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Craven's Bike Site

A junky blog mostly about bikes.


I'm mad about chains, PSA: Fake chains everywhere!

TLDR: Thank Sheldon Brown for keeping the bike mechanics industry working, fake chains are all over the place, buy from supplier, reputable online dealer (NOT EBAY OR SCAMAZON), or preferably a genuine local bike shop if you have one that has stock. Get yourself a chain checking tool, and oil your chain well. Your bike will love you for it, and …

One Gear, One Problem

So first of all, no I've not yet finished the GT and fully tested it... The starnut is still loose, the 5th gear still skips. I'll do it at some point, honest!

But I've got a new idea, see?! And it requires changing wheel sizes (like almost all my plans seem to)

We've had this old green bike in…

Critical Mass Leicester Isn't Dead!

It is not dead, and it's an amazing thing and great fun!

On the last Friday of the month, at 18:00, I met up with a few riders in Orton Square Leicester for an unplanned and open to all bike ride!

There were only 5 people there (including me), but I'll take that with the weather being quite shit.

My journey over was…

Spring Time Service Time

This is a late night post, but I keep forgetting to write it! Not much will make sense, but when does it ever?

It was the clock changing day last week, also known as 6 months since I installed my wrap around mudguards on my CX/Road/Gravel bike. That's when I said I'd take them off. Also a great time for a full service.

MTB Upgrades, Fork and Gears!

So, it's been a while, I've done things I should have written about, but here goes something that's happened over the last few weeks. I upgraded my MTB to 9 speed! This was due to having a 9 speed shifter I was gonna use on the GT (post up at the same time as this one) but I wanted more gears on this bike, so I did it. There were issues, because…

A seized wheel, and a tale of cleaning

To the guy that owns this wheel, if you can't be arsed to read my ramblings my recommendations are clean your bike more, the grease was replaced with mud, and that if the wheel wobbles let me know I've probably not got the screws set quite right.

A friend of my Dads brought over his rear wheel a little while ago as it had seized up in the…

Stuck in the Mud

So I went for a ride in the mud. I had a half day off work on Wednesday and I decided to really test the semi slick, light gravel/summer grass, but mostly for road tyres I have (the WTB Byway)

Mudguards, my saviour of bum

I finally got mudguards (like 4 weeks ago, I also finally made the pissing post...) Honestly I swear I've had no things to post or something IDK, let's ignore that there's no fucking algorithm here!

So the mudguards: They needed to fit within the not massive clearance of my cyclocross bike. It's got clearance for 35mm tyres with good mud …