News / Ride UK Tech Articles

  Wheel FiddlingThis month I want to continue where I left off last time. If you remember I had just finished assembling the worlds most garish wheel, a lovely little rear 48, laced 4 cross and interlaced under the third. But there is a lot more to wheel building than just putting the parts together in the […]
  Chain TensionThis month’s tech column is going to be about chain tension. But before I get on to that I should probably ramble on about something pretty much unrelated for a while. In this case I want to get you to take a minute to think just how awesome bicycles are. I was awestruck the other […]
  ChainWhen the very first bicycles were being developed, simplicity was king. We are talking about Scotsmen scooting about on wooden frames with wooden wheels and wooden forks. This soon developed into the first real bicycles, where rather than pushing along with your feet on the ground cranks were fitted directly to the wheel of the […]
  How Tight is Tight?People like Jeremy Clarkson often talk about torque. Unfortunately they either just quote a number or skirt right past it like it is this incredibly difficult concept to understand. The truth is that torque is very simple to understand. Time for another dumb simile… (hard to believe that that is really how you spell simile […]
  Isn’t that bike a bit small for you mate?Chances are that at some point some incredibly witty sort will have shouted this tired old phrase after you as you roll down the street. You may have noticed that they wait until you are a fair distance away before they shout it, and they don’t hang around to hear your equally witty rejoinder of […]
  Bent Frame SpottingWhen the ancient Egyptians were laying out the great pyramid at Giza over four and a half thousand years ago they had little more than bits of wood and string to help them lay it out. And yet they got all four sides bang on the four compass points and the lengths of the sides […]
  Click Click ClickClick click click. Or if you are running certain cassette hubs; CLICK CLICK BASTARD CLICK CLICK CLICK, or even CKCKCKCKCKCKCKCKCK. Some people seem to like a really loud click when they freewheel, some people hate it. Personally I hate it, it’s the ultimate give-away to security guards and police. If you need to sneak about […]
  Living in a Material World…“Supertherm or Ox platinum? T45 or Reynolds 853? Sanko or Tange? What’s it all about?” Yep, several people have been foolish enough to ask me to write a tech column on all the “fancy” tubes that companies are increasingly using to make frames. Obviously this is unlikely to be an exciting story with dumb security […]
  HandlebarsHandlebars, Bars, Steering wings. Call them what you like we all need them. Personally I always find changing bars to be a bit of an ordeal. Not just because I have to wrestle the grips on and not because I have to switch the brake levers, and the cables are inevitably no longer the ideal […]
  Bottom Brackets AGAIN!!!Once again I find myself writing about bottom brackets. Bollocks. I really don’t want to get labelled as some kind of obsessive dude who only thinks about bottom brackets all day long, yet I don’t seem to have much choice in the matter either. Equally, I imagine that you -the noble reader- is pretty bored reading […]
  Flying Tonight?Nobody really likes public transport. We would all rather drive ourselves to our destination. Door to door with our own timetable and agenda. Unfortunately there is a flip side to this. I am not talking about congested roads or the coming apocalypse of global warming. No. Simply that nobody likes public transport and public transport […]
  Bottom Bracket CompendiumYou may remember that 2 years ago in issue 58 I wrote about the new Euro Bottom brackets that were starting to pop up on some frames. I also predicted that there would be some other new standards to look forward to. Well now they seem to be starting to come through so I thought […]