psycholist

I'd say that balls as a rider is the only thing you can't develop - if you haven't to balls to risk stuff there's not a lot you can do to magically develop them. Saying that it makes it more impressive that a complete coward like me can ride the lines I do through spending so much time practicing that the hit it and hope element is pretty much gone... This low risk technique does mean much slower progress than somebody with the balls to try big stuff (As I have seen with the progression speed almost everyone I've got in to trials has made compared with my own progress) but also a lot less hospital time ...

I ride trials because it pleases me to ride trials. It's a pastime I took up without knowing anyone else did it when I bought a MTB and started trying to ride it around a building site near my house. A few years later (Probably 1999ish) I discovered that trials as a sport existed. Everyone I know locally to me who does trials type stuff is doing it because they saw me doing it but none are as obsessed as far as I can tell based on them having a lot more nerve than I do and still not making the same lines... ...and I'm still crap, but that's never been the point - hopping a bike around on stuff for some reason pretty much exactly fits the gap in my brain where pastimes are supposed to go (Combined with XC touring for some reason ). If trials as a sport didn't exist at all I'd still be doing it, just the bikes I'd have would be a lot less suitable for the job .

Haven't bled my Maguras since about 2001... I have replaced most of the lever internals (TPA bushings, pushrods to the pistons and threaded bolt from the TPA knob have all been mashed from use and replaced at least once and the brake still doesn't leak. Try using Magura oil (Or failing that try Citroen suspension fluid - LHM oil). No problems at all with leakage.

Check how tight your spokes are - sometimes if they go slack they'll bow out. Only place I've seen this though was building a road rim onto a Hope XC front hub and the rubbing stopped once the spokes got decent tension...

I use a cup of flour, 1 egg and 1/2 pint of milk for batter and eat them with golden syrup instead. For added weirdness try adding a shot of créme de menthe to the batter - green minty alcoholic pancaykes - Awesome ... Also done Baileys and Amaretto .

Are they square taper or ISIS bolts? Using an 8mm drill on a square taper bolt will damage the BB threads too as these bolts are 8mm in diameter.

I've had enough landings where the spokes/dropouts snagged and I've seen other people's cycle's ruined by bent disks, so I'll go without disks for the time being. I've tried a mod set up with the Hope trials disks and it's awesome - silent and still locks the wheels, but it would always nag at me every time I go to hop on something. As for the caged vs. pinned pedals I've gouged my shins a grand total of once in the past 2 or 3 years on V8's when I had caged pedals this would happen badly every 6 months. A friend of mine who runs caged pedals because his feet are too big to be comfy on V8's slips off and does his shins regularly. And that's using skate shoes on them rather than the ordinary runners I use on my pedals - he's been riding trials longer than I have, so it's not an experience issue either. The reason as far as I can see is that caged pedals tend to be higher off the pedal axle than pinned pedals, making it easier to have the pedal roll under your foot. I've specced it so I can fit a disk up front if I decide later alright. I'm going to try the green Magura pads on unground rims as recommended by the guy I talked to in tartybikes first to see if they lock well enough to be useful for trials while still allowing a bit of modulation for manuals and other rolling stuff. Currently I'm on discobrakes trials pads and ground rims and they're deafening but they lock the wheel damned well. Mostly what I have to do now is get good enough at trials to deserve the bike I've bought ...

Th VP's are cage style pedals? I used them previously to the V8's and found my feet tended to roll off instead of staying put. Less shinjuries with V8's ... Not going with a disk because of the ease of crash damage.

I've run skewers like this on my trials bike for years with no problems. Make sure you get ones with a 5mm allen key head though. 4mm head ones can't be done up tightly enough to keep the wheel on without rounding the bolt head.

Just put an order in to tartybikes for a built long Echo Control... As specced on their website except for V8 pedals an a magura up front http://www.tartybikes.co.uk/product.php?id=388 . Hub and fork will be disk ready in case I go that way later too - Still nervous about hanging the disk up on the edges of walls and I like all the brake pad options for Maguras...

Also if the chain is tight that tension plus the tension you add pedal kicking will be seen by the freewheel and the axle/BB/crank. It will shorten the life of all these parts. When setting a chain tension, the chain should be just short of taut, so everything should spin around easily. Some freewheel/crank setups have a significant eccentricity though, so check the chain tension over a full rotation of the hub/crank to make sure there are no tight spots.

I pinch flatted the tubeless back tyre in my XC bike on the edge of a step about a month back - one hole by the rim rather than the standard snakebite - and the goo didn't have a hope of sealing it. Worse than that I barely touched the step compared to what I've done with tubed tyres, not to mind on a trials bike (With tubes). Tubeless isn't generally lighter thanks to the rims usually being heavier, the tyre always being heavier and the goo adding back or exceeding pretty much any other weight you might think you're saving by ditching the tube ... Makes sense in XC racing where even when you puncture most of the time you can stay going till the end of the race...

What's the story with the 116mm spaced 26" frames? Are these compatible with Mod bike hubs or something? What spacing do people prefer? Presumably the 116mm is singlespeed only? Are there advantages to choosing one over the other - presumably a singlespeed fixed 135mm hub will build a stronger wheel thanks to having the hub flanges further apart? Do you have to pick a different BB width depending on what frame spacing you choose to get the correct chainline?

Since I fitted proper trials brake pads to my bike I can't hold a manual at all. As soon as I pull the brake to drop the front the brake squeals really loudly and it pulls the front down too quickly. Still can't control a manual with pure weight shifting - only been practicing about 10 years ... Before changing brake blocks I was able to manual for 3 or 4 seconds pretty consistently - on the plus side I can now land drops and back wheel onto things without the brake sliding out on me, so it's probably worth it overall .

I'm about 5'11" and ride an old Echo pure with an 80mm stem. There's no BB rise and the BB to centre of headtube top distance is 27.5". This seems to be about half an inch longer than pretty much anything I've seen for sale. at the moment. The bike feels class on the back wheel. What I'm wondering is whether my current frame having no BB rise while most newer frames have rise makes newer bikes as easy to lift and hold on the back wheel as my current bike? Fitting a longer stem will allow most frames to be made fit your height but presumably the longer the stem the more likely it is to snap - it'll also make the bike feel a bit funny on the front wheel...

Get a steel chainring instead...

That's a class looking bike - now I really want one . My current setup has a 1080mm wheelbase and what looks like no BB rise at all. How different is the Control likely to feel?

Just avoid Titec stuff... I've had brand new bars from them snap within 6 months and just about everyone I know who's run titec stuff has had failures. Also they broke as I was pulling up on the bars rather than on a landing strangely. The Azonic doublewall bars I got after that and the DMR aluminium wingbars after that both ran for well over a year before I got nervous and replaced them. 2 years is as long as I'd trust handlebars on a trials bike... I had an Amoeba stem snap on me before too - never had issues with the brand X cnc jobbie I've been using since (I replace this at least every 2 years too)... I'm not that light or smooth though, so I tend to be an early warning for other people to replace their stuff before it breaks...

I'm thinking of replacing my current 3 year old (I think - I got it second/third/4th hand) Echo pure. I really like the way the current bike rides, so something similar but better (Higher BB possibly - is this a good idea?) is what I'm after. I want something that's very comfortable on the back wheel... I've got a Pashley TV series fork, but I'd probably go with an Echo fork too... I plan to run it singlespeed and with Maguras on the back. What other bikes should I look at? I pretty much am the trials scene in my area, so I can't try other people's bikes . First and foremost I want something strong - not too worried about the weight...

Get the UN72 (XT level) if you have to use a square taper BB - I'm guessing the XT uses a better material for the axle as usually the difference between shimano components is in the materials choice. I used to snap cranks, but since I got my Middleburns I started snapping a BB every year(ish). Since I swapped to ISIS a couple of years back I've had no breakages, but the bearings recently seized, then unseized when I pedaled backwards, so it'll need replacing (Since I'm planning on getting a whole new bike I'll just use the current BB till it's properly dead).

Adding an extra freewheel just gives more things to fail - given that the nastiest accidents happen when the chain skips or the freewheel doesn't engage quickly it's a very bad idea I reckon. Incidentally, anyone tried industry 9 hubs? 120 engagement points - even more than the 72 on Chris King hubs ...

Only Shimano XTR hubs are strong enough to survive trials use (XT freehubs usually break within 6 months) - I got 5 years from my last XTR before the freehub started catching - it's still running on another guy's XC bike 7+ years since I bought it .

Prodesktop will only allow pretty basic geometry to be constructed, as well as allowing incompletely defined models, which will crash later if the wrong dimension is changed, to be constructed. ProE adds the dimensions automatically as you sketch, as well as not making stupid assumptions on the geometric constraining of sketches (Absolute hell to deal with on ProDesktop sometimes) preventing you from making under or overconstrained sketches (ProDesktop stops overconstraining dimensions, though not geometric overconstraining but not underconstraining). ProE has some seriously high end features (I've been using it for years and I'm still not using anything like its full range of features). If you have complex design constraints that you need the program to apply automatically as the design changes then ProE is the only way to go. I've used solidworks briefly and found it more use friendly initially but slower than ProE to work with. The ProDesktop photorender is excellent compared to ProE's rendering (Provided you can live with less lighting/perspective features), though there's an advanced photorender extension for ProE that is very powerful...

Limerick isn't great for natural stuff - the rocks over here are mostly limestone and mostly wet, so very difficult to have fun on (Though I like having a bit of spare grip ). There's loads of nice urban stuff though - the university of Limerick campus has loads of stuff to play on... Ballingarry is about 40 or 50 minutes drive from Limerick I reckon. If you're ever around Limerick and looking to do some trials get on to me . So any ideas on what I should get for my next bike ?

1.37" x 24 TPI is the standard for the threading in the BB shell of the frame. I'm not sure if the threads for a screw on freewheel are the same.