psycholist

I Shannon's departure lounge now - Hooray for free WiFi ...

I have a pretty much OEM spec Specialized Rockhopper from 1989 - It dates from 6 or 7 years before I started MTBing - bought it last year for €50 . It's great fun to ride, but the canti brakes are properly scary in the wet... I bought a completely new trials bike last year and sold on the previous bike. Oldest parts on it were the Maguras at 6 or 7 years, nothing done to them (Apart from the TPAs and a couple of bleeds) for their whole time on my bike.

The bearings are definitely f**kered in the BB now - that sideways movement is the ball bearings moving out of line and seizing. Replace the BB or the BB bearings...

Ha ha - that sounds a bit rude ... Flight from Shannon at 6:50am on Sunday ... Bike is packed already...

Nice one I just hope it works for you, usually this fixes most brakes anyway. I should be making a guest appearance in London along with 'Tha Goat' for comedy and trials - we'll be the only two Irish guys...

That's the usual anyway. On a completely new disk it takes longer, but on a worn in disk with new pads the stopping should be pretty much full power almost instantly.

First thing to try is spraying water on the caliper/disk and trying a few stops on it. This may fix it if the disk has dust/dirt contaminating it. If it bites well for a while and then goes back crappy there is probably oil on the disk/pads. Clean the disk with washing up liquid and water or Isopropyl Alcohol to remove any oil. Clean the caliper too, to make sure grease/oil hasn't seeped from the caliper mechanism to the pads and disk. Fit new pads. Reassemble the whole lot, making sure everything is aligned correctly (For a BB7, since only one pad moves, set the caliper so the moving pad has to flex the disk sideways slightly before it hits the fixed pad for drag free running - (Since the BB7 has a fixed pad adjustment IIRC, this is most easily done by winding the fixed pad in a few clicks, pulling the lever with the caliper bolts loose and tightening the caliper in place with the brake on, then backing the fixed pad off again afterwards). A few hard stops should get the new pads working right and hopefully that's it...

I love my 375mm chainstays ... I'm pretty sure I couldn't tell the difference between 375 and 385 on a similarly set up bike though... No matter how good the geometry on a bike is if the brakes or freewheel don't inspire confidence it'll ride like crap, so its very easy to have a go on another person's bike and think it's awesome or rubbish because of how other parts feel compared to what you're used to...

If the shipping is reasonable try these: http://superstar.tibolts.co.uk/index.php?cPath=22_35 Both red and green work well, I prefer green for colour coordination reasons . Lock and hold is way better with the Superstar pads than on the harsh but well worn in grind I'm using than with Rockpads Blues I bought recently for 3 times as much...

Random tunes on my phone on solo sessions, insomnia helps too - at 1 or 2 in the morning very little is off limits due to traffic either ... Foam grips are probably the biggest change I've seen in my bike setup - way less callousing on my hands so I can ride harder for longer ...

Front wheel hops, manuals (It took me over 2 years to get wheelies - over a decade of trying later, the longest manual I've done is about 40 feet), high sidehops (past 30"), bailing off my bike when things go wrong rather than going down with the ship, anything that involves a fall of more than 3 feet if it goes wrong (Linked to previous item). I've been riding trials for something like 12 years - I'm only on my second trials specific frame though, so I've seen more improvement in the past 2 years than the previous 5...

Blue shorts I reckon... You trying to make sure you don't wear the same clothes as me for a cycle again? No wait, that only happens with you and Chris - repeatedly!!

If it's hollowtech II style BB with oversized axle bolts, that still needs a crank puller, your best bet might be to get self extracting crank bolt collars and use them (Some self extracting bolts here: http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Categor...CategoryID=149). I find putting pennies under the crank puller will give you a very mashed penny, but often won't move the cranks. If it's an ISIS spline then you just need the correct crank puller.

Bandicoots? To get back on topic - on solo spins I do a lot of repetitive stuff trying to improve technique, while with groups I try to match/improve on other people's lines, so solo rides get my technique better and are of high intensity, while group ones improve my ability to see lines in the first place.

This method is usually termed a 'ghetto' tubeless setup. I've seen quite a few people claim they work but haven't tried it (I've used UST setups and find them disappointing). The trick to making the rim tape is to slit open a 20" tube to seal a 26" rim, so the tube is stretched onto the rim to form a good rim tape. No reason this couldn't be done using a drilled trials rim provided a suitable rim tape was fitted first and the 20" tube was big enough to cover the full width of the rim.

There's a glue I found a while ago called 'Flex and Bond', which might be suitable for this. I've used it to glue metal to varnished wood and it works well. There glue stays flexible after bonding too, so it's more likely to take a few hits... Based on the description this seems to be the stuff I got, but it was a local hardware/machinery spares supplier I bought it from and the packaging was different. http://www.weicon.ca/en/produkte/elastisch...e/flex-bond.php

Strangely my bike and those of the people that cycle regularly with me stay working very well. Of the two that went over to Scotland only one has ever gone out to ride trials with me. That was once, early last year...

I didn't go on the Glasgow trip at all. I know James and Steve though - they're too busy studying arsitecture to get out riding ... I'm pretty sure there's a 'y' in cayke - pancaykes sound way more appetising than nasty old pancakes ... Here's my setup for the evening ... I'm adding creme de menthe to at least one batch because green minty pancaykes are all kinds of awesome...

Solo for technique stuff (There's a supermarket car park with a hoppable wall around it and a couple of rocks small enough for me to ride less than 500m from my house, so I head down there at weird hours of the night and mess around on my bike till I'm tired). Group rides (If I can get them) are great for bigger riskier stuff, learning new moves and the crudest, nastiest, most hilarious chat ever. On group spins the intensity is a lot less since I watch lines other people are trying for at least as long as I spend riding myself...

That wasn't me - IIRC I built the back wheel on that bike though (And was paid handsomely in Jaffa Caykes )... Last time I saw it the brakes were low on fluid again though ... It's part of the reason I prefer to buy my Maguras new ...

Citroen LHM is all I've been using in my mineral oil brakes since dickety two... Still on the same 1L bottle too ...

Whether the frame weakens depends on the material its made from and the heat treatment it has before welding. Welding requires a local area in the frame to be heated to its melting point. Once the welding is done it will tend to cool very rapidly (Even more rapid cooling known as quenching is achieved by dunking the metal in water after welding/heating, this is desirable to harden products such as files, drill bits etc, but not desirable in load bearing frames, especially where shock loading is likely). The rapid cooling after welding usually leaves the metal harder and more brittle at the weld than when you started. At the edges of the weld there will be zones in the metal where it is heated to near the melting point, but not melted. This often softens the material in the area near the weld (Depending on initial heat treatment, cooling rate and temperature reached and time held at high temperature). The result of this is that welds are often hard and brittle with a softer more ductile material around them - the difference in material properties leads to extra stress when the frame is loaded which will lead to cracking, usually just beside the weld. Heat treatment is used to bring the welds and tubes back to a having similar properties and is more or less essential for Aluminium. There are grades of steel that perform better after welding (Reynolds make a few air hardening steels specifically for bike use with these properties). As for the dent in the chainstay, it's nothing to worry about in a steel frame and no great cause for worry in an aluminium frame either unless there are cracks in the dent that aren't visible in the pictures.

I used to use a DMR Sidekick for trials and I can say with confidence that the geometry on it is definitely not suitable for pure trials riding. The main issue is the distance from the pedals to the handlebars is shorter than trials specific frames, making the bike easier to tweak in the air and to lift to manuals (Useful for dirt jumping, which is what it was designed for), but massively less comfortable to hop on the back wheel. They're also shockingly heavy... I don't think any amount of trials abuse will break a DMR frame though - the DMR trailstar I still have has been taking everything I've given it from long XC rides to DH hammering and street riding since 2002 and is still showing no signs of failing...

Just make sure you keep a decent amount of pressure in the tyres 30-35psi in 2.1" tyres on XM819s was the minimum I found to be safe for XC use - they will pull off the rims and let all the air out if you land on them sideways. I also pinch punctured a Conti tyre I was running tubeless with light sidewalls, again on an XC bike, so they have a major thumbs down from me for XC use and I wouldn't even consider them for trials...

I'm running an almost off the shelf Tartybikes build of an Echo Control bought at the very end of 2007 and it's an amazing bike. Only thing to watch is that the Echo forks, especially the ones with Magura mounts on the back of the fork legs have a nasty habit of snapping at the brake mounts - mine did (with no warning - this is a feature of the way Aluminium fails anyway unfortunately) after 7 or 8 months and I don't do anything big, I'm not what could be termed light though... I'll hopefully be making use of the London ride on March 1st as a chance to try a bunch of bikes to see if my Control really is as sorted as I think it is...