Showing Ann My Shiny Bits

A special post for Ann, as she has been asking me for the next instalment. Nice to know someone actually reads this!

I've had a fairly quiet couple of weeks. I had to miss the Ashby road race yesterday due to a slight problem with my knee (sorry Dennis) but risked the 10 mile time-trial this evening, 4th place in 0:23:48, a little slower than the 0:23:27 I managed last time. I don't know if the loss of 21 seconds was just down to my knee but I'm going to blame it anyway, everyone else got a good time so it wasn't the wind or anything like that. To be fair the only place it hurt was the hill up to Osbournby so I think I may have been slow on merit.

Anyway, onto the shiny bits.

I recently managed to destroy one of the jockey wheels on the rear mech of the race bike. I've always stuck with Shimano ones as the bearings seem pretty much indestructible, and indeed they survived unscathed. Oddly enough I had managed to wreck about half of the teeth on the lower pulley.

I gave Ant at MtZoom a ring and he brought me a set of the lovely ceramic SpeedWheels (hand delivered to my door!) He is course a purveyor of many other items, including my lovely titanium bottle cages and rather fancy mini-I-Link gear cables, click the link above to see his full range of shiny bits.

As you can see from the pics I am using a Shimano XTR-Shadow M972-SGS rear mech, and those of you who have a Shadow will no doubt be aware how much of a pain it is finding jockey wheels which fit. However, I can report that the SpeedWheels fit perfectly.

I must also say a big thank-you to the lovely folks at Magura. I had broken the shaft inside the right leg of my Durin Races which has the holes for the oil at the bottom and connects at the top to the white bit underneath the blue bit where the lockout cable goes. For those of you struggling to picture it it's part 07722589, hope that helps. My usual dealer had been quite useless at getting hold of the necessary part and had dithered for ages (not Neil & Kim in this case I should add). The forks kept working perfectly well in every respect other than the lockout.

Anyway, I saw the man from Magura at Margam, showed him my forks and 2 days later I not only had a new 07722589 but also an 07722587 and two, yes two! 07722352s! How exciting is that!

Seriously though, big thank-you to Magura.