Well. that was a big fat letdown.

• The bars were too narrow (ok fair enough)
• The left leg of the forks blew it's seal and dumped all the oil out
• The fork's are shit
• Because of this I ran the bike with the forks locked out which just make it really really slow
• There's a weird noise coming from the drivetrain every revolution
• I flatted
• Getting the wheel out means removing the brake
• It's not faster down hill than the surly
• It's slower up hill than the surly
• It's vaigue in corners (but that might just be the forks and geometry)
• I don't think Hope put that hub back together properly.
• The cog and chain aren't meshing properly.
• The chain tug bolts kept rattling lose.
• The front brake failed entirely, despite it having been bled properly when the bike was built.
• Rear tyre clearance is a joke (it's like a mid 90's Kona)

So all in all it's slow, noisy and doesn't very well.

So now I need to rebuild almost the entire bike and fix a brake. great.

It seems I am cursed, in the last week Ive: destoryed two tyres, punctured 5 times, had two different front brakes fail, had one rear brake fail and blown up a pair of forks. There's probably more too

As this bike was made entirely out of spare parts I guess at least it's been essentially 'free' the forks have been out of service (except for 4 rides) since sometime in 2005, however everything else was pretty much brand new. I'm confused over the odd noise from the chain/cog though... I've never encountered anything like this and 've been though 15 or so chains and 8 cogs in the last 6 years.

10

Rode bike, saw Jon, was windy, front brake failed, rear brake pumped up, fed ducks, saw Wayne, rode home. 31.2miles.

Can't wait for Shimano XT ServoWave brakes to be available to cure my braking woes.

2

A high splatter day meant another set of pads magically disappeared. (bedded in somemake Organics - which are all I had) - they did last almost to the end of the ride, but I needed to scare lots of people into moving out of the way towards the end as braking was no longer an option for me. Oh and when did we start riding on the right of trails? KEEP LEFT?

Not a very good ride, my right knee blew up in the first 12 miles after battling the MF wind again, it rained heavily 3 times, the trails are very very bumpy now, I was really slow. blah blah blah 40.2miles.

2

Only one month to go now

I'm wondering if I'll ever ride the Surly with two working brakes again. In the last 3 weeks I've had 2 days where the rear brake's worked properly, and the rest where I've been riding on backing plates or not working at all.

Even a swap of brake to my old O2 has failed: Ride1: brake develops no lever throw so it's either off or locked, Ride2: pulling the lever to the bar fails to do anything, Ride3: starts off like ride 2 ends like ride 1, so pretty much no braking.

My freehub also died entirely today luckly I managed to get to the top of the last hill before home before I pushed the crank and it tore all the teeth on the ratchet off leaving me with a double freehub! - I've almost run out of brakes and wheels for the Surly now.

I only got soaked from th waist down today - maybe that's from the feet up? although it did rain, so I'm keeping my record going.

0

The only milestone I could find for today was ride number 250 on the Surly.

It was a VERY VERY wet ride (and windy), but warm again (for this year anyway) so I didn't wear a jacket.

My rear pads yet again dissolved somewhere on Winter Hill, only two brake pulls into the ride. So the the majority of the ride was spent trying not to go to fast into loose / broken / muddy corners because front would cause crashing.

Im going to assume the pads, which were put in in April 2006 were organic and maybe degraded a bit.. but at least I made some pads last almost 15 months!

Despite the terrible weather, scary braking and shredded trails, today's ride was alright... I'd quite like to see the sun again soon, the great tanlines I had in April have been sanded away.

1