psycholist

My bike has green, silver and gold. Silver probably works best as the booster should look more like part of the frame. Using black would add another colour, and my XC bikes use a lot of it because it doesn't show the dirt too badly - since the trials bike will never see mud it's the only bike I have that's worth buying shiny stuff for ... Since I'm thankfully in the position of being able to afford new parts at shop prices, I'm happy to let free/cheap stuff go to people who barely have the cash to keep their bike going in the first place - they'll hopefully appreciate it more and it'll keep more riders in the sport . I sold my last trials bike (Echo pure '04/'05 ish, Pashley forks, maguras, XTR rear hub, BMF rim, ISIS Middleburns with trials bashguard etc.) for €150 just because the guy who was looking for it showed an interest in learning trials but didn't have the cash to buy a new bike himself - there were 2 or 3 other people who offered me more to buy the bike, but I fixed the price and did it in order of who'd got back to me first. I read in a post somewhere that one way of reducing arm pump is to fit brake boosters so that when you're holding the brakes on the levers stay at a fixed point rather than moving in and out a little as you hop around - work is force by distance, so flexing the brake levers in and out as you hold the brakes on while you hop will tire you quicker than applying a constant force to an immobile lever (Which still takes energy as your muscles use energy to maintain a given force but it should require less energy). Even a small reduction in brake flex will help in this regard - I've no fault to find with the power or locking of the brakes.

I'm using an ENO since January and it's better in every way than the freehub I used to have. I made the change in order to get a BMX chain as the 8 speed chains I had tended to suffer mashed rollers and snap after a while, so I had very little confidence kicking hard using that setup. The ENO has given me a lot more confidence and control (Which still isn't much, but I've got significantly better in the past 3 months than I got in the preceding year on the previous setup). My ENO has never skipped so far.

Pretty much what I was thinking... Aesthetically I think this wins, purely because it matches the look of the rest of the bike: http://www.tartybikes.co.uk/product.php?id=12

Like a guy I know who got paint for detailing tyres and wrote 'fast as f**k' on the sidewalls. One of the other lads scraped an 's' off the tyre as soon as he wasn't looking - I'll let people guess which 's' it was ...

Green, gold or silver? That's the big question ...

Since fitting a 4 bolt requires removing all the brake mount bolts at the same time it's going to be a pain alright... One of these in Gold might do the job too: http://www.tartybikes.co.uk/product.php?id=2238 - no fiddle space in the mounting bolts though - hopefully the frame spacing on my frame is 100mm - I'll measure when I get home and find out... Otherwise I'll have to go for the Echo team booster (Designed for Mod bikes, but should fit a 26" frame, just leaves more clearance over the tyre): http://www.tartybikes.co.uk/product.php?id=165

It's mostly that I don't want black bits on my frame, and all the 2 bolt boosters seem to be black.

Deadly. Pretty much what I thought. Next question: Any preference between this - £15 for the silver one: http://www.tartybikes.co.uk/product.php?id=581 this in gold (£15): http://www.tartybikes.co.uk/product.php?id=579 this in green (£15): http://www.tartybikes.co.uk/product.php?id=578 Or should I go for an Echo control one for£25 ( http://www.tartybikes.co.uk/product.php?id=12 ) to match the rest of the bike - everything else on it is Echo... As for what colour to get there are a few photos of the bike here... http://www.trials-forum.co.uk/forum/index....howtopic=111205

I tighten the drive side bolt a little more than I'd usually tighten a bolt of that size as the chain was getting loose if the bolt wasn't tightened this far. Make sure there's no grease on the faces of the tensioning arm parallel to the dropout surface. It relies on lots of friction to hold it in place...

Since the braking is slightly spongy and more importantly I've already broken the crossover line on the back brake once, I've decided to get a brake booster. The bike is a current model Echo Control. Tarty has 2 and 4 bolt boosters, both should fit my frame and brakes, the question is is there a good reason to get one over the other - Is the 4 bolt significantly stiffer? Is adjusting the brakes on a 2 bolt booster easier What are people's experience with the Echo boosters? Presumably the extra fittings that come with the boosters will work fine with Echo CNC brake mounts?

In my experience Race Face cranks aren't even up to XC use. The pedal threads have a nasty habit of pulling out on them... That'd be what happened the Race Face cranks on my XC bike anyway... Race Face have a nasty habit of making their stuff from cheese, but they have a good marketing department.

I've the one already integrated into the hub and it works really well. To tension the chain I loosen the bolt on the chain side of the hub slightly (So it's still got some tension) and use a socket set handle to lever the tension arm down against the chain until the tension is right. Then tighten the hub bolt and you're done. With this one the pinch bolt will need slackening instead. I don't see why it wouldn't work, and it should be more out of the way and harder to damage than hanger mounted tensioners...

The only thing better than getting stuff by taking it cos it's not locked is asking whether you can have it and taking it legally... Ever had your bike nicked cos you left it unlocked?

If you have a quick look every hour or two while you're at work it looks like you're on for hours ... No point sitting at a web forum waiting for your posts to be replied to, even online chat thingies like MSN are a waste of time if that's all you do while on a computer.

Disco brakes have them in stock at the moment too: http://www.discobrakes.com/?s=0&t=2&am...&p=279& - not sure whether they're cheaper than the Tarty price since it gives me everything in Euros - The Disco ones include some rubbish black Magura pads for all the good that does... Free postage on most orders and they always deliver quickly for the three or four orders I've put through .

I'd be interested in an answer to the pallet question too - I have 5x14m of grass in my back garden that would look much better with a few trials obstacles on it... And require less mowing ... I already have a few bricks and paving slabs around, but the side gate is too narrow to bring in decent rocks, so building the mother of all rockerys isn't a viable option .

Flights (2 people and 2 bikes) were 313 Euro, Car rental 210 Euro (Both of us were added as drivers at no extra cost) -they've now refunded me 66 Euro for not crashing the car while I had it, so 144 Euro for the car, Hotel 215 Euro (3 nights, Wednesday to Saturday). Fuel was about 25 Euro (Would have been a lot less if the signage was better). Not cheap, but it definitely had to be done, especially good to look back on after yet another spin yesterday was ruined by heavy rain about an hour in... I only took a couple of pictures - I've added them to the original post now.

That's probably the best reason to change the disk side. If they can go to the trouble of making reverse threaded freewheels and hubs for use on left side drive BMXes it's far less of a deal to stick a disk mount onto both sides of the fork.

The problem of wheels falling out has been mostly linked to the use of lightweight skewers. There is a European standard for testing bikes (Can't remember the number, but I have a copy of it on my desk at work), which gives a figure of 2300N for the pull out force on a skewer - this was increased from I think 500N a few years after disk brakes came out. The safety lips on fork dropouts get worn away or ripped through in some of the accidents, so not a guarantee the problem is removed. I've never had a QR loosen on me, but I use Shimano QR's, so not a big deal, Hope QR's have been implicated in quite a few of these accidents in the UK. I have a mechanical engineering student measuring the pull out force on QR's for his final year project at the moment, so I'm looking forward to seeing the data from that ...

It's something like 11km from Barcelona which has some coastline . Not too sure what the story is with minimum ages to drive overall, but Sol Mar takes over 23's only... http://www.solmar.es/carhire/faq.php - they were a lot cheaper than the other hire companies I found though. I know with a lot of car hire companies you have to pay extra if you're under 21.

For a correctly designed bolted joint there will be no change in the bolt tension with braking force. This works as follows - the bolt is tightened into the mount causing tension in the bolt and matching compression in the part the bolt is holding. When an extra load appears on the joint the load is absorbed by a change in the compression in the part the bolt is holding until this figure reaches zero in the case of an applied tensile load. At this point the bolt will take the remaining load as a change in tension. This is why bolts don't fatigue crack through the threads all the time as even on cyclically loaded joints the load on the bolt remains constant. Similarly the friction between the parts the bolts are holding together should be greater than the side loads on the joint in order to prevent the bolt from taking a shear load. Depending on the safety requirements of the joint the bolt is often sized big enough to not fail under direct shear just to be sure too... The reason tensile loads are less favoured in structures is because a tensile load is required to initiate a fatigue crack - an all too common cause of catastrophic failure in bike parts, so keeping disk mounts running predominantly in compression is a good thing. Metals are as stiff in tension as they are in compression while loads are below the yield strength of the material.

Have a talk to Aaron Chase on this forum too - he's based in Sabadell but wasn't around while I was there unfortunately. The trip wasn't cheap but well worth it for some heat and sunshine .

Spent a chunk of last week in Sabadell playing in the trials park there - here's some information for anyone planning on taking a trip there: Flights were Dublin to Reus (Cheaper than flights to Barcelona - though presumably this depends on where you're starting from) with Ryanair. Ryanair at least have a consistent policy on carrying bikes and allow you to book them in with their web booking thingie (45 Euro return or so), so we had no problems travelling. Reus airport is pretty small, so very easy to find everything - and the departure lounge restaurant does nice chips . We used a hire car from Sol-Mar to get from Reus to Sabadell (About 100km - 1.5 hours if you can follow the extremely dodgy signposting, a lot more if you get badly lost like we did, getting back to the airport was very easy though, mainly because we stayed off the motorway until after the junction we got totally lost at near Barcelona). the hire car had 15km on the odometer when we picked it up, so basically brand new and it took two boxed bikes easily - we booked a focus estate and got a 307 people carrier with a very nice turbo diesel engine . A note on the signposting for anyone planning to drive: For some reason that is completely unclear to me, the same road is named lots of different numbers at the same time, only some of which are on google maps (Or any given road sign), making it nigh on impossible to work out where the correct turn off for anything not signposted by name is. Using google maps certainly wasn't enough to allow us to find our way along the motorway - GPS might be the way to go here... Sabadell is full of one way streets too, but once you get used to it there's no problem getting around and you can ignore all that on a trials bike anyway, the footpaths are huge, everyone cycles on them and there's the odd bike path around the place too. We stayed in the Husa Vallés hotel about a mile from the trials park and it was brilliant. Plenty of car parking behind the hotel (We weren't charged for using a space there either - I think the hotel website said we would be) and they allowed us to keep our bikes in our room - we made very sure not to lean the bikes on the white walls in the rooms - leaving them upside down was the easiest thing to do to stop tyres or handlebars marking the walls (Those with hydraulic disks might not find this as good an idea though). The rooms are air conditioned and our room had a sink, two cooker rings, a fridge and a microwave but no cookware. They'll do washing for you too... what's an undershit? Microwaving stuff is about as much cooking as can be done (But better than most hotels). Breakfast is brilliant too - cereal, tea/coffee, all the orange/multifruit juice you can drink, croissants, pain au chocolate type thingies, meat and cheese, toast etc. served on an all you can eat buffet so no problem getting enough to last till lunchtime. If you look up the location of the Hotel on Google maps the arrow points about a block away from the hotel though - not a big deal, just annoying thanks to a couple of one way streets there. The trials park is fantastic. The obstacles range from stuff beginners can do all the way to obstacles that will challenge world class riders. The park is right in the town centre too, so there are piles of places with seats out in front (so you can mind your bike) to go for lunch etc. There's a McDonalds directly across from the park which conveniently has an Irish woman working there, which made life very easy for ordering food (Given we have no Spanish to speak of - not everyone has English, so I'll have to learn a lot more Spanish for next time) when we called in there. Other places we tried and recommend are the Viena Pizzeria Restaurant at the corner of the park (The chocolate mousse dessert comes highly recommended, the other desserts we tried weren't great though, good pizza though) and the Tragopan restaurant (Head from the trials park past Corte Ingles on right, restaurant is on left a few blocks up) which does the best Death by Chocolate cake I've ever eaten. About 10-15 euro will cover eating out for one person in most restaurants. Sabadell seems to be very quiet and safe to walk around at all times of the day and night too, we saw no trouble while we were there. I have heard a few stories about the cops being very harsh on people caught riding street in Barcelona, so straying outside the trials park might not be a good plan without local guidance. Not really an issue though given how much there is to play on in the park. There's also a set of BMX/skate ramps beside the trials area, so if you like skate park stuff it's all there to be ridden. Only thing that was really strange was that in 3 days hanging around the park we met a grand total of no other trials riders - possibly we were out at too quiet a time (Weekdays), but given that trials has a higher profile in Spain than pretty much anywhere else, I was expecting to meet a few other people riding trials. For spares there's a sports shop on the top floor of the shopping mall beside Corte Angles overlooking the park which stocks basics like tyres and tubes, but thankfully we didn't even need anything while we were there. We did notice our brakes losing bite over a couple of days use thanks to the dust from the soil around the course getting on the rims. I thought it was just the grind wearing off or tired hands until I was out in a rain shower back in Ireland today and my brakes came back 100%. Wiping the rims down every so often is needed to keep the brakes at full power while in Spain then... The weather in March was perfect for trials - not too hot at 15 ish degrees, but more than warm enough compared to the Irish weather, and the sun shone for almost the whole time . Next trip will be for quite a bit longer I think .

I was being quite sarcastic in my previous post though what I've said is not an unusual viewpoint. Given that every 'fact' used to justify the Iraq war was shown to be lies made up by the US or with US assistance it's no surprise it looks like a manufactured war. Same for Afghanistan, again the political regime running that country were complete scum, but they were not the September 11th terrorists. If the US wanted to cut terrorist funding they'd have to attack Saudi Arabia as that's where Bin Laden's money is and where most of the terrorists (14 out of 19) came from. But attacking a whole country to defeat a very small number of people with views that differ in an extreme way from the bulk population makes no sense anyway. That the wars were an economic decision is the most plausible explanation to be honest. If it's all about freedom and human rights then why haven't they sorted the countries which have already suffered decades under dictatorships/ethnic cleansing etc. in Africa or North Korea/China etc.? If it's about ending suffering why is the US the only westernised country (Apart from Finland for some reason) that hasn't agreed to ban landmines in the Ottawa treaty? Nobody who's not actually running their country should be expected to defend their government's actions, so this is not a personal attack, but speaking as a resident in a deliberately unmilitary country with negligible economic influence (Ireland) it scares the piss out of me how much blind faith the US media gives its citizens in everything they do being right. I actually met one American who refused to watch Farenheit 911 because watching it would be 'unpatriotic'. Not saying everything in that film is entirely true either, but not even being open to having your mind changed is a very dangerous sign and a conscious unwillingness to make use of the freedom of speech enshrined in the US constitution. I think this might have been same person who doesn't believe in DNA though, so possibly a bad example. Like the Mississippi school board who banned the use of fractions because the bible didn't mention them and declared the value of pi to be 3 again for biblical reasons. Or the people in Kentucky who raised 25 million dollars and have built a museum which claims to use science to convince people that dinosaurs and humans lived together in harmony after god made them all on the 6th day (I think) of creation (I'm pretty sure on the 7th day he rode trials) and the carnivores only turned nasty and started eating other animals after Adam and Eve ate the apple. And the CIA can't get me - I always have a tinfoil hat on so they can't modify my brainwaves ...

So Maguras are the most popular brake by quite a margin still . Impressive for a design that's been largely unchanged for over 15 years at this stage . I'm happy with mine anyway...