psycholist

I'm pretty sure the answer is no unless you get the adapters to convert 4 bolt Magura mounts into canti mounts first... Then it will work though you may still have trouble getting the Magura pads far enough in to reach the rim (And still use the Magura booster), but you should be able to get them in further than 4 bolt mounts on a trials frame.

I had to use 8 hops once, but that was just showing off ... Getting very comfortable with trackstanding is very important for trials too - well worth practicing a few variations too: 1. Trackstand with both brakes on - balance by tipping the bike from side to side. 2. Front brake on - balance by tipping the bike again. Loading the pedals will affect balance slightly - usually easier than with both brakes on. 3. No brakes - point the front wheel uphill - balance by loading/unloading the lead pedal to make the bike roll forwards and backwards with the front wheel turned slightly. 4. Alternating front brake on and no brakes (Similar energy needs as option 3 except for this you can be pointed slightly downhill or on the flat) - balance by rolling the bike forward, putting the front brake on for a short while to stop the forward movement and them rolling backwards by pushing away from the front wheel and letting the brake off. Options 3 and 4 will get you comfortable with rolling backwards on your bike too - very handy for positioning without having to waste energy hopping and for freaking out the local chavs who cant work out how you're going backwards but still have a freewheel...

I'm pretty sure all the OROs currently being made have the same geometry (Piston diameters/lever pivot locations), so they should all produce the same stopping power. I most recently tried were the ones with the polished finish (K24s). Reviews are phenomenally good: http://www.mtbr.com/cat/brakes/disc-brake-...97_1507crx.aspx The only thing I didn't check was what the brake's hold was like. Loads of braking power from any speed to stopped dead, but until it gets gapped to the back wheel a few times (Not really an option on the Commencal Supreme they were fitted to) how well the disk holds for trials is the only thing I'm not confident about. These would definitely be on my short list (Accompanied by Hope trials disks and possibly the new Shimano Saint 4 pot) for a front brake for my trials bike if I finally get fed up of the howling noise the Maguras make...

If the frame geometry is right then you probably won't notice too much that the frame is cheap (Apart from the weight and having it snap a lot). For XC style bikes you can get away with this sort of thing, but if you're spending serious ca$h on parts for the bike you might as well get a frame worth putting them on. Cheap frames are for jumping into lakes...

Try Formula OROs - A friend of mine has them on his DH/AM bike and they have fantastic bite and hold. I'm still running all Maguras on my trials bike, but OROs would be high on my list if I was looking for trials disks...

For trackstands it doesn't matter which way you turn the front wheel. The only reason to pick a preference is based on what feels more comfortable unless the toe of your leading foot catches the front wheel when you turn the wheel...

If your current star nut works there's very little benefit to replacing it and a risk of damaging the fork while removing the old star nut. Since nobody will ever see it and once the stem clamp is closed it's not even structural it seems a strange thing to bother replacing it unless it's not working...

Best you can hope for is to try returning it and see. Depends how long you can live with being off your bike for though. I'd buy a new lever and then see about getting a warranty return on the broken lever unless you're sure the shop you're dealing with will sort you out very quickly (The shop where you bought the lever and not Magura are the ones legally obliged to sort you out).

The physics of backhopping is exactly the same as that of trying to hop without a bike. To hop without a bike, first push down towards the ground with your feet. Then, when you've pushed down as far as you can, pull your feet up as suddenly as you can and they leave the ground. It's exactly the same principle that allows back wheel of a bike to leave the ground while backhopping. The difference is that your arms can contribute to the force you're pushing into the ground with (And have to unless your feet are directly above the contact patch of the back tyre - higher BB's get you closer to this) by pulling the handlebars towards you to stop the front wheel dropping as you press the bike into the ground. The harder you press into the ground the higher you'll hop. By pulling the handlebars towards you and pushing the cranks forward while in the air you can make your hops go forward, the opposite will allow you to hop backwards (Usually the easiest direction to hop while you're learning because most people end up going past the balance point on the back wheel) and offsetting your weight to the side before taking off and moving the bike sideways in the air before landing allows for sideways hops. Once you get a feel for it you'll wonder what the difficulty was in the first place. Watch people doing it in a few videos and look at their body position and how it changes depending what direction they're trying to hop and try to visualise the move in your head before trying it. I find thinking about the move at random while you're doing other things will make you better once you get back on your bike too...

If you want cheap but very effective (And loud) try these: http://superstar.tibolts.co.uk/product_inf...;products_id=88 They last for over a month of nearly daily trials riding on a grind at least as harsh as that, but have never slipped on me yet ...

Through axles are 110mm spaced while standard axles are 100mm, so unless you can remove 10mm of space between the hub and frame (And maintain the correct disk spacing) it's not likely to work. Some bolt through hubs can be changed over like this though I've no idea about Chris King hubs. There is the option to swap for a QR hub or sell for profit and buy a QR hub... Axle lengths: http://www.sheldonbrown.com/frame-spacing.html

I bring my phone, as few keys as possible and phone headphones. If something breaks I tend to call it a day (Though a lot of my riding spots are within a km or 2 of my house, so going home doesn't take long. If I'm going further I'll throw the Camelbak I use for XC in the car. That has several tubes, a Topeak multitool, random spares including brake pads, water, a minipump (Though I throw a track pump into the car too), emergency energy goo, a rain jacket etc. and there's a first aid kit in the car if things go wrong in a 'bleeding but not so badly I need to call an ambulance' kind of way...

Smooth rims are great (I ran one with Rock Green pads for a while) - roll through some damp grass, hit a puddle wrong or cycle in even the lightest of rain and you might as well not have brakes at all. Don't know about anyone else, but that completely ruined my confidence in smooth rims for trials, so I'm now on a harsh grind with Superstar red pads. Loads of noise (Which I'd rather not have) and it holds every time, wet or dry . I don't think grinding really affects rim life unless you do a lot of grinding - I grind my rims possibly 3 times a year (If I'm riding a lot) and still have never replaced a rim through it being worn out. When I used rim brakes for XC I'd wear through the braking surface of a rim in about a year, thanks to the brakes being dragged rather than used to lock the wheels and mud making very good grinding paste. I've only once worn through a trials rim and it took at least 3 or 4 years...

Some impressive body positioning around the 50 second mark ...

Keep your lower back on the ground while doing crunches - you'll probably do more damage if you lift it off the ground (And it does very little extra for your Abs). I can have myself killed in about 10-15 situps if I first lift my shoulders off the ground and hold for second or 2, then lift even further from that point, consciously squeezing my stomach muscles as hard as I can, and let myself down slowly (Over at least 2 or 3 seconds). Haven't done a lot of that sort of work in a while come to think of it - I'll have to do something while my trials bike is out of action, but at least it's raining all the time, so I'm not torturing myself by itching to ride trials but knowing I can't cos my bikes out of action... Or I could use one of my other 4 bikes (But not for trials)...

I wouldn't jump into the sea with an expensive bike unless I was planning to strip it completely afterwards to clean it out or sell it to someone I really didn't like immediately afterwards. Get a cheap, nasty bike for jumping into water. Also it's a good plan to stick inflated inner tubes in the spokes of the wheels to help it float if you're planning on getting it back again if you're playing in deep water... If you still plan to use your good bike then I'd recommend sealing the holes in the frame, packing loads of grease into every bearing and keeping a can of WD-40 handy to spray on the chain after it comes out of the water.

Normalising is a heat treatment pretty much the same as annealing (For most metals - the cooling rate is faster for normalising than annealing, but it's often enough to give th required properties. Normalising is more popular in industry because the furnace can be refilled with new parts rather than allowed to cool with the parts in it as for a full anneal, improving production rate and lowering unit cost... Read on: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_treatment

It does when you're comparing front freewheels and rear freehubs and trying to decide which gives the least crank movement before engaging. If you're on a front freewheel the number of clicks divided into 360 will give you the number of degrees the cranks can move before engaging (5 degrees for a 72 EP freewheel). If you're running a rear hub, the gear ratio is acting on the rear hub through the cranks (And if the gear ratio is greater than 1:1) the same number of clicks on the back hub will leave less angular movement in the cranks before the drive engages (18:15 driving a 72 click Chris King will give 4.1667 degrees before drive engages). This is not 100% correct as there is a certain amount of backlash before most freewheel mechanisms engage, which will add to the angular movement required, but it's still a damned sight better than a standard Shimano 16 click hub, where the same gear ratio gives 18.75 degrees movement before engaging...

It's exactly the opposite (Assuming you've got a 1.5:1 gear that is). 72 engagement points on the front (An ENO for example) with an 18:15 gear is the same as having a rear wheel with 72*15/18 = 60 engagements on the rear...

I wouldn't call 48 engagements crap really...

I think clicky joints come with the territory in trials riding (And probably most sports where your joints have to move under heavy loads)... As far as I know they're nothing to worry about. Cod liver oil is supposed to ease joint pain if that's a problem and it sometimes stops joints from popping too (Not that I've ever bothered taking that stuff, but anecdotal evidence is in it's favour).

I can get a lot of clunking out of my upper back by sitting on a lowish backed chair (The stackable polypropylene ones a lot of schools/public buildings have are perfect), bending back as far as I can over the back of the chair and pulling my head forward with both hands... Dunno why it works, but it's very effective...

Rate of cooling affects the grain size in a material. If you cool something suddenly it forms small grains, making the material brittle. If you cool it slowly it has time to form larger grains, making it more ductile. It's more favourable for bike frames to aim for the more ductile side of this range. Particular medals are chosen with compositions to improve hardenability or ductility depending on the final application and the heat treatment available. Welding tends to heat and cool the material very quickly (Especially in Al which is about 10 times as thermally conductive as steel IIRC). Heat treatments such as T6 are more involved again. They require the material to have a composition that allows certain compounds to form in the material at temperatures below phase transition temperatures (Where the material either turns from a solid to a liquid or from a solid with one crystalline structure to another structure). This is also known as aging as in many materials, especially aluminium, this process continues to happen very slowly at room temperature... To sum up regarding bike frame materials - some steels and aluminiums can be welded without requiring heat treatment (Either they're designed to handle welding without losing too much strength or they're built much heavier than they'd need to be to give the same strength/life if they were heat treated). Pretty much all aluminiums suffer a massive drop in either strength of fatigue resistance if they're not heat treated. This is why if you break an aluminium frame and get it welded up, the chances are it'll fail just beside the new weld (In the heat affected zone where the material is most brittle) if it's not heat treated.

A friend of mine had one fail when the ratchet ring inside the hub started to spin forward under power. It was so loose you could turn the sprocket forward by hand within minutes of the slip first being noticeable. Got a warranty replacement, so hopefully that will last better.

It's a good idea to stretch your back out every so often while you're riding (Just bend forwards as far as you can followed by bending backwards and repeat). I reckon a lot of back pain is muscles that should be relaxed being kept tensioned after they've been used for a hop and cramping... Lying on a flat surface and walking back on your shoulder blades is a good way to stretch your back out - I find I have to consciously make my lower back muscles relax (With some pain) before my lower back feels good again... Keeping your shoulders flat on the ground and twisting your hips sideways till you hear clunking from your back is another good way to stretch it. I did slip a disk many years ago though, so I'm more conscious of my back than most - shooting pains down one or both legs are an indicator that you've done enough damage to your back to cause the vertebrae to squeeze the nerves that pass between them to feed your lower body...