Lost parts and pointless bikes.

A few days ago trying to fix one of those annoying little clicks in the pedal area I decided to re-grease my pedals, an easy job, just undo the grease port screw inject the grease from the handy syringe thing DMR supply with the pedal then put the screw back in. Unfortunately at the bottom of the yard is a drain and it’s a very small screw, I think you can guess what happened next. I replaced the screw with one of the pins out of the pedal to stop grit getting in while I waited to replace it, having looked at the prices I decided to replace the pin rather than the screw as a set of pins are about the same price as one screw.  Time will tell if this is a good idea or not.

Having visited the new improved trails at Ashton Court (post coming soon hopefully) I decided to do a little tweaking here and there, again some slight adjustments to my gear alignment and taking a couple of links out of my chain, which with the right tool is very simple and can be done very quickly. I use a Topeak Super Chain Breaker which is small light and works very well and also comes with a hook to hold the area of your chain you’re working on loose.

Something I’ve noticed a lot since I moved to Bristol are people riding around on cheap full suspension bikes, and it bugs me. Why on earth do you need a full sus’ bike to ride around town especially a cheap one that takes most of the power out of your pedal strokes? It doesn’t look cool because cheap full sus’ bikes look… well… cheap, for the same money you could get a much better hard-tail which will be much more suited for what you use it for and less likely to break. If you do take it off road, the stuff a bike like that can handle can easily be managed on a hard-tail, not only this but it will improve your riding. If you need a full sus’ bike then you probably know all this anyway, if you don’t know this you probably don’t need one and can either save some money or get a better hard-tail.  I guess most of these bikes come from large chain shops and shops where you just pick one and walk out with it, where there is no advice or potentially not anyone who knows anything about bikes working there.

Rant over, happy riding.