Cycling UK Forum

For those of you with a green tinge to our rose-coloured spectacles:

I wrote a whole business plan on recycling bicycles, for an NVQ qualification. In practical terms, things like brake designs become obsolete after a while. Buy a new chain and a new tyre, and you might well have spent more than you can sell a bike for.

For what it is worth, I wrote a few tips as to how the cycle industry can make their products easier to re-use/ re-cycle. The difficulty is finding a sympathetic ear on the technical committee for relevant British and European standards. However, Dr. Caroline Lucas (MEP) seemed to think this a good idea.

The main cause of deterioration for a bicycle seems to be rainwater, in copious amounts during outside storage. It was great fun hammering an old Sturmey Archer hub apart to find out how it worked.

See you at the table in the corner of the tea-room?
Punk_shore

Peter Rowell wrote:

kwackers wrote:
You can't buy imperial screws/nuts at B&Q.

You probably won't get them anywhere now except an engineers stores.
I had a similar problem last year, I bought an American Mantis Electric Rotavator. within a short time the head of the clamp screw holding the motor stripped. It turned out to be a Torx head (easily mistaken for the more common Allen head). No chance of getting a Torx headed screw even from an engineers stores. I had to drill out the clamp hole and fit a metric clamp screw (next size up). When will American Manufacturers wake up to the fact that if they want sell to world markets they have to use world standards.

But American manufacturers have a big enough market without bothering about anyone else and that is what they do with regards to virtually anything anyway.

My local car accessories shop started stocking Torx screws a few years ago as he could see that people would be wanting them as their use increased.
Good thinking guy.

Speshact wrote:Isn't it about time they stopped insisting plug in electrical items came with plugs attached so we reuse the ones on the old appliances and insisted on mobile phones being sold separately to chargers.

Two simple steps to reducing the amount of stuff made and helping stuff be reused.

And if some people electrocute themselves because they can't wire a plug that's either because schools aren't teaching what they ought to be teaching or because they're morons

Can't see how it's the schools fault if people can't wire a plug up.

What's a mobile phone?