psycholist

http://c2.com/doc/etymology.html wiki wiki means quick in Hawaiian...

The photo looks like the trials park in Sabadell - that's smack in the centre of the city in the park there...

Best thing to do is find the move in a video, post the link to the video and the time it occurs at to get an idea of names of moves as well as advice on technique. The trashzen website http://www.trashzen.com/ has a lot of this done already too...

There is a reason ambulance and emergency room staff call motorcyclists organ donors. They're usually an excellent source of healthy organs for transplant (Because they tend to be young men) but are still 100% dead by the time they get to the hospital or often by the time an ambulance gets there. Don't think that being limited to 30 mph doesn't mean you'll be any less dead if you hit something at that speed (Hitting something in a car at 30mph isn't guaranteed not to be fatal either) - the main thing to do is get lessons from an experienced motorcyclist, especially in terms of reading the road and what's going on around you and knowing where the blind spots for different motor vehicles are. While having a car pulling out in front of you for example is completely the car driver's fault, the injury you suffer as a result of a car/truck's mistake will be much more than the consequences the driver of that vehicle sees.

I would say videos do improve your riding directly through helping you to visualise what you need to do. This is part of the reason you can leave your bike for a week and come back better (The other part of this is that you don't get fitter while riding, you get fitter once your body has time to repair the muscle damage that training causes to bring the muscles to a higher spec than they were before you trained). Time spent thinking about how to do certain moves while not on the bike makes you think through where your limbs should be and how the timing should work, so that the next time you try it your body has already been programmed to perform correctly (Whether it can or not depends on your flexibility, strength and understanding of what you're trying to do in the first place of course). The more time you spend riding the better you'll be able to simulate trying new moves in your head.

All the brakes I've seen with leaky piston seals were never even used for trials, a mix of Avid juicy 3's and 5's mostly. Used for trials I'd say the leaking will get a lot worse very quickly. Thing is I've run Shimano XT brakes for 7 years of XC and never had to touch a seal, same for the 2 pot SLX's I replaced them with, and the 2 pot XT's on the other bike as well as all the Magura HS33's and Louises I've owned on trials bikes. This problem is one I've only seen in Avid brakes over the last couple of years and heard about in Hope ones. This is why I specifically flagged Avid as susceptible to this problem (My guess is they're not using the correct tolerances in the machining of the piston bores or o-ring grooves).

They'll probably have to be hammered out of the hub. Sitting the hub face down on a wooden board with a hole the bearing can fall through and hammering the bearing from the inside should work. Hitting hard a few times will be a lot more effective than tapping it (Which may never remove the bearing). To refit either use a vice to press the bearings in or use something like a quick release skewer or a threaded bar - the aim is to apply a controlled force to the bearings and keep them aligned. Spread grease on the surface the bearing mates with in the hub too - it should make it easier to fit and remove the new bearing.

I've seen way too many Avids with dodgy lever piston seals to ever consider them for trials. For normal use they're fine, but holding the brake on, the lever slowly moves towards the bar as oil leaks around the piston. Release the lever and pull again and the bite point will recover completely, so most people using them for XC won't even notice and even if they do it doesn't bother them. If you're lucky and get a brake that doesn't do this, I reckon it would be an excellent lightweight brake for the front. However I'd buy a Marta SL for the front and Hope trials brake with all the carbon bits for the rear if money was no object. Instead I have a Louise on the front and a standard hope trials brake on the rear...

Four stroke for no other reason than 2 strokes have been made illegal for sale new in the EU and they stink of unburned petrol, because that's a significant portion of the content of their exhaust gas. Even moto trials bikes where lightness and power are essential are available in 4 stroke and hold their own with the two stroke bikes. Also be warned that mopeds/scooters are a really really effective way to get yourself killed - but presumably you ride trials so you, more than the vast majority of people who buy those things, are far more aware of the risks. If you haven't spent a lot of time cycling in traffic get yourself an hour or two of motorbike lessons - the lessons cover a few simple things that aren't immediately obvious, but will save your life.

If the hub axle spins smoothly but has play you need to tighten the bearings. If it makes cracking noises and is notchy or has stiff points in turning the axle then the bearings are probably dead or the axle's broken.

If you can find details on the thread dimensions in the existing steerer you may be able to get an engineering company to make an insert you can screw into the current fork - use some serious thread lock on it though... Another option is to sell the old forks to someone who can use them and buy a new fork to go with your new frame...

Probably about 15 minutes with a fresh stanley blade to take the side knobs off - if you have a blunt knife it's nigh on impossible though... I should also mention the Echo frame I used the tyre in also has 375 mm chainstays. I use a single ply tyre with a DH tube for dealing with pinch flats and I'm around the 90 kg mark (But then again it's not like I do huge lines either). I used dual ply minions before as well and they were amazing for holding onto side slopes and not squirming, but they had no bounce in them at all for pogoing up steps on the back wheel or for preloading hops and pinch gaps... I've got a 2.1" Maxxis Advantage up front (I've been running these for years on my XC bikes because they grip fantastically well and wear pretty slowly, but didn't try them on a trials bike till a few months ago) - very impressed with it - it grips as well as anything else I've tried, but weighs a lot less and seems to have enough puncture resistance with a standard tube in it too.

The Rubber Queen fits in my old Echo Control (Bought new around Christmas 2007), but only stopped rubbing badly after I cut the side blocks off the tyre. The centre blocks still rub the brake booster very slightly - basically the diameter of this tyre is huge. It grips well and is very bouncy, but don't expect it to not squirm out from under you on side slopes or expect not to slit the sidewalls if you snag it on anything. The 2.5" single ply high roller on my new bike is almost as bouncy but more stable on side slopes and has more durable side walls, so I'd get one of them instead and save myself a lot of money...

To be honest from what I've done to my shins with pinned pedals compared to what I've seen friends of mine do with caged pedals, pins do a lot less damage than caged ones. Cuts from pinned pedals tend to be quite surgical and heal easily compared to cages. I did have one pin from a V8 pedal punch a perfect circular hole in my pants before getting embedded in my leg once - hilarious stuff provided it doesn't hurt enough to stop you riding ...

It definitely doesn't sound like the new system is better. If you ride each section under the time limit and don't dab then you should win. What was so wrong with the previous system they used? I wouldn't think the kind of audience who watches trials have such a short attention span that turning everything into a race is in any way justified. Given riders already got a point added for every 15 seconds they went over time on a section, that should be all incentive needed to keep things moving, as well as allowing a bit of showboating on shorter sections (If your surname is Raga or Bou)...

On the outdoor round in Venezuela he kept pronouncing Venezuela with a vaguely Spanish accent too, which cracked me up... For truly bad commentary all I need to do is watch anything that's not soccer, gaelic football/hurling, boxing, golf or horse racing on Irish TV (Not that sports other than this ever get significant coverage)... The Olympic commentary for example is the single greatest show of sporting ignorance I've ever seen - for example, a quote from one of the Irish commentators on the XC MTB race in 1996 (Approximately the last time I watched sport on Irish TV) - 'These bikes have 24 gears, and you can be sure they'll use all of them on the course today'... For anyone who hasn't ridden a mountain bike, about 6 out of the 24 gears are never used because they're duplicates of gears with a better chainline. For the gymnastics they got a male presenter from a fashion programme they used to make, probably on the basis that since he was into fashion he was probably gay and therefore (In a display of the kind of stereotyping most civilised countries abandoned in the dark ages) must know something about gymnastics...

If you let go of the lever and it bites at the correct spot when you pull it again but the lever slowly moves inwards if you keep the brake on, then the piston seal in the lever is leaking (Loads of Avid brakes seem to suffer from this, which is where I've seen it - not a big deal for XC use (Many people whose brakes do this won't notice it if they ride XC/DH on it)). If the bite point doesn't seem to recover or the lever gets spongy after a few pulls, then it's leaking oil from somewhere... Try removing the brake pads and see if the pistons/back of the pads are wet from brake fluid. Other leaks are more obvious and should be easier to spot.

The commentator for last year's indoor rounds using the word fiasco to describe every dab every rider got was a bit irritating, but the riding itself is unreal...

If the last couple of years are anything to go by Halfords will sell a DVD with coverage of all the indoor rounds and a second with all the outdoor rounds once the season finishes - that's how I've been able to get my fix of trials coverage anyway. I only wish I could get the same thing for the bicycle trials rounds...

Google sketchup is the free software I'd choose - graphical editors are more worried about the picture on the screen that the dimensional precision of the part, so not really suitable to design parts. PTC have a £60 offer to (university) students for a copy of their latest CAD package Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 4.0, which would be my software of choice - it includes a finite element analysis package, basic photorendering and a mannequin part, so when you design a bike you can sit a realistically proportioned person on it and confirm your dimensions. The commercial edition is more like £5000, so quite a deal... PTC Offer... I'd have bought mine already only when I changed currency to Euro the charge magically rose to £76 for exactly the same offer, so I've sent them a grumpy email ... Most CAD packages are hard to start on because you need to understand what information the computer needs before it can create the geometry correctly and that takes some time especially if there's nobody who knows the package really well to teach you. Once it clicks it becomes very easy though.

I have the Echo SL 108 click freewheel on my new bike - too early to tell yet if it will last as well as the ENO on the last bike (2 years old and still flawless), but no problems with it so far and it feels very solid. The gear teeth don't seem to be as wide as the ENO, so I'm guessing wear might be more of an issue long term, the ENO is barely showing any. The Echo is designed for trials specifically, so the lockring is on the side against the crank, so it can't fall off, it comes prelubed with oil rather than grease, so negligible break-in period and no need to squirt oil through it before fitting and a large chunk of the folks at Tarty are running them, so indicators are good so far... The ENO's got very expensive over the last while and with Tarty's confidence in the Echo it didn't seem to make sense to get the ENO. Also the ENO is a 1.375" thread rather than the standard 1.37", so more likely to strip cranks if you're heavy...

Get a chainring bolt and either grind, sand or file it shorter so it sits flush with the outside of the hanger and the inside of the frame. It is an unusual spare part because not many people lose them as pretty much the only time the bolt is removed is when the hanger breaks...

The GU blade is a lot better than the 2 finger lever the brake shipped with - I tend to run the lever so the brake bites while it's relatively close to the handlebar, so the hook at the end of the OEM lever didn't feel like it was up to the job of keeping my finger on the lever. As for making a replacement TPA knob - any M6 threaded nut will do the job - one thing to note though - threads are usually rolled on threaded bar but cut in nuts, so the threads in the nut will tend to fail first. The after market TPA knobs are usually aluminium, but gat away with using a weaker metal by having a longer threaded section. Making after market spacers to replace the plastic ones would be a good plan though, especially if they have a tang to centre them in the lever slot - one of mine had a ridge worn in it thanks to the thin OEM pushrod being able to move off line, so when reassembled with the new pushrod the lever binded thanks to the spacer moving off line - I swapped the spacers around and it runs perfectly now.

After just under 2 years on my trials bike the TPA pushrod in my rear HS33 failed - this rod transfers the force your hand applies to the brake lever to the piston in the lever body (With something in the region of a 7:1 force multiplication): To remove it I just undid the lever mounting bolt, removed the lever and then unscrewed the remaining bit of the TPA pushrod from the red TPA adjuster and slid the adjuster and it's plastic spacer washers sideways out of the large hole through the lever. I should note here that the OEM lever and TPA adjuster knob have been already replaced with after market versions due to the threads in the OEM TPA knob being the usual point of failure on the brake and the OEM lever not having enough of a hook on the end to hold my finger in place for my liking. On measuring the failed pushrod it was 33 mm long, a totally unmodified one will be more like 33.5 or 34 mm, but I had already shortened it slightly to allow it to adjust for wider aluminium backed brake pads. The OEM pushrod is 4 mm thick over most of its length and this lack of thickness, especially at the screw threads is the reason for it's failure. Measuring the slot in the after market lever (See red arrow in picture) gives a space of about 5.1 mm for the pushrod. OEM levers may have a slightly smaller gap (I can't find the one I removed to measure), but the square bumps visible on the sides of the threads on the failed pushrod bring its maximum width to 4.6 mm. I got some M6 threaded rod and filed two flats in it - it was a pretty rough job (Filed sections aren't perfectly parallel), but everything fitted perfectly afterwards, so I couldn't justify making a cleaner version - the whole job took about 15 mins and I wanted to get back out riding... The side by side comparison for thicknesses is in the picture below. I then filed a conical tip into the end of the new pushrod to match the cup in the back of the brake lever piston. Side by side picture below. The lever was then reassembled as below and fitted back to the bike - only thing to remember for this is that the aftermarket lever uses a small washer at each side of the lever. To set the correct lever bolt tension tighten it until the lever blade doesn't rattle in the lever body and then back the bolt off until the lever is able to return at full speed after it's been pulled. Higher resolution pictures are here: http://www.skynet.ie/~ceason/photos/200912...w_HS33_TPA_Mod/

I was going to go, but couldn't find any other takers, so I shelved the plan... Danny Mac was supposed to be doing the half time thing, but I'm not sure he's definitely confirmed...