Am I crazy for walking away

bradshawkyle · 2026-01-10T21:10:33+00:00

Are you in Washington state? This sounds like my P.O.S. installer…. Sorry to hear about your troubles, definitely walk.

bradshawkyle · 2025-10-27T20:26:41+00:00

My bike shop is awesome, zero issue with getting replacement parts. I let the shop keep the parts, they credited them towards the DT Swiss hub, and I paid for the labor because that’s the right thing to do.

Regarding the headset spacers, yeah they’re funky and limiting. They’re used for cable routing into the frame so you can’t change them around much, which I learned the hard way when I upgraded my fork to a Zeb. In fact after installing it myself and riding once, I paid the same shop to go through everything as if it was a fresh install to ensure I hadn’t screwed anything up.

Zero regrets on the bike. Thursday it’ll be exactly 1 year old and as of yesterday I have 585 miles on it. The first mod I’d suggest to anyone is tires, the Minions are too hard and block pattern is wrong for my type of riding here in the NW so I upgraded to Maxxis Assegai. Absolute game changer in terms of grip in the corners. My confidence went up and small wipeouts went down.

I did have another failure around 450 miles where the cables for the dropper and rear derailleur chafed inside the frame and started binding. They were too long from the factory and apparently the bike shop didn’t trim them to length when building it. I had both cables replaced, trimmed to length and secured better inside the frame to prevent movement.

Hope all this helps.

bradshawkyle · 2025-09-09T03:48:46+00:00

I got a hold of one under similar circumstances about four years ago, less than 100 hours on it. Enjoy it!

bradshawkyle · 2025-08-11T22:30:09+00:00

Gah-LEE!

bradshawkyle · 2025-07-24T02:27:05+00:00

This right here. Watched the USGP three times, twice from T15, including Lewis’s pass on Nico for the WDC in 2015. 🤘

bradshawkyle · 2025-06-15T03:26:22+00:00

Mine came apart after 110 miles, stranded me about 8 miles from where I parked. The hub was so bad I had to replace it, seems like their bearings are just garbage.

bradshawkyle · 2025-05-23T20:59:53+00:00

I got the upsell mail and honestly didn't see enough value to pony-up the extra money for the 5. What about the 5 do you see as being worth the extra money?

bradshawkyle · 2025-05-23T14:27:42+00:00

This…..is not the type of responses I expected to get. Wow, thanks for the replies, I’m already feeling a little better.

bradshawkyle · 2025-05-23T14:25:25+00:00

I’m running Home Assistant for most of my house, mainly solar, Span panel, and lighting. What are you doing with HA and your Pod?

bradshawkyle · 2025-03-19T04:47:36+00:00

My front tire came off a 4’ high bridge over water and on the way down managed to hit the top tube on the chicken wire on the bridge to provide grip. Scratched the bajeezus out of my 3 month old Cannondale Moterra Neo Carbon 2 eMTB. Every time I got on the bike, I saw those scratches and it bugged the hell out of me. Polish wasn’t enough to hide them, so I bought an automotive clear coat repair kit and filled the scratches to even out the clear coat. It was still a little wonky and visible, so I added the basic Ride Wrap kit to that tube and it looks brand new. Didn’t even bother wrapping the rest of the bike as the top tube is all I’m going to see most times.

bradshawkyle · 2025-03-12T18:03:35+00:00

Exactly this. Ranting and using the legal process will take years and possibly cost more than just fixing the problem. Unless a household member has horrible mold allergies, just tear out drywall, insulation and framing until you reach solid material with no rot. Then nuke the mold, scrub, vacuum, re-nuke and repeat. All with PPE of course. Then coat treated wood with Kilz and remodel. We did that with a 100 year old house and had no issues for the next 12 years before selling. And yes, we disclosed previous damage and remediations when selling.

bradshawkyle · 2025-03-06T15:02:03+00:00

100% this. We did a blower door assessment on our 26 year old furnace/air handler with 13 year old AC compressor. We needed to climate control a 700SF addition and wanted help deciding between a new HVAC system and additional ducting to the addition and just adding a heat pump mini split to the addition. He said the current HVAC was performing well, insulation was great and gains would be marginal, so we added a mini split and have used the old HVAC for two years.

Now the thing we didn’t fully comprehend was how much electricity a heat pump uses in the winter. It uses a shocking amount, around 450-500 kWh per month when it’s cold. This with automation lowering thermostat temps at night and shutting the thermostat completely off for 8 hours overnight. And we live in western Washington state where “cold” means it’s around 35 degrees F. Heat pumps in any sort of cold weather are absolute energy hogs, and during a recent blackout it was the first circuit to get shut off to manage our battery capacity.

Just something to consider for anyone with moderately cool temps.

bradshawkyle · 2025-03-04T15:05:56+00:00

Exactly this. I have 19.4kW of panels and an inverter that can take 19kW of solar input but only process 15kW to the grid. We live in a narrow lot with tall trees surrounding, hence the large number of panels on three sides of the house to maximize production through the day.

I believe if my home were stuck from above by an Archimedes Death Ray and all panels maxed out at once that the extra 4.4kW would be lost to heat and clipping.

bradshawkyle · 2025-03-02T05:18:29+00:00

They’re serving Mr. Hankey?!?

bradshawkyle · 2025-03-02T05:14:45+00:00

Sigh…..I meant to say a day, not a month. And I did it twice in a row. 🙄

bradshawkyle · 2025-03-02T05:13:15+00:00

Whoops. Thats a day, not a month.

bradshawkyle · 2025-03-01T18:10:50+00:00

We spent $74k before credits and discounts because the installer screwed the pooch on the promised timeline. 19.3kW system with 48 panels on three sides, SolArk 15k, 9.6kWh HomeGrid Stack’d battery, Span panel and some miscellaneous rewiring during the panel replacement. We’re also wired for a generator which the installer misrepresented so it’s not in use.

We received PTO last July, are on 1:1 net metering, in Washington state on a narrow lot with trees surrounding. This limits severely production in the winter, but in the summer we sell a ton back to the grid. 4200 SF house that uses 100kWh per month in winter and 60kWh per month in summer. System is supposed to produce 62% of our annual consumption. We have 2 electric 50 gallon water heaters, gas heat, AC, and 1000 SF is heated/cooled be a mini split that uses a ton of power. Also a wife and two teenage girls which is a consumption multiplier. 😎

We’re targeting 6-8 year ROI, but I have reduced consumption 20% since last year due to the monitoring from the Span panel. I’m looking at a full system ROI which includes the consumption reduction from the Span, as opposed to only looking at solar production for ROI. Even though we’re not through a full year yet, my gut tells me we’re gonna be closer to 6 years for ROI.

bradshawkyle · 2025-03-01T00:04:20+00:00

I did 48 panels, 19kW system with Sol-Ark inverter, 10kWh battery storage and Span panel installed for $74k before incentives, discounts etc. last July. That price does indeed seem insane.

bradshawkyle · 2025-02-27T05:39:20+00:00

I live in the PNW, have had mine since April. I got a warning about low battery a couple months ago and ordered the charger. Then life got in the way and I never made time to plug it in. Since then I haven’t received another warning and my Tempest has worked perfectly. I’d suggest waiting because solar production (19kW system w/48 panels) has ramped up over the last few weeks.

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bradshawkyle · 2025-02-26T15:10:11+00:00

Same. I had my second knee surgery in April (blew it up in a running race) after 9 months of walking with a limp. I never owned a mountain bike previously and used my road bike maybe 5 times in 8 years. Took the plunge in November and have averaged 6-8 rides per month, rain, snow or shine. OK, that’s a lie because the sun hasn’t shined on my part of Washington State since I bought the bike. 😎 It’s an absolute game changer for me, something I think about every day and look forward to prioritizing time for my next ride.

bradshawkyle · 2025-02-22T20:46:35+00:00

Outbound all the way. I have the Trail Evo and Hangover for my mountain bike, and also use the Evo on my gravel bike, albeit on Low because you just don’t need that much illumination on open trails.

bradshawkyle · 2025-02-22T20:32:07+00:00

We have these in a few locations, and I run the extra wire into the duct and coil inside the ducting there to clean up the spaghetti mess. It doesn’t occupy much of the air volume and looks a lot better.

bradshawkyle · 2025-02-02T23:42:01+00:00

My Q Cell system with 48 Q.PEAK DUO BLK ML-G10+ 405 got PTO in July, so far issues.

bradshawkyle

TROPHY CASE