Cycling UK Forum

roubaixtuesday wrote: ↑6 Feb 2025, 11:13am Tesla, the world’s largest EV maker, in January registered only 1,277 new cars in Germany

it’s a drop of 59% compared with the same month last year

From the FT

https://bsky.app/profile/pickardje.bsky ... iugv24sk2n

That’s a significant drop, pity it wasn’t 100%.

reohn2 wrote: ↑11 Feb 2025, 8:28am The physics we know and understand or the physics we partially know presently?

That’s about the top and tail of it. Some here are great scientists who know their specialist subjects well but are bound by the limits of the knowledge of experts. As a practical person I have to accept that there’s a lot of stuff that I don’t know and will never know, that acceptance is liberating in that it allows me to see beyond false boundaries of what is or is not deemed possible (as defined by current scientific knowledge and laws). Current scientific knowledge, laws and models are immensely useful but note the word current (as in present time); over time humanity’s understanding of the world around us has moved a long way and doubtless it has much much further to go.

It’d probably be a good idea for the author to change (edit) the tittle in the original post to Castelnau.
http://www.delaunecc.org/Castelnau%201959.htm

irc wrote: ↑10 Feb 2025, 12:05pm

pjclinch wrote: ↑10 Feb 2025, 11:54am In order for cycling to take a good slice out of the private motoring cake takes both sticks and carrots. Private motoring has to be a clearly worse way to get about and cycling has to have clear advantages before people will change habits, because changing habits is hard.

You need to be careful with sticks. Glasgow city centre is suffering a bit because sticks for drivers mean they go to out of town retail parks instead.

My sister lives in central Glasgow. Used to have the choice of three bridge clubs within walking distance. Parking costs in the evenings after the council abolished post 6pm free street parking was a major factor in the clubs merging and selling their seperate premises. The replacement centre was built in an industrial estate with easy motorway access and free parking.

https://www.bridgewebs.com/clyde/

After Covid - or rather during it - a lot of habits changed and attending Bridge Clubs might be one of them; parking costs do encourage people to give up on none essential activities - however worthy the activities are - and particularly so when alternative transport provision is poor. It may be that the Bridge Clubs were hit by two different factors.

I see that the new club is near (?) to a train station so perhaps some public transport to it exists.

When I lived in Swindon there was a good network of cycle tracks, they were used but most people still chose to drive. As they say: “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink”. Of course a car can be needed for the journeys that can’t be done by bike so for the marginal cost of the petrol it’s maybe quick and easy to drive instead. For short distances I much prefer to cycle and love cycle tracks, but maybe that’s because I enjoy the freedoms and exercise that cycling brings.

rogerzilla wrote: ↑10 Feb 2025, 8:18am. You lose most of your money on any bike restoration but you lose just about all of it on a Moulton!

I suppose that if you buy a new bike then, in normal times, you’ll take a massive hit (in percentage terms) when you come to sell it too. Perhaps the smart money is on buying excellent condition second hand goods rather than new. Of course with previously restored bikes the buyer might spend good money on something that’s well presented but actually in poor condition: to some extent it’s a gamble. Oh well, as with all gambles, use your best judgment and don’t risk more than you can afford to loose; and if you restore then do it for the utility that you’ll get out of the item and not as a way to increase value - wealth is better gained by doing wanted work for someone at a pre’ agreed rate.

Putting costs in context - and this is separate from insurance, petrol, VED, and depreciation - my car has cost me over a grand in garage bills over the past year, my bikes likely haven’t even cost a hundred pound in parts - when actually ridden bikes are really good value .

Mike Sales wrote: ↑9 Feb 2025, 9:04pm We used to find many things, like weather, tides or epidemic diseases incomprehensible. But we persisted in applying logical methods to explaining them, rather than say that they were beyond explication. The understanding of the universe we live in has expanded and expanded.

^^ Quite. Though I believe that at some points in history scientists were viewed with suspicion or worse. In those past dark days some people decided that they didn’t know everything there was to be known and made their own contribution to extending the wealth of human knowledge. Whilst we know a lot more than we used to there is still much to understand and the logical person accepts that. Rather than saying that’s impossible the logical person says I don’t know how that might be possible, a subtle difference but a crucial one. Scientific knowledge changes very significantly over time, two centuries ago the idea of video calls would have been deemed impossible but now they are common place.

reohn2 wrote: ↑9 Feb 2025, 10:00am

Carlton green wrote: ↑9 Feb 2025, 9:23am

PDQ Mobile wrote: ↑8 Feb 2025, 11:39am It makes one wonder how a Morris Minor (and all the other older ones) driver ever survived into old age!

Looking at death rate statistics and how rates have fallen over the years shifts my perspectives a bit. However I’m of the view that we’re well past the point at which ever increasing safety features add significant value.

I drive my car between 7 and 10,000miles and my motorcycles 12 to 15,000miles per year,half of that mileage is on motorways,the standard of UK driving appalls me so much at times particularly tailgating,phone use and lack of indicator use when manouvring eg;changing lanes on m/ways and right turns etc.It leads me to wonder where people's heads are at when driving and whether they rely much to much on the modern car doing the driving for t.hem

That’s a lot of mileage and chance to observe ‘road skills’. I’ve long thought that the biggest safety issue of any car was the nut behind the wheel, and that it should be easier to loose your license than it is.

PDQ Mobile wrote: ↑8 Feb 2025, 11:39am It makes one wonder how a Morris Minor (and all the other older ones) driver ever survived into old age!

Looking at death rate statistics and how rates have fallen over the years shifts my perspectives a bit. However I’m of the view that we’re well past the point at which ever increasing safety features add significant value.

Manc33 wrote: ↑8 Feb 2025, 3:47pm I stopped believing in ghosts when as a child my father said "If they can walk through walls then why don't they fall through the floor?" That pretty much summed it up for me. He also used to say "There would be billions and billions of ghosts overlapping each other and/or getting in each others way".

Your Dad did the right thing in comforting a child . On the other hand as an adult we’re able to look at issues differently and accept that there’s much that we don’t understand and are likely never to understand. For much of life we get on with dealing with the immediate things that allow us to continue living and much of the rest is either unnoticed or outside of our perception. So some stuff is beyond our comprehension and some stuff is unnoticed.

After lessons in ‘the school of hard knocks’ I try to keep an open mind and constantly question things; to quote Mark Twain: “It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.“

jacobean wrote: ↑6 Feb 2025, 11:19pm Aside from the dodgy labour practices, I never knew that the bicycle manufacturing industry was so consolidated. For example, I never knew that Giant makes some bikes for Trek.

It’s all about commerce, greed, how much (duplicates of) item X can be sold for, rather than about the qualities of the product. The commercial folk have been marketing the ‘same item’, made in some faceless factory, for many decades - it seems to have become normal rather than exceptional practice. For a surprisingly wide range of goods the belief that a factory of the same name (and ownership) always manufacturers the branded goods sold in ‘the shop’ is flawed - it might once have been the case but it no longer is. Raleigh certainly did badge engineering and much of the time the customer had no idea that that was the case. One of my Raleighs was almost certainly made in Italy by an independent supplier who sold bikes to Raleigh for them to market under the Raleigh ‘badge’; the design wasn’t even a Raleigh one, and pretty much all that Raleigh did was to customise it for the intended markets and put their name on it.

Anecdotal evidence is of limited value, but imho it still has value.

Recently I was chatting to a friend and the topic of cycling came up. She told me that she’d given up cycling and I asked about why. The answer was that her home faced onto what had become a busy road (the first and last part of her every journey by bike) and that the road wasn’t wide enough for vehicles to safely pass cyclists (she felt physically intimidated and feared for her life). As an aside unless she too drives her car she’s imprisoned in her home by motor vehicles. The key point there is that much increased traffic (numbers and vehicle physical size) has effectively resulted in removal of safe on road space.

It’s easy to blame simply being female on why a part of society doesn’t now cycle, but it’s a small part of the bigger issue. My friend is a woman of confidence and ability, she has a PhD and is used to managing people and public speaking, yet even she has pragmatically accepted being driven off of the road by motor vehicles.

Maybe rather than saying that this or that is impossible or doesn’t exist we should consider our own ignorance and the magnitude of scientific discovery in the last thousand years. My conclusion is that just because I either don’t understand something or don’t believe in something is no reason to discount it, or say it is not so.

I’ve not cut handlebars yet but have cut similar bar / rod / tube with success.

Get hold of some wide masking tape and wrap it around where your cut will be.
Measure from some convenient datum point, I suggest the old end, and mark the tape with a pencil.
Take a moderate sized piece of paper or card and fold it it give a straight edge, then wrap it around the bar in a tube with the straight edge right next to your pencil mark.
Pencil mark around the tubes.
Using a junior hacksaw gently cut around the handlebar following the pencil marked guide.

I’d do this with the bars off and likely supported by a vice.

Good luck.

pjclinch wrote: ↑7 Feb 2025, 9:56am

Carlton green wrote: ↑7 Feb 2025, 9:11am You could commission someone to either repair or replicate the original basket but I can’t think that you’d get what I call value for money.

I think typical "value for money" in terms of functional bang per buck doesn't really come into restoring vintage 60s bikes in quite the same way as, say, selecting a bag for a daily commute...

Pete.

Fair enough. It seems like going OTT and throwing money away to me, but if the owner can afford to pay and particularly wants something then that’s their choice. As they tell me: there’s no pockets in shrouds …

rjb wrote: ↑7 Feb 2025, 10:11am He's looking for an original restoration as close to the original as possible. He's even had the rusty rims rechromed. The frame has been resprayed and is stunning. Will post again when it's complete for you all to drool over.

I hope it gives your pal a lot of pleasure. Please tell him about decent brake blocks to work with his steel rims - I assume he’s going to ride the bike.

Please do post some pictures of the restoration. It’ll be interesting to see.

You could commission someone to either repair or replicate the original basket but I can’t think that you’d get what I call value for money. EBay has many wicker baskets, ones which could give great utility, and they’re not particularly expensive. When it was sold, decades ago, was there anything special about the original basket? Probably not and it was just something that’d fit the rack and help get a sale.