psycholist

Google and youtube both give me nothing - usually the freehub will pull off the side of the hub once you remove the drive side axle end cap. This may unscrew or just pull straight off the hub. I haven't worked on Atomlab hubs though, so no idea of the specifics... **edit: Should have said Atomlab - had Halo in my head for some reason ...

If the freewheel catches suddenly while you're pedaling forwards but pedaling backwards doesn't consistently make the top run of chain slack, there's something stuck in the freewheel mechanism that catches intermittently. If while you backpedal the freehub lets the chain run slack every time, then the bearings might be draggy and need cleaning/replacement or else (Which I've only ever seen in a Hope XC hub) the spacer that separates the freehub bearings from the hub bearings on the axle might have got worn down allowing the freehub body to drag against the hub (This can be spotted by seeing if there's a difference between the drag on the freehub backpedaling while the wheel is in the frame with the QR closed and the drag with the wheel out of the frame.

Based on other Crank Bros products I've seen I wouldn't risk buying it unless you get a string of people who've actually used it long term saying it's great. Most Crank Bros stuff seems to be made of cheese, but that's my opinion on them based on seeing the allen keys on their multi tools round in no time flat, having to rebuild a friend's brand new Crank Bros pump before it would work at all and all the people who've had egg beater pedals wear out or self destruct in less time than it takes Shimano pedals to break in - I wouldn't pay money for Crank Bros anything unless it was to put it on my wall to look at...

If the prongs are 2mm from the rim and the pads are 3-4mm from the rim then the prongs are the first thing the rim touches when the wheel flexes over. Most people don't notice this flex because if the rim touches a brake pad the noise and drag aren't that noticeable compared to the metal on metal sound of a prong hitting...

No problem - glad to be of help .

Most people don't run pads worn enough to allow the guide forks on the piston to stick beyond the surface of the pad. Chances are you've had to move the slave pistons in closer to the rim than they'd be able to get with new pads to deal with the wear too, so that's the second part of how wear is contributing to the grinding...

It makes more sense for every type of cycling but trials to put the front brake on the right to give maximum stopping power and control for right handed people. I'm left handed, so putting the back brake on the left makes sense for the extra back brake control, but if the brakes were the other way round day one, I'd have just used them as they were as I'm not 'strongly' left handed. The question then boils down to 'What is the rational for US/Euro riders to run swapped brakes in the first place and where did that come from?' I'm pretty sure bicycles predated motorbikes by over a century (Though the same technology that allowed bicycles to work well, namely steels strong enough to make a mass producable, reliable chain drive and bearings also made internal combustion engines possible), so the first brake lever almost certainly turned up on a bicycle... Which wheel it operated on is anyone's guess though...

I've used that kit with a bike tyre instead of a car tyre and it's fine - take the pressure down under 30 PSI first though. It can be done as easily with a syringe though I like the adaptor that kit comes with to fit an outlet pipe to the lever reservoir.

Initial fitting of 4 bolt boosters is a bit fiddly because you have to deal with both sides of the brake at once. I've done it without the rubber band trick and it's a bit messy - very easy using this method though: 1. Set your brakes up aligned to the rim with no booster. 2. loosen the bolts both sides of one piston until they're about a turn from coming out and hold the piston in position by hand. 3. Hook a rubber band around the front of the brake block, stretch it around the brake mounts and frame and loop the other end around the back of the block to hold the piston in position. Do the same for the other piston. (Having the bolts loose before you put the rubber band on makes it easier to get tension in the rubber band even so it doesn't move the piston when you let go of it). 4. Remove the current short bolts - the rubber bands should hold everything in place. 5. Put one of long bolts that came with your booster through a hole in the booster. 6. Slide a spacer onto the bolt (Spacers go between the booster and the clamps for the piston), then thread it into the frame. Do the same with the three other bolts. 7. tighten everything up, making sure the spacers are long enough to keep the booster from touching the clamps on the frame (On my booster they were very slightly too short, so I added a couple of extra washers between the spacer and the booster. 8. Remember that since the braking load is distributed between both the bolts that hold each piston you should tighten the bolts alternately until they both come to an equal tightness rather than tightening one the whole way and then tightening the second (Same goes for stem bolts, wheel nuts in a car etc.).

The lockrings on almost all freewheels are on the side that faces away from the surface the freewheel is screwed on against, so if the lockring loosens you're in just as much trouble whether you have it fitted on the front or the back. Having the lockring come loose isn't that common anyway. My crank mounted ENO has given no trouble in terms of loosening or skipping in the past year of use anyway.

The same freewheel will work on the front or back, so the unscrewing issue will not arise (The front freewheel moves to the right as its tightened, a rear freewheel moves left, both have torque applied in opposite directions, so both tighten in use). If for example you want to run cranks with bolt on chainrings you will have to use a rear freewheel. A screw on rear hub can take a screw on fixed sprocket or a freewheel, so either option is possible there. The same freewheel will engage with a smaller turn of the cranks if it's used on the back of the bike rather than on the cranks thanks to the gear ratio. The only downside to FFW I've found is that it will catch and chew your pants leg while freewheeling if you're not careful.

Echo are not the best for making well aligned frames - they do seem to be reliable though. I'd see about a return, mostly because this will annoy you every time you have to go at the brakes, make the frame harder to sell on after you're done with it and may make the brake more susceptible to slipping out when loaded backwards. I've owned 2 echo frames so far and neither of them had dropouts that were parallel to each other, but that's a lot easier to work around and I barely ever take my wheel off... On the Echo Control I have, the brake mounts are angled correctly, but one mount is about a mm closer to the centre of the frame than the other - I was able to accommodate this easily with brake adjustment though, so not an issue for me.

Try to keep your elbow very slightly bent - it won't make any difference to how much of a weight shift you can make, but will take the stress off the ligaments on the inside of your elbow. I've had this from time to time, it always went away after a few days once I became conscious that I was forcing my elbow too straight and kept it slightly bent instead.

Check if you're locking your elbow straight when you pull back - that can end up straining the ligaments in your elbow, especially if you further push your elbow even straighter during the spin.

That looks like fatigue cracking with a ductile final failure. It's blurred, but there seems to be a discoloured area in the broken cross section which indicates an initial crack that was growing over time. The white grainy surface is a ductile failure in the remaining material. A brittle failure would have a shiny faceted surface... Nice work BTW ...

Chainreaction have Shimano grease, which i've been using for the past while. Given that Shimano seem to know what they're doing and are big enough that they can afford to have grease formulated specifically for their needs this could be a good choice. Teflon grease can be a pain because it doesn't break down with degreaser, so it has to be wiped off everything to remove it, making working with it a filthy job - this doesn't make it any better as grease either as once dirt is entrained in the grease it will be fed into the bearings, which is a common cause of failure in greased joints/bearings. It is very chemically inert though, so suitable for use on everything. Lithium based grease is what I usually use (I'm not sure if the Shimano stuff is lithium based, but it most likely is). This grease can be dissolved out with degreaser, making regreasing much easier. It will damage a lot of plastics, so don't use it on the likes of elastomer suspension forks for example. The rubber used to seal most hubs seems to be fine with lithium grease.

Talking specifically about lead, it's generally not that harmful while working as paint unless you ingest it in large quantities (Or have a small body mass - children meet both these requirements), but when the painted item ends up in landfill, a lot of that lead can potentially leach out into the general environment, especially groundwater if it's an old or badly run landfill site. It's for this reason that lead based materials have been completely removed from mass produced electronics (Google RoHS for more on this). Given that lead is still used in roofing though, I wonder how much ends up in groundwater from that source...

The government make the rules as to what can and can't be sold in the country and thanks to VAT, everything sold in the country generates profit for the government, so they implicitly have a level of responsibility for dangerous products sold within the country. Since the lawyers doing the suing see the government as a bottomless moneypit to take from, it's cheaper to close the door on the problem in a preemptive fashion than wait for the frivolous/not so frivolous law suits to come in...

The only reason the government has to step in is because companies can't be trusted to behave ethically in the first place...

They're not testing the frame material as far as I can see - they're worried about the paint having lead and other poisonous stuff in it. Justifiably based on the number of scandals involving products from China particularly which were found to contain poisons and were shipped with the knowledge of the company making them because they couldn't care less. It would be hard to argue that this reaction isn't justified. What irritates me more is that it's not just a blanket law - I'd rather not have my 'adult' bike covered in lead based paint either. The question for most people on this forum is whether the EU will apply the same rules...

Most levers that use a small diameter pin for the pivot get rattly quite quickly, especially when the material supporting the pin is aluminium. A big diameter pin will put less pressure on the material supporting it, so the hole in the lever housing for the pivot pin will stay the right size for longer and the peak stress in the lever housing should be reduced also. The band holding the lever onto the handlebar looks very thin compared to most production brake levers, so it'll probably need to be made thicker to avoid it cracking - I'd round the square corners on the slot in the lever clamp too as they'll act as start points for fatigue cracks if there are sharp corners. If there's a bolt under the lever to clamp the band onto the handlebars then it looks like it'll have to pass through the piston in the lever based on the position of the protrusions for the brake line and (I'm assuming) bleed screw on the other side.

Very nice CAD work - Solidworks or ProDesktop? Are you planning on making these? If so the toptube-downtube junction on the frame may be troublesome to make. The hole in the lever housing for the lever pivot looks a little close to the edge of the housing given people will be swinging off it for its working life - I'd be tempted to replace it with a hollow big diameter pin to reduce the bearing pressure between the pivot pin and the housing too, especially if its aluminium. Is there reach adjustment for the lever and how will it work? I'd put more of a hook for your finger in the lever blade unless the lever pivot sits it pretty near the bars anyway. Are you doing any finite element modeling on the parts? The cross sections in the handlebar clamp look very small and might need bulking up. The handlebar clamp bolt on the underside may interfere with the lever piston too.

If I got a offer like that I'd buy the bike and then hand it in to the cops with a description and address of the scum I got it off... If nobody was willing to buy stolen bikes nobody would steal them in the first place...

Tim: Nice - so the caliper ends up more or less directly above the axle? I only looked at the pictures of the fork, not the fork with a disk caliper fitted. That location sounds like where they probably should have been put all along ... Monkeysee: If you don't use the front brake hooking then how can you pull down on the bars to stretch the fork out to spring you up without just falling backwards?

I'm pretty sure being slightly crazy is an entry requirement for trials riding in the first place...