monkeyseemonkeydo

Little update here for anyone who's interested- Having messed around with BB/crank spacers I thought I'd have a play again with gearing and have found that 24:17 works out right between 22:15 and 22:16 and is perfect for the 365mm chainstay length. Bonus fact- JE James are still doing the 24T Raceface inner rings for £5.49.

Very sad to hear that Justin Wilson has died following his accident in the US... my Dad bought shares in him when he floated himself on the stock market (still find that odd) and have followed his progress since then. Horrible irony that he was killed by hitting a flying crash structure from another car. The accident is on Youtube and the initial incident was really innocuous compared to many Indy crashes but he was just massively unlucky.

Surely that's called 'backing it in'? I do it all the time these days coming up to junctions and stuff (note: Not backing it in Rossi style, just scrubbing the rear tyre on hard braking for lols).

Took the easy option and have signed up for a 10 year fixed deal with Nationwide at 3.24% over 15 years but will overpay to bring the term down to more like 10 years. £945 or so base price and will overpay to £1300pm. Edit: And just snuck in before they upped the rates today! Only by 0.1% but every little counts!

What do you do about chain tensioners etc.? I tried 22/16 the other day on the Arcade and had to run without the tensioners to get the chain on and so lost the ability to set the wheel position properly... Edit: Oh yeah, awesome video as usual- so natural and smooth riding. Pleasure to watch. Excellent work from Mr Westlake as well of course.

The thing with drafting is that you're actually being physically sucked along by the low pressure behind the lead vehicle so rather than just reducing your drag in some cases you can actually experience a level of thrust (aerodynamically speaking- rolling resistance etc. would still mean you'd decelerate if you stopped pedalling).

How does that work?!

I hadn't realised that the 10% is of the outstanding balance which we'd definitely be within. To be honest I don't know if we'll move anytime soon. In 10 years the boys will be 11 and 14 and I'm sure we could cope in the current place but even if we move the 10 years would still roll on and we'd just end up with a second smaller mortgage I imagine... Think I'll arrange a chat with Mr Nationwide.

Actually, thinking about it it would make more sense to enter at a 15 year term and over pay, assuming the deal allows it. That would be far more flexible in theory but I think I'll need to have a chat to Mr lender man...

Ok, time for the old TF advisory service request again... Fixed rate mortgage deal is up in October so looking around. 10 year fixed deals at 3.14% don't look too shabby but... Our current mortgage is just over £1100 a month but we've overpaid since day 1, currently paying back £1200 pm. If we took out that 10 year deal over the remaining 15 years (started with 20 years) it would cost £958pm and we'd want to overpay as much as possible (though lenders seem to limit this to ~10% so £1054pm paying back when we'd like to stick to the £1200. If, however, we do the 10 year deal over 10 years it bumps the payment up to £1322 but in 10 years we'd be mortgage free and I reckon we could quite happily stretch to the extra £100 a month. It kinda seems slightly no-brainery to me but is there a reason why we shouldn't try and get rid of the mortgage ASAP?

No way of splicing (you know what I mean) a new cable to the end of the shit one and pulling it through like that so it follows the same route? How tortuous is it beneath the floor etc.?

I more really want to hear a French person say inspired. Ensppeered?

Exactly. You really need to work on your sales pitch Mike!

I retract all previous statements... Managed to snap the threaded section of BB on the driveside at a demo on Saturday so have removed the third spacer from the BB and will turn up a crank spacer at work tomorrow...

Can't help thinking that Hulkenberg could probably have got out of that if he'd released the brakes and tried to turn the round thing in front of him... Surprisingly entertaining race and couldn't have been happier when Nico got the puncture. Oh how I laughed.

Come on then, what is it?! Maybe we all need one, whatever it is!

Right, I searched around and found that Sevylor sell a skeg for some of their kayaks but didn't know if that would be compatible so decided to do something myself. I started with an image of the Sevylor one: And then scaled it to be an appropriate size. I used paint to hack out the majority of the insides (to save on ink) to leave an outline and printed the full size thing over several sheets of A4. That became the initial pattern to cut out of a sheet of 6mm thick nylon and the shape was then offered up to the kayak and modified slightly to snugly fit inside the back of the boat. The Z-Pro has a very useful mounting eye thing at the bottom of the aft section and so I mount it to that using a plastic numberplate nut and bolt. A bit of filing to add a nice radius and stop it puncturing the kayak and it's all gravy!

On my phone at the moment and will reply properly when on my laptop but I basically used a picture of a Sevylor one on Google images and scaled it before printing it and cutting it out of a sheet of plastic. Works surprisingly well!

Lucky! Rear axle looked bent at the end of it but could just be the lens.

Ooh that looks painful and expensive...

You're riding brakeless at the moment aren't you? No, just no

Nice. I really fancy a dual disc version of the 2013 orange one... What's the score with Qualitybike.net? Their price for the Gu complete is ~£840 compared with £1699 at Tarty! Where are they based?

We got a Z-Pro Pioneer as a wedding present and have used it a few times on rivers but not since the kids came along. Not sure I'd take it to sea but on inland stuff it's been spot on. I made myself a skeg which made a massive difference to the speed and directional stability as otherwise they don't have much to keep them heading forwards since they sit on top of the water with a relatively flat bottom. Would like to get out more on it to be fair. If I wanted to go out at sea I'd definitely get either a surf kayak or a proper plastic jobbie but for messing around (and not having to worry about storing/transporting the thing) the inflatable has been spot on.

Especially with a potentially wet, slippy tire. That stratodab was super gay though...

What was that at 2:10?