and therefore even pricier models are probably OK locked up to a public bike rack for nipping into the shops on your way home or at the pub on Friday. 2) If you're happy to do recreational rides on a bike setup for commuting, just don't necessarily expect to do the kinds of speeds and distances you could on a dedicated fast road bike.
If by fun bike you're meaning a fast road bike then not so much unless you're happy commuting with a rucksack and have a secure place to store at work etc. It really depends on your overall needs and preferences.

Personally I have separate bikes with the commuter being built up from a kaffenback frame and fulfilling a fairly specific set of requirements I had for commuting/utility trips around a hilly city that I'm happy to leave (i.e. looks scruffy enough and didn't cost a fortune) locked at the shops and in town on a night out. It's also setup for a relatively upright position to help with visibility and negotiating traffic.

I've been commuting on cable discs for some years and found shimanos resin pads to be good both wet and dry. Good grab and surprisingly resilient to fade as well, certainly never had any noticeable reduction in power when needing to stop after riding the brakes down the hills round here. The negative is that they don't last all that long. I've tried a few sintered pads but generally found them to have worse initial grab and lower overall power and a slightly 'woolly' feel, they do last though.

On the flip side the avid organic pads that come with the bb7 road sl are pretty poor ime. Initial grab is decent in the dry, ok in the wet, but they fade really badly. They did last ages though. Tried out some ashima mixed compound sos ones more recently and they are much better.

I haven't yet (after one year) found my braking limited by road grip.

In 'normal' wet conditions I've found that to be the case as well. If it's the first rain for ages (so the roads are particularly oily), or leaves, ice, manhole covers etc then obviously it's a different matter. Even so, ever since I took a particularly nasty trip ohb when I first restarted cycling several years ago I tend to do practice emergency stops on a fairly regular basis so I know what I'm doing when the real thing is needed. I have found that a good set of low friction compressionless cables helps a great deal with the overall feel and power.

I'd considered hubs when building my current commuter/city get about bike but given my loaded weight is close to the 100kg limit and the hills round here it didn't seem a great idea, not keen on the power modulator either.

Wiggles lifeline one is £25.

http://www.wiggle.co.uk/lifeline-derailleur-hanger-alignment-tool/

The 50% off is off the recommended retail price, not wiggles (or most other online retailers) normal price.

Should be noted that warranty or not you're still protected by the uk consumer rights act when buying from uk companies and can expect goods to be of satisfactory quality. Details here: https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/about-us/how-citizens-advice-works/citizens-advice-consumer-work/the-consumer-rights-act-2015/

I'd steer clear of suspension forks in your price range. Those are generally pretty useless and will add weight and expense but do little to soak up any smaller and high frequency vibrations while not being good enough to be of any use on serious impacts. Wider tyres will do more for less.

1. Sks ones tend to be quite good but this is quite dependant on mountings etc.
3. A d lock. The main thing is to not be able to get a bottle jack in it when it's locked up so not too long: lock it around the bottom bracket.
4. They're all much they same save a few grams in weight.
7. The wiggle lifeline one is very good if you're after a mini pump

Yep is agree fully with that, was mostly just providing information on what galvanised actually was.

IME though I've found galvanised inners tend to break either at the clamp point or in the brake lever first.

I think he means that outer cables eventually go even if the stainless steel will last forever. Should take many years though.

Regarding galvanised, they are normal steel that is coated with zinc. Zinc itself is like aluminium and will oxidise but forms a hard surface preventing further deterioration. However the coating tends to get damaged, particularly at each end and while the zinc still provide a degree of sacrificial protection (it's more reactive than iron and therefore oxidises in preference) that won't last, particularly in adverse conditions.

Magnics patent actually specifically states that the generator has a different axial profile to the wheel.

Reelights pending application goes into quite a bit of detail on the rest of the light as a whole including the mounting etc.

Given that there's probably some prior art about that means using the same axial profile isn't patentable. It might even be in the citations, i didn't check, worth considering though that there's a good chance someone else thought up using eddy currents before magnic did. Patents tend to be more on the specifics of getting it working than the idea (us software patents excepted).

As for kickstarter, i thought the while point was to allow crowd sourced financing of projects? Their advertising may be focused on the creative side and much of that is because it was targeted at media creators but I'm not sure there is anything inherently wrong with getting any project funded there as an alternative to using a bank.

Can you even get cross plys for modern cars?

Regardless, the main issue with cars is mixing across the axle, this is because if you're using tyres with different levels of grip one side is going to go before the other and the resultant additional rotational force can make handling more... interesting. With higher spec cars now with per wheel traction control etc it likely only means you'll be limited to the worst tyre of the pair.

Front/back differences will have an impact on car handling but not really a dangerous one (no more so than getting in another car anyway) and possibly an intentional/desirable one.

And the same applies to bikes really. It's only a front/rear thing so all you'll be doing is shifting the balance of the grip and whether the front or the rear gives out first when pushed to the limit. On a road bike you're generally in trouble if you've reached that point anyway.

Different front and rear tyres are quite common in mtb due to the reasons Vantage notes as well as many people preferring the back to give up before the front in terms of lateral grip (easier to control). Some models actually have specific front and rear versions.

Li-ion/Li-po batteries are generally happiest kept between around 40 and 70% charge.

Firstly Li-ion batteries degrade as they are charged and discharged. Charging and discharging further away from the optimum voltage reduces their total capacity more quickly. Rapid charge and discharge may also do so, though the extent to which it does has been subject of some debate recently.

Secondly they degrade simply as a matter of existing. This degradation happens quicker at higher temperatures and higher charge levels. (e.g. a battery at 25C and 100% charge will lose about 20% of it's total capacity over a year, at 40% charge it would only lose 4-5%)

Given that, no it generally isn't a good idea to leave them plugged into stuff when charged. Whilst they do have a protection circuit built in to stop overcharging, discharging or other issues (ALL li-ion batteries have this as they tend to undergo a runaway thermal reaction when outside certain operating parameters, plenty of vids on youtube) you will still be unnecessarily shortening the battery life as:

-you're operating it mostly at at the top end of the charge (unless you drain it in one commute, in which case you have no choice)
-I find, even with charging cut offs, plugged in stuff tends to get warmer than it needs to, which will shorten the life.

Usually there's some kind of indication if it's charged?

Li-ions do not really suffer from any memory affects so there's no need to go to 100% or 0%. Also do you actually use all 400 lumens? If so do you need to?

I'm not sure it's such a problem in mtbing. Switching chainrings mid trail is not an ideal situation to be in unless you happen to be on a smooth bit. If anything I'd consider 1x with a wide range cassette better than a double where the big rings a bit too big and the small rings a bit too small. Triples are fine but in all honesty on mine (a 3x10) I only ever use the large chainring getting to/from the trail and almost never use the small one at all so it's not surprising that with a 40+ cassette it's moved to a single chainring.

I see no reason that electronic shifting wouldn't work with a triple. I thought it was just that it keeps manufacturing costs down if you don't have to bother designing triple versions of parts of the groupset?

Just a thought but you might want to try a longer ride on your current bike. 15-30 miles occasionally on flat bars is one thing. Spending most of the day and most days a week is another entirely. While finding a bike with drops will probably end up outside the price range (unless you go s/h) it's worth finding out if you need to fit bar ends or even butterfly bars to allow more hand positions if you get a flat bar bike before you get to France.