Dazed and Confused

Peter Headland wrote:
How in the world does the EBC justify not fitting mudguards as
standard?

Not sporty and trendy: they don't want to put people off, and people who
register comfort and laundry minimisation more than fashion and
weightweenyism can retrofit them.

Pete.
--
Peter Clinch Medical Physics IT Officer
Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
net http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/

Peter Headland wrote:
How in the world does the EBC justify not fitting mudguards as
standard?


They're all hard men in Edinburgh ;

--
Tony

"A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought" Lord
Peter Wimsey (Dorothy L. Sayers)

"Paul D" wrote in message
...

Did they not have bicycle locks in those days?

I wouldn't expect a bicycle lock to do much against a determined thief.

Paul D wrote:

It does seem odd to me that when I said that an MTB with a 21 speed setup didn't
have sufficient range (i.e. I use the lowest possible gear, but the highest is
much too low), that people are recommending a bike that has, I would imagine, a
much smaller range.

A typical 21 speed setup will give you about 11 effective gears, and the
actual range you'll get in that is highly variable according to the
cogs used. If you put an 11-34 on the back that gives you quite a high
range. A typical MTB has a 42 big ring, the Rev. Courier has a 44, so
that gives you a higher top gear (which you want). 42 to 34 (32 is
standard I think) still gives you a usefully low bottom gear, bearing in
mind MTB low gears are designed for the sort of steepness where keeping
the front wheel down is a major problem and the surfaces are potentially
loose too.
My freight bike is an 8 speed with enough depth of gearing that I can
take 50Kg of coal up a fairly major hill while sitting in the saddle.
You don't need a tiny ring to get usefully low, even somewhere with
hills (and Dundee "does" hills).

Also, there is no dealer list on the site

Edinburgh Bicycle Co-op *is* the dealer: they are primarily a shop
rather than a manufacturer. There's one in (unsurprisingly) Edinburgh,
and also now in Aberdeen and Newcastle.

Pete.
--
Peter Clinch Medical Physics IT Officer
Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
net http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/

On Wed, 27 Apr 2005 07:42:52 +0000 (UTC), "LSMike" wrote:

"Paul D" wrote in message
...

Did they not have bicycle locks in those days?

I wouldn't expect a bicycle lock to do much against a determined thief.

Neither would I, but he did seem to lose an aweful lot of bikes to theft.

Peter Headland wrote:
: How in the world does the EBC justify not fitting mudguards as
: standard?

It's a courier bike. Why would you want them?

Their traditional hybrids do come with mudguards as standard (which is
also sensible)

Arthur

--
Arthur Clune PGP/GPG Key: http://www.clune.org/pubkey.txt
Don't get me wrong, perl is an OK operating system, but it lacks a
lightweight scripting language -- Walter Dnes

On Wed, 27 Apr 2005 08:53:15 +0100, Peter Clinch
wrote:

A typical 21 speed setup will give you about 11 effective gears, and the
actual range you'll get in that is highly variable according to the
cogs used. If you put an 11-34 on the back that gives you quite a high
range. A typical MTB has a 42 big ring, the Rev. Courier has a 44, so
that gives you a higher top gear (which you want). 42 to 34 (32 is
standard I think) still gives you a usefully low bottom gear, bearing in
mind MTB low gears are designed for the sort of steepness where keeping
the front wheel down is a major problem and the surfaces are potentially
loose too.
My freight bike is an 8 speed with enough depth of gearing that I can
take 50Kg of coal up a fairly major hill while sitting in the saddle.
You don't need a tiny ring to get usefully low, even somewhere with
hills (and Dundee "does" hills).

Interesting points.

I'll experiment tomorrow.

Also, there is no dealer list on the site

Edinburgh Bicycle Co-op *is* the dealer: they are primarily a shop
rather than a manufacturer. There's one in (unsurprisingly) Edinburgh,
and also now in Aberdeen and Newcastle.

That's an aweful long way to go for a test ride when you live in the SE.

Paul D wrote:

That's an aweful long way to go for a test ride when you live in the SE.

Indeed it is. If it's what you want on paper you can risk the postage
cost to return it. Personally I'm a believer in getting my hands on
stuff before I buy for the most part, especially where fit is very
important, but having said that plenty of people buy mail order and are
happy with the results.

My first tourer came from EBC (I lived around the corner at the time)
and my MTB is an EBC which I picked up on a visit (I'm usually through
to Embra several times a year), so I can report I'm happy with their bikes.

Pete.
--
Peter Clinch Medical Physics IT Officer
Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
net http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/

in message , Paul D
') wrote:

On Tue, 26 Apr 2005 22:24:30 +0100, Simon Brooke
wrote:

in message , Paul D
') wrote:

I posted a thread yesterday, entited; "stressed and depressed",
because that's just about how I felt trying to come to some sort of
a decision about upgrading my bike.

I think it's worth pointing out that without any prompting three of us
recommended the Edinburgh Bicycle Co-op's Revolution Courier (and/or
the 'Race' version of the same bike). It's in the middle of your
budget and will do everything you want.

Funnily enough, I was looking at that one, and when I mentioned it on
a cycling forum, a couple of people mentioned the Ridgeback (although
nobody had anything bad to say about the Courier).

It does seem odd to me that when I said that an MTB with a 21 speed
setup didn't have sufficient range (i.e. I use the lowest possible
gear, but the highest is much too low), that people are recommending a
bike that has, I would imagine, a much smaller range.

You're confusing number of gears with range. They're not the same -
indeed, they're not that closely related. You say yourself that you
change gears two at a time, so you select only ten or eleven of the
twenty-one you've got; and with three chainrings you inevitably have
substantial overlap between the ranges, so the number of usefully
different ratios is considerably fewer than the theoretical number of
combinations. And then you say the lower gears are too low to be useful
to you. So you're probably _now_ using only five or six different
gears. The Courier Race has, as you say, only eight gears, but they're
rationally spaced with no overlap so they're eight usable different
gears.

You can use Sheldon Brown's gear calculator (here
URL:http://sheldonbrown.com/gears/) to work out what effective gears
any system gives you, but the Courier Race setup gives you a range from
37.1 to 108 inches. What range does the alternative you are considering
offer, and is it useful?

I'm not saying the Courier Race is necessarily _the_ bike for you, but
it's a solution which reduces complexity and maintenance while still
giving useful spread of useful ratios.

Although to be quite honest, I've now been rather put off spending
that little, considering that everyone seems to think that that's at
the low end of the 'budget' price range, and with all the dark
mutterings about component longevity at that price point it does seem
sensible to spend more.

Well, that's true. But how you spend money is something to consider. If
you go for the top bike from a cheap brand, what you typically get is
good components on a poor frame. It'll be low maintenance for a good
while because those good components will last a long time, but you'll
never really be able to upgrade it and it will still have that poor
frame for the life of the bike.

By contrast if you get a bottom-end bike from a good maker you will
often find you get poor quality components on a high quality frame
(Cannondale is a particular case in point). The poor quality components
will wear out much more quickly, but if you replace them as they wear
with better quality ones then over time you'll end up with a really
good quality bike.

--
(Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

...but have you *seen* the size of the world wide spider?

in message , Paul D
') wrote:

On Wed, 27 Apr 2005 07:42:52 +0000 (UTC), "LSMike"
wrote:

"Paul D" wrote in message
...

Did they not have bicycle locks in those days?

I wouldn't expect a bicycle lock to do much against a determined
thief.

Neither would I, but he did seem to lose an aweful lot of bikes to
theft.

Living in a University town, working at a University. I don't any more.

--
(Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

'there are no solutions, only precipitates'