psycholist

I'm pretty sure there was - when I joined TF there was no validation process at all ...

Sounds like Ireland, except here we haven't had anything that could be described as a summer since 2006 ... It rained pretty much non stop from November till January 07/08 too . I'm honestly considering emigrating...

If you're using a syringe try pumping the water/oil through quickly - this will tend to entrain bubbles in the fluid. Are you bleeding from the lowest point in the system to the highest? Make sure bubbles are able to rise to the top to get out of the brake - angling the slave pistons and the lever so the exit line from them is their highest point as you pump fluid through will help with this. I find with the newer design Magura lever that it won't fill unless you pump the lever as you bleed it. The lever you show should fill without needing pumping. The lever piston is probably a bit sticky if it's not returning fully on it's return spring - this will leave the lever rattling before it presses on the cylinder, overfilling the brake and pushing the pistons back should force the piston out to engage with the lever, but it's probably not worth worrying about (You may damage the seals pushing the lever piston back the full way if the reason the piston doesn't return is contamination that's got past the lip seal on the piston). This message was sitting on my PC for the past hour before I finished and submitted it - better late than never ...

Stress relieving takes all of 2 minutes after the wheel is built - often it doesn't even affect the trueness of the wheel either. Since I started building and stress relieving my wheels in 2002 I've have one spoke break and it broke at the threads in the spoke nipple rather than at the bend which is guaranteed the highest stress area on the spoke before you stress relieve. Modern components are well enough made that you can get a couple of years out of spokes even when they're not stress relieved though it will be a lot more if you do.

What you describe will not put anything like enough stress on the spokes to stress relieve them. The pinging you hear is wind up in the spokes from friction between the spokes and nipples causing the spoke to twist as you tension the wheel rather than causing the nipple to thread further onto the spoke and the twist releasing as the wheel is rolled. When adjusting spokes it's best to turn the nipple about 1/8 to 1/4 turn further than you intend to adjust it to and backing off the extra to reduce/eliminate twist during building.

Unless you kink the spoke while bending it is not going to affect the strength of the wheel. Make sure to bend the spoke in a continuous curve rather than a tight radius when you are fitting it.

Make sure the wheel builder stress relieves the wheel after building. If you've owned the wheel for a while (And it's still pretty straight, so that spoke was under a similar load to the others) it's likely there are a lot more spokes waiting to break on that wheel. A rebuild with new spokes and stress relieving will give you a durable wheel. Stress relieving is where you load the spokes after building the wheel to force them to bed in. When the extra load you put on is removed the peak stress in each spoke will actually be lower than before because you've caused some plastic deformation where the spoke contacts the hub, spreading sharp contact loads over a bigger area. I apply the stress relieving load by squeezing parallel pairs of spokes together with my hands until they start to dig in painfully - Even wearing leather work gloves my hands are still sore by the time I've gone around a whole wheel. The fatigue life of a spoke reduces exponentially as peak tensile stress increases, so for example a 50% reduction in stress leads to a 10 fold increase in life before the spoke fails.

Magura Gustav if you want what's probably the most powerful brake on the market - it has loads of modulation too though, so just pull the lever in all the way to guarantee the wheel stops turning... Looking for a brake with no modulation is a bit strange though - it means that wheel swapping onto things will be more difficult, it's the reason I changed from a front Magura rim brake to a Louise, that and the quiet braking from it .

Once you have a rough idea when you want to travel get on to me. I live outside Limerick city near the university there. I have friends in Dublin and Galway that ride trials too, so loads of options .

If you don't mind a bit or possibly a lot of rain, I could put you up in my house in Limerick in Ireland... Quite a lot of street stuff with a few bits of natural around. done Laoghaire on the East coast of Ireland has some amazing lines on the rocks. Very few trials riders here, mostly a small community of committed riders ...

Was this your postman?

If they classed it by mental age I'd rip up the under 12's ... Though there might be a lot of other people joining me down there based on the other trials riders I know come to think of it ... If I was to travel to an event it'd have to be something huge and in a drier country like Koxxdays or an indoor event, so there's a guarantee of getting some good riding in. I do ride in the rain every so often (Very little choice here in Limerick, Ireland's rain capital), but there's a difference between riding in the rain near your house where you know you have warmth, shelter and dry clothes and can disappear indoors if the weather gets worse and travelling for hours each way to endure the same thing.

I've got the Superstar branded version of this hub. It's been flawless for the past 6 months ish on my Giant Trance for XC/messing about. It has a bit more backlash before it picks up than a Chris King, so is only slightly quicker to deliver power compared to a Chris King even with all the extra engagement points. Search back a few months for a thread titled 'new drive mechanism' or something where this was discussed in detail - not a single person on that thread was willing to recommend the Superstar for trials. I'm waiting on them to arrive back in stock on Superstar to buy one for my hardtail too - again for XCish use but with more pedal kick type shock loadings. If, after a couple of years more use, both hubs still behave perfectly, then I'll consider trying them on on a trials bike... One thing to note is that the freehub body is aluminium, so you need to use the widest base sprocket you can or a spider based cassette like the Shimano XT... Industry nine hubs also offer 120 engagement points - some of the slopestyle/street riding pro's use them, so if I had to pick a 120 EP hub for trials, the industry nine would be my first choice, but I don't think I'll ever have the same confidence in a freehub setup as I do in my ENO freewheel... Just a pain it screws onto the crank and the removal tool has been out of stock everywhere I've tried for it for almost the past year ... Thankfully there isn't a threat of it going wrong either ...

Much as I suspected on the travel front then, more a decision as to whether to road trip from Ireland or endure airline baggage restrictions... Between 3 or 4 people it won't break the bank .

I'd like to see a few low obstacles (Low enough to step off easily if you overbalance) with the emphasis on precision and technique rather than big drops with big consequences... The trials park in Sabadell (Only trials specific spot I've ever ridden) had a lot of stuff like that (As well as the crazy difficult stuff), concrete filled pipes of various diameters, a lot of them less than a foot off the ground with varying gaps and directions for backwheeling between, where making the line hinged on being able to hop the bike precisely on a small spot to line up each gap. Sleepers arranged in a few different loops, with varying width, slopes and side slopes to test balance would be cool too. Low rails to help get used to the feel of the bike gapping rail to rail without having to worry about a big fall would help me no end . To get there does anyone know what the handiest option would be from Ireland? Ferry to Holyhead/Fishguard and lots of driving seems to be the most likely (I've done Liverpool before, so it's mostly a matter of going further inland from there by the looks of it on the map). What's the story on getting accommodation local to the quarry? If I was to fly in to Liverpool rather than drive is there public transport to get me out there or is a car rental a better idea? ...A plan is forming for somewhere to go next summer ...

Did you try turning the ratchet ring in the hub while it was exposed? With one pawl spring broken the other pawls should still give drive?

Does it still click when you backpedal? If it still sounds alright backpedalling then the ratchet ring is spinning in the hub and it should be a straight warranty job. For this the hub will have to be sent back though, so dismantling the wheel and sending it to Hope may be the only option . If it's grinding while you pedal it forward but still doesn't catch then the ratchet pawls may be f**kered and need replacing. All this can be checked by pulling the freehub body off and having a look at the ratchet mechanism - this is an easy job. Here's what it should look like inside (I happen to have one in my garage at the moment). To open the hub just pull the end cap off the axle and then pull the freehub body off while turning it in the freewheeling direction. The plastic seal you see on the freehub sometimes stays in the hub, sometimes comes with the freehub. Make sure you press that seal back flush with the hub when reassembling the hub. The ring with teeth for the ratchet pawls to engage in may be spinning in the hub if there's nothing obviously broken in there...

To look at it from a completely different point of view - why should people be interested in competition riding in the first place when riding street locally with their friends was what got them into and keeps them interested in trials? There is a contingent of people who are willing to take even the most mundane activity and turn it into a competition (A good example I heard about a while ago was the UK hosting the world window tinting championships - yes they actually turned sticking sheets of tinted plastic onto car windows into an international competition ). I'm guessing I'm not the only person here who likes trials specifically because there's no pressure to turn an activity i enjoy in my spare time into yet another tedious 'sport' - think about the pressure you'd get to join a local team if you happened to like kicking a soccer ball around but didn't like having to attend fixed training slots, match times etc. If there were competitions local to me I might turn up, but based on my occasional messing with XC racing where I turned up, did the course (Occasionally even placing well) and realised at the end of it all that I didn't enjoy it anything like as much as just heading out on my own or with friends, with no fixed route, no pressure and no aggro, I've concluded that I prefer what I'm doing already to sucking the joy out of it by making it into a competition. Based on the attendance at street rides in various cities around the UK, people are willing to travel for street sessions, so trials events rather than competitions seem to be the way forward if you're looking for numbers... In Ireland the biggest trials ride so far was in Galway a few weeks back with 5 people - though one bowed out pretty early after a nasty landing back wheeling a bollard, we had 4 in Limerick last weekend too. Given there are possibly 10 trials riders in Ireland, that's pretty good attendance, and it's growing as we're attracting more people to the rides we do as we go ...

Long bikes tend to gap better, shorter ones are better for spinning...

What sort of riding do you like? Do you like bunnyhops, sidehops, gaps, street, precision stuff, natural, big drops etc. etc.? That may suggest one frame over the other, but I've ridden neither - I'm more of a fan of long stock bikes ...

There's a lot to be said for going for steel parts, especially high stress parts like forks, handlebars and stems. I've snapped enough Aluminium and steel parts to know that the mode of failure (Usually bending) and the amount of warning you get with steel justifies the extra weight... Wider BB shells and bigger diameter shells would be a great addition too - wider shells will give more tyre clearance/allow wider rims, keep your ankles off the back brakes if you've got Maguras or V's and give the axle more support (And less bending) from the bearings. Bigger diameter BB shells should allow bigger BB axle diameters (Better stiffness to weight) and potentially more weld area. 1.5" or 1.5" bottom 1 1/8" top steerers would be nice to add strength without making a big weight difference. I'd like to see disk mounts on everything too to give people the option to use disks. The weight weenies will grind them off if they want to save the weight anyway, so better to have them and give people more options. I'd love spline mount freewheels too. If a lockring similar to that used in adjustable chainline BB's or like that used to hold the spider on Middleburn cranks and a shimano standard freehub spline (This is a slightly smaller diameter than the BB threads currently used on freewheels, so possible freewheel sizes will be the same or potentially smaller) was used, no new tools would be needed either. Making steel inserts on pedal threads the standard would be a nice too. Really reliable chains, or a tool for testing trials bike chains (Chain stretch measurement is good for high mileage chains, but useless for high load chains). Something that checks stiffness of the chain, loading it link by link to spot weak links before they snap and/or a go/no go gauge for quickly measuring the rivet protrusion past each side plate would spot some snappages early. Chain tools that mushroom the chain rivet heads on joining would be good too (I think one exists, but costs a ridiculous amount). Trials rims made to Mavic standards would also be nice...

Sounds good ...

Unless the stand is ridiculously heavy duty you won't be able to make the recommended torques for tightening BB's and cranks to unless the bike is on the ground. I find the main use I have for a stand is to hold the bike off the ground so the gear indexing can be checked easily. Not really a problem with trials bikes. Fitting wheels should be done on the ground too so you can make sure they get all the way into the dropouts. This is especially true for trials bikes where most of the frames (Pretty much every one I checked, but they were pretty much all Echos) have rear dropouts that aren't parallel, so tightening one side of the hub often lifts it out of the dropout at the other side unless you lean on the bike to push the wheel in.

How did Chainreaction win this year? Their service for the last year has been abysmal - next day orders taking a week to arrive, no response to emails for almost a week (And the responses being of no help), never answering their phones, no acknowledgment on receipt of returned items. Loads of other people on Bikemagic and Singletrack World have had the same experience based on the threads on the subject. If they'd got this award a year or two ago I'd have been up there cheering with the rest of them as they used to provide exemplary service, but to give it to them now reeks of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ok85BmPyl_I...

If your freewheel skips, something is mechanically wrong with it. Open it and make sure there's no thick grease in it and that the pawls move and engage correctly. The idea that a freewheel should 'break in' is ridiculous. If it skips then you're probably damaging the pawls and ratchet ring by using it anyway, so even if the grease clears out and it engages correctly after a while it may have been damaged because you ran it while it wasn't engaging properly. As for the brake - if it squeaks (Apart from a very high pitched - think bat noise - squeak as it is dragged) then the disk is almost certainly contaminated. I have a Luise I bought brand new a few weeks ago and it took about 5 minutes of pedaling with the brake on (And rubbing a bit of mud into it with a squirt of water) to get it to pretty much full power and after an hour or so of trials it was perfect. Magura say if oil gets on the pads they're toast, so you may never get it to work with the original pads. Use IPA (Isopropyl Alcohol) to clean the disk - It's available at a lot of pharmacy's, leaves no residue and will mess you up very badly if you drink it, but isn't desperately toxic apart from that...