falling off bikes since 1975

As I posted a couple weeks ago my lovely wife just bought me a new TNT linkage Turner Five Spot frame from Sideways Cycles. That week we got home we rang the shop with a list of parts to get in for us - all in black or silver. This last Saturday we ambled back down the M6 and Tim did his usual lovely job of building it up. Though I am proud that Tim remarked how I “fitted the bottle cage nicely”, after he’d spent an hour fettling Nokon cables and Hope brake pistons.

My wife remarked that I couldn’t stop smiling as we drive home.

This weekend also saw Chipps Birthday Rides, so we had a plan to get over there for the Five Spots inaugural ride. And of course my wife now wants to ride the ten year old Burner. Which was still in a right state from my previous ride on it.

Thus Saturday night was spent in the kitchen with a length of hose, an empty liquid soap bottle, several rags and a fresh bottle of DOT 5.1 doing a brake bleed. Turns out I did 80% of the job and although I removed the bubbles a full fluid change is needed. Ho hum.

Sunday morning was spent swapping various stems around between bikes in order to shorten and lower the front end of the Burner for her, lowering the rear shock pressure to cope with her lighter weight, and fitting a rather spiffing Specialized Avatar saddle. These have made a real difference to her riding and mean she can actually go out for more than an hour. I also rode 50 yards down the road on the Five Spot, dialed in an extra notch of pro-pedal, rode 50 yards home and declared it fit to ride.

Image courtesy and © Steve Makin

Suitably fettled over to Todmorden we went, Burner on the roof and Five Spot hidden in the boot.

Thanks to everyone who was impressed with the Five Spot. After the theft of the Maverick almost exactly two years ago the thrill of having a new bike felt a bit muted. This lot brought it back. And it still hadn’t been ridden in anger.

As usual the ride started with an up and then we did some Calderdale technical on the way to the café. I wrote about Strathpuffer how I loved riding my singlespeed after a year of riding the Burner. Today I loved riding the new Turner after riding the singlespeed. It laughed in the face of obstacles. It leapt small buildings and cleared streams in a single bound. And I didn’t have to tweak anything. No suspension dial twiddles, no extra pressure here, or negative air there. It was just sweet. If you look closely at the picture you’ll see I even got to use all the chainrings. (Confession Time: I changed to the big ring just to ride past SteveM).

It wasn’t entirely a faff free ride. The front end of the Burner was still more suited to a 14 stone bloke than a lady with some finesse. But after letting some air out of the forks and twiddling with the rebound damping, my wife started getting to grips with the Burner. Given that she’s not ridden anything technical off-road for over a year now it was great to see her improved confidence and the grin she wore riding down things like Rodwell B. Apparently finesse can go out the window now that she has suspension at both ends.

Then on the ride home the four year old ISIS bottom bracket that I have always used as an example of “they’re not that bad surely” whenever anyone mentions how fragile they are has bitten the dust.

Rather more worryingly as we were admiring the lines of the Burner (that’s right, not the new Five Spot, the ten year old Burner) at the end of the ride we discovered that there was play in the driveside Horst link. Closer inspection this morning has revealed that one of the nylon washers between the chain and seatstays has disintegrated and the slop is due to the resulting play. Hopefully we can get hold of a replacement bushing kit. I’ve always been evangelical about Turners use of bushings not bearings. Having had bearing failures in various components that have stranded me miles from home I’m sure that if the Horst link had used bearings not bushings we’d have spotted the problem sooner, but far more dramatically and catastrophically.

It all brought to mind the saying that you should never look a gift horse in the mouth - in case you find out how old it is.

Kirsty is now the Burner’s third rider. In 1996 it was Chipps. In 2001 it was me. In 2006 it’s Kirsty. I fully expect that we’ll fix this little niggle and in 2011 it will still be going strong.

As for the Five Spot, it ROCKS!