Yep, it's Andrew's fault I'm in! He emailed me on the morning that entries opened to remind me - otherwise I would have forgotten. Planning to use the ancient Shand (got it in April 2009, so it will be 15 years old by the time of the HT550), but not yet decided whether to use it SS again or geared ...

It seems odd. I'm not sure how James would have designed stuff when he was doing relatively high-volume production stuff but fork dimension is pretty much a starting point for me. If you don't know that, then you don't really know anything. If doing one-off design then it's not uncommon to have to c...

Years ago at Shand, we started calling ourselves an 'Adventure Bike Company'. For us it was about trying to find something that could still mean serious, high-quality, performance equipment but without suggesting there was necessarily racing or speed involved. Of course there are other terms like 'r...

I was in a similar situation a few years ago and ended up with a Nissan Elgrand imported from Japan. There are loads of examples around, all RHD, no rust (much less road treatment in Japan) and many with very low miles. Apparently, they often get used as 'holiday' vehicles, 2 or 3 trips a year. Mine...

You dont need a cache bank as you can just plug your garmin straight into a sinewave* even if the light is on, that said everyone is carrying a battery bank** anyway so its not additional weight Most bike lights are not the " road legal" German set up but it works fine for me on the road ...

jameso wrote: ↑Mon Oct 30, 2023 5:37 pm Those spade connectors are solid but a faff in the dark or with cold fingers.

Yep, I switched over to using these which have been working well.

https://www.brickstuff.com/store/p240/WIRE-2P-MAG.html

I've also used some that are available through SJS I think which are good too.

What is the magnetic connection? I'm not familiar with that. From the pic it looks like a connection at the bar side? Not down at the dropout?

Both forks will be more than strong enough. Both will have gone through the same testing and will have passed. I'd be amazed if any difference in ride feel could be attributed to the additional bosses. I guess what I'm saying is that if you think you'd ever need the mounts and don't mind the aesthet...

I've just built the perfect bike for that :

Have I not delved deep enough but I can't really see much mention of returns or benefits. Apologies if it is there and I've not seen it. This isn't really a crowd-fund campaign like Kickstarter or some of the others out there. Seedrs is an investment platform that allows easy purchase of shares/equ...

Lazarus wrote: ↑Sun Feb 12, 2023 7:11 pm I think the days of people in sheds doing stuff is pretty much over - see also LED lights
Still some space for niche bespoke bike /bag makers [ at a price] or ones with loyal fan bases [ Cotic/Jones etc]

I hope not!

Sign of the times - enthusiast sets up successful business in their shed, gets bought out by big company. I'm not sure I see it quite that way. I ran out of steam with Wildcat and it's been passed over to another small company to carry on with what I tried to do but couldn't. Your wording sounds a ...

There always seems to be such a churn in brightly coloured jerseys - changing year on year to be 'fresh' but not sure if that's feasible for the bags. Yeah, it's a tricky one. Most of the high-end fabric in use is usually destined for other (bigger) markets and the ultralight bikepacker/fastpacker ...

My only thought was wondering if they will start doing bags in the same funky patterns as the clothes in the same vein as WizardWorks and Swift. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? As an aside, we were criticized a little bit for having boring, dull fabrics on our bags. When we set out what we wan...

redefined_cycles wrote: ↑Thu Feb 09, 2023 1:54 am Don't think I'll be buying em now they're Stolen Goat...

Ok, why not?

Third owner of Wildcat then - or I am just a bit confused/behind (not for the first time) The last time Steven posted about Shand I do seem to recall it sounding slightly complicated (or I may have read it in an interview of his... dunno). But yes, kindalike 3rd owner now once or twice removed Coli...

Chainring Bolt Bingo : http://www.diacompe.com.tw/product/torx-bolt-nut/

Torx, aluminium and different colours.

Nuke from space?

These replies are all brilliant. I should add, I wasn't asking because I didn't know what to build. I just found it an interesting way to describe a bike and the comments here cemented what I already thought. It's a sub standard way to describe a bike.

Steven, just make a couple of the Lancia Stratos scheme bike, like the one you made for Ian. It was so good looking, every single cyclist will want one, including myself. And they will surely be very handy for most kinds of off road riding. any excuse to post a picture of that bike! https://ianbarr...

Since finishing up at Shand I've been doing quite a lot of consultancy/design for other brands but I've just started to build frames again ( www.willowbike.com ) and I've had a ton of people looking for a 'bikepacking' bike. When I dig a little deeper, it turns out that everyone's idea of a bikepack...

I've fitted quite a few of the Hebie steering dampers . I wouldn't really class them as dampers though. They actually work really well on a bike that is front-loaded and tends to suffer from wheel flop. But not really at speeds higher than walking pace I would say. https://www.hebie.de/uploads/tx_te...

I've flown twice this year and I debated it for a long time. One was a family holiday and I didn't beat myself up about it too much but the other trip played heavily on my mind. I'm in a fortunate position to be able to seek out offset schemes and pay for them but it feels 'dirty'. As others have sa...

I've been using a Fairphone ( https://shop.fairphone.com/gb_en ) for a couple of years now. They're made in China (at least they were when I last checked). There's a good article online where the founders (a Dutch social enterprise) discuss how difficult it is to produce a 100% 'fair' phone and tryi...

Wildcat sale and extra BearBones discount. Hey, just a heads-up that we're doing an end-of-summer sale to free up some space and (almost) all Wildcat products at www.wildcat.cc have hefty reductions. I realise this is very close to an unpaid ad and so in a (not very) subtle attempt to appease the re...

We only have your word for that

My mate Bob can supply references on request.