aigle_de_la_route wrote:
I could rant .. ah hell, I _will_ rant ...

I've had enough of cheap plastic. We have a chain of sportswear shops
here in France (it's they who built the Surly and yes, further to my
other thread about a loose headset, the front brake _still_ causes
juddering, even 24 hours after it was tightened, and so it looks like
they screwed up the build, and it was a 'moonlight' job, so no receipt
to claim compensation, should I need a new Surly fork) called
Go-Sport, and I bought a set of plastic trouser clips from them.
They lasted all of three days. I was by no means brusque with them,
but they'd just snap in my hands as I was putting them onto my
trouser leg (I only wear the right-hand one). The last straw was
about ten days ago, when I was stopped at a set of traffic lights on
the way to work, left foot in the pedal and right foot on the ground.
I lifted my right leg up as I pushed off, and the clip got caught in
the pedal. 'Snap!!' Four bicycle clips in the space of ten days.
I went and bought a set of velcro ones, but they don't look like
they're going to last very long, either. What the hell happened to
that word, 'quality' ?

There's a set of metal ones available on the web, but the site is
UK-based, and they don't ship to addresses outside Blighty.

You do not need metal levers to fit tight tyres. You just need the right
technique with thin-tipped levers - which can be made of average-strength
plastic.

Recommended: *Specialized Pry Babies*. Is that a great name or what?

~PB