psycholist

Denial isn't just a river in Egypt (It hits Ethiopia, Zaire, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and Sudan too)... How's your (fat) ankle recovering?

Cup and cone bearings are a much better idea for bike hubs because they deal with misalignment and side loading better than cartridges and no hub is stiff enough to not misalign as the axle flexes under load. That's why Shimano have stayed with that design - I've got 6 years and counting and over 10,000 miles out of the XTR hub on one of my XC bikes for example. A Hope XC lasted about a year on it, a Deore lasted less than that due to cheap bearings. It's easier for a company getting into making hubs to just pick cartridges off the shelf and shove them into machined spaces than to go to the trouble of cubic boron nitride coating the bearing surfaces after lapping them to a mirror finish and designing their own hub seals specific to the bicycle application. King hubs are not cup and cone either, but cartridges with an angular contact component AFAIK. I agree 100% with the comment that when Kings skip they really skip though - I wouldn't swap my ENO for one (Except to sell it for profit and buy another ENO of course )...

Call to Ireland - we're all crap at trials here ...

Try running more pressure in the tyre and focus on landing on the tyre as straight as possible. If you land at enough of an angle you'll unseat most tyres, but higher tyre pressure definitely helps. Try a different tyre too just in case you have a particularly loose one, rims are usually the right size...

They're pretty consistent in all conditions on a ground rim, just have nothing like the bite and hold of trials specific pads. The good side of this is you can modulate the brakes for manuals (I've been totally unable to manual for any distance since I changed to trials specific pads) and they're much quieter... If you've never used a trials brake before they're seriously powerful...

For very small values of 3, 1+2+3 = 5 ... And 9 x 6 = 42 - I have proof...

Not to me so I haven't bought one...

Put the bleed hole the fluid is coming out of higher than the one the fluid is entering it. If there are air bubbles in the brake they'll naturally want to go to the highest point in the system.

This should do the job - as far as I know the Onza forks are all IS mount (Bolts that mount the disk to the fork are parallel with the front axle) and spaced for 160mm calipers and Avid brakes are post mount (Bolts to hold the caliper point towards the fork leg), so a 203mm IS to post mount adaptor is needed: http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Models.aspx?ModelID=13720 Can't find disk adaptors on Tartybikes at all for some reason...

You'll need the right adaptor for the 203mm rotor. If you fit the avid caliper instead of your existing one it should run on the 180mm rotor you have. A well set up 203mm rotor Avid SD7 is viciously powerful - certainly loads more bite and hold on the bike I tried than the 185mm rotor and Magura Louise I'm running at the moment.

I've used ones that look about the same as that from Discobrakes and superstar components. They work well for the money on a harsh grind. The likes of heatsink pads are better, but if money is tight these are the way to go.

It's both hands if I spend too much time hopping around looking for perfect balance/position rather than taking the 'shhit or get off the pot' approach and going for it...

Find a bolt that threads into the back of the piston (It'll have to cut its own threads since there's just a seat for the pushrod from the lever), attach to a power drill, clamp the power drill so it won't move, put the drill on at low speed and hold sandpaper against the piston as it rotates to keep it round while sanding... I'm still using oil in my Magura though, so have never had to deal with this problem... The brake pump on the other hand is a pain...

Pneumatic braking is unworkable for bikes - Car brakes are also fully hydraulic though the braking is assisted by pneumatic pressure/vacuum. Because air is compressible there will be no easy proportionate link between pulling the lever and the braking force and a compressor would be needed to continuously maintain air pressure. Cars get around this by using the flow of air being sucked into the engine to create a vacuum. In trials the braking problem is coming up with a brake with bite and hold that will also offer modulation and not cause the user permanent hearing damage... Disks are the closest to offering this, but they seem very sensitive to contamination and some can be surprisingly variable from day to day for no good reason...

They're usually part of the derailleur. Call to your local shop and ask them for a bent/broken derailleur before they throw it out and take the bolt off that one.

While on the other hand I was refused warranty cover on a Hope XC hub (Even though Hope are generally considered very good for warranty support) which I had only used for XC where the spacer separating the freehub bearings and the hub body bearings had started to deform, making the hub really hard to backpedal, 6 out of 8 of the cassette sprockets had dug so deeply into the steel freehub body I needed to hammer the cassette off and axle flex had allowed the ratchet ring to mark the freehub by the ratchet pawls (Which were also deforming) because Hope didn't believe XC riding could do that to a hub... Strangely the XTR hub I was running on my trials bike at the same time lasted years longer and the XTR I replaced the Hope with with is still running since 2003 - it never even got a service until I fitted a new freehub body to it in 2008. I wouldn't get a current model XTR rear hub though, the rear axle fails through fatigue after about a year (of XC use) and the older model XTR only has 16 clicks, so I couldn't go back to it after using an ENO. Superstar who get bad mouthed a lot for their warranty support have been nothing short of excellent in dealing with me for the return of one of their 120 click hubs, again used for XC only for less than a year, which had the ratchet pawl carrier crack first, followed by the drive ring starting to spin in the hub body about 3 rides after the ratchet carrier was replaced. The moral of the story is mostly that you can't tell how a warranty claim will be received till you try it...

Given I've had hubs I've used for nothing but XC fail in a similar way the the way many people see trials hubs fail I reckon they'll have their work cut out for them proving anything. The thing is the warranty probably is more or less at King's discretion (They'd be foolish to write it otherwise). If you've had dealings with them before and are happy with their service (And possibly even if not) I'd try being honest first though.

I'm pretty sure if the freehub spline isn't notched and the ring drive inside the hub is still OK then there's no way Chris King can tell the hub wasn't used for XC. It doesn't sound like a trials related failure to be honest.

Sintered tend to bite less well than organic, but it varies between manufacturers. Definitely Shimano Organic are a lot better (And quieter) in terms of bite and hold than sintered in the XT brakes. I use a Louise on the front of my bike and the Magura pads are organic too AFAIK...

I just remember trying it with a snips many years ago and it taking bloody ages... I'll have to see what Stanley® will do for me ...

Only problem with drum brakes is the servo style locking action will only be in one direction unless you go for opposite hinging directions for the 2 pads, but you'll still be almost certainly left with a bit of slip on direction changes. Drums also tend to be very heavy compared to disks. I had a try of the Shimano Nexave drum brakes a while ago and they're inadequate for use on the front wheel for ordinary road use. Not that they were designed for trials of course, but drums tend to be great drag brakes, but not so good for sharp, quick response or locking wheels. Consistent brakes would be a huge improvement in trials and moving to a fully enclosed system is a promising way to go about it - no more worry about wet/oil contamination ...

Is there a quick way to take knobbles off a tyre - some of the side knobbles on my Rubber Queen are rubbing the frame and its getting annoying...

I've never heard of a resin specific disk in my life, they all run on the same disks - 1.5mm thick stainless steel with holes in them. Resin pads are better insulating (Les heat to brake fluid so less boiling - useful for DH, irrelevant for trials), softer material (Better conforming around the holes in the disk leading to more bite at the expense of wear rate), quicker wearing (Pretty much irrelevant in trials since you'll still probably get a year out of them) and usually slightly cheaper than sintered. Sintered are useful for wet, muddy, gritty off road riding where a set of resin pads can be worn through to the backing in a matter of hours (I've seen this first hand).

If you're getting a splined sprocket make sure it has a wide base, otherwise it will cut into the freehub spline on your hub. Screw on sprockets and freewheels are a complete pain in the ass to deal with as they may come off easily or may be the work of several hours depending on how long it has been fitted for, how well greased it was and the condition of the threads. Splined sprockets are easy to remove because the pedalling forces don't drive the tighter and tighter as you use them. Saying that, I run a front freewheel on my bike because I trust the freewheel engagement on an ENO more than I trust any rear freewheel I've tried... If there was a splined mounting for freewheels onto preferably Middleburn cranks I'd upgrade immediately...

I resurrected my front disk yesterday by wiping its surface with wet grass cuttings and dirt sprinting the bike as fast I could pedal it and pulling the brake full on about 3 times. No idea what happened it though - on Monday it worked perfectly and its sat in my garage since. I do find the rear Magura loses bite if I leave it in the car on a sunny day...