Heatsink

Nice one! Did you go for the 18 or 20 SWG tube in the end? Good to see all the info I put your way being put to great use. All the hard work actually realising the frame is where muchos Kudos is due! Is there really a patent on the Leeson 360deg dropouts? Although it's a nice idea, I'm not sure it matches the criteria for patentable ideas in terms of how "novel" it is, non-existance of "prior art" etc. Steve

Adam's homemade tensioner looks really good! Also I like your new hanger Ali! The only tricky parts to source are the roller and the fixing bolt for the rear mech. The rear mech bolt has a M10 finer thread than you can buy normally so they tend to be custom bolts when you buy a tensioner. The axle can be a standard bolt with nuts in the right place. If you've got an old knackered tensioner then the bolt and roller could be reused, but otherwise you can buy the rollers as I've said, and use an M8 Bolt and Nut. Ugly but does the job! Steve

You can make your own using a band saw and a drill + some sheet alu or steel. The design that fixes to both axle and mech hanger (slotted for mech hanger) is simple and reliable. Buy the roller from www.chainreactioncycles.com. Prices start at £7 for rollers (I bought the Mr Control one because it was cheapest!). I've done this myself to keep me going until I have something tricker. I could post a photo of the latest simple tensioner I've made (Version 2) once it's finished in a day or two. Steve

Here's a summary of the 24UK side-on geo. Should be pretty much the same Ashton ET geo that riders love: Some frames have already been preordered, and you still have about a week to place a preorder and take advantage of the free stuff being thrown in. The ETA is 3 weeks. Steve

The frame weighs 2.1kg, and the frame pictured is infact Jon's which some of you may have seen because he's been riding around Bracken Rocks and other places too. I've heard some nice things about people's impressions of seeing it and having a go on it No detailed side on photos to show just yet because we're bringing the frame into 100% harmony with the ET geo, although in its final form the tubing choice and joint design is much improved in our opinion compared to the ET, which should eliminate the various premature failures that occured with the ET at the high stress points. Once you see the detailed photos of the final geo built up frames then I'm sure it will shake off comparisons with other frames and start to carve a unique identity of its own. The stickers can indeed be peeled off so that the frame can be personalised with custom stickers. I have some great contacts for custom stickers making and can get people going with this no problem when the time comes. I will get all the material information and guidance on build components such as BB size etc up on my site in the next couple of days. Frame ETA a few weeks - slightly delayed due to everyone involved falling very ill with a nasty bug, plus family commitments. Steve

The first 24UK is indeed built up. [attachmentid=2690] It's currently being gone over with a fine tooth comb aswell as being put through its paces. I'll put some geo of the 1st batch up later on. Baby Callum is fighting to play with the laptop at the moment! Steve

Pete, I hope the Coust pads I've made up into the various backings pass your quality test! Here are some photos for people to judge for themselves: You'd don't have to fork out as much money as people are mentioning to get your hands on some Coust pads. Put into Powerpad backings they are a very similar price to the other pads out there. The CNCed backings + Coust material will always be a very top of the range option, which work out cheaper in the long run due to cheaper refills and the capability to use any magura pad in the reuseable backings. Since the Coust pads are so expensive for me to buy, for the CNCed backings I actually loose money on the pads themselves, plus the user gets the making of the blocks into pads and the glueing all for free too (A skill that takes along time to develop as people have found). Having made many hundreds of hand cut pads with my trusty jig, (more than any other person in the world for sure!) I hope people will agree the quality is top notch and 100% safe. Steve

Just to clear this up, about the size of the CNCed backing recess. They are designed to allow all magura pads to fit into them. It's all about giving riders the opportunity to 100% customise their brake set up. Koxx, Zoo, Coust, Plazmatic, Heatsink Red, make your own etc etc. The latest Heatsink Vees have had the recess size reduced compared to the previous ones. So these also fit all magura pads snugger than ever. It's a little known fact that the plastic backings branded "Magura" are 1mm shorter than the ones branded "Powerpad". The CNCed backing recess gives a snug fit with the smallest pads (Magura and Plazmatic) whilst the longer pads like Koxx just need about 1mm trimmed off them to fit into the CNCed backings reassuringly tightly. Because the fit is nice and snug (if you had this snug a fit for plastic backings, they would bow), you don't need much if any glue at all. I drop a spot of superglue in each end just for peace of mind. Any supermarket brand will be sufficient.

Fear not, if you continue the cycle and have your own children then you have a license to be a kid all over again! I spend my weekends playing in playbarns with Callum and checking out the latest toys Steve

It would be "old skool" because it would be just like the "Trials bikes" of old when normal MTBs were used due to a lack of affordable bikes with trials geometry. The low BBs would be because the frames were intended for use with sus forks (longer than rigids) and so the BB will sit lower with rigids, when in fact for Trials use its good to have it at least horizontal. Also, the chainstays are likely to be longer than the 385mm or so on the trials bikes of today. Harder work getting them onto the back wheel when you kick the pedals. Steve

The other versions like the Mr Woo (see bikedock website) and the Jamie Tomkins one have jump bike geo (designed to take longer forks, ie sus forks) so the BBs will be old-school-low when you pop on a 400mm rigid fork.

The Base TA26 is only £170 at Bikedock. Here's mine shortly after I built it up: I might sell if I had a good offer. Of course it's got the usual trials scratches now although I don't go that big so it's seen relatively light action. I was thinking of selling just the frame, but if a opportunity came up to get some 24" wheels and such then some of the other components could be sold on too. Steve

Will do I don't know why I didn't make them available on their own earlier! Steve QUOTE(deanie-b @ Jan 27 2006, 04:52 PM) ←Lovely cheers steve Mind lashin' me a PM when they're ready to buy? Cheers Dean

Careful with the positioning of the 4 bolt holes! [attachmentid=2647] It's 46mm, here's the distance straight off a drawing for a certain CNCed Alu stock booster that I'm acquainted with Steve

I'll be making the Vee backings on their own available at a cheaper price - Just need to add this to the website for you with prices etc The latest design (Dec 2005) has been tweaked so that the recess gives a snugger fit then ever will all Magura pads from plastic backings. It should be possible to use superglue to retain the pads since they will already be tight and the longer ones (For some pads the top of the recess is 47mm long, some 48mm) need to have 1mm shaved off because naturally the backings are designed to accomodate the smallest first. Steve

The site is looking good with already enough eye catching bits and bobs! Do MAD not ride in the rain then?

For me what strikes me about the 35mm backings is the ease of preparing the pads and then assembling them. For this reason along they are very appealing! It still takes me a fair while when I need to hand cut pads to fit the 50mm backings, but the 35mm ones require just a flat surface and some decent glueing. You can get really decent adhesion even though there's no recessed form, but you mustn't go beyond a certain softness with the pads because you need sufficient stiffness in the pad itself to stop the braking action being turned into a peeling mechanism rather than a shearing one. This shouldn't be an issue though because the Monty pads and also Koxx and Coust have shown that you can get the grip performance you're looking for in a sufficiently stiff pad that can be retained well on the flat backings. The more pad choice the better in my opinion! Steve

All the info is now up on my site. Including a rather special offer Steve

It could be easy to get hold of one very soon. Tim at ExpressiveBikes is going to be bringing a 24UK from the first batch to Australia, with a view to making them available to buy in the immediate future. Steve

New Photo: The Geo of this first 24UK frame is very similar to that of an ET. Some subtle changes and new ideas have been tried, and the key things geo wise are a 10mm longer wheelbase and 10mm higher BB. We thought we'd take the opportunity to experiment slightly with the geo at first. But I have yet to decide on the final geometry for the batch of frames about to be made. From talking to riders so far, it might be the best idea to play safe and stick with the ET geo at the start up for the first batch of frames. I've got some geo details for the ET, but can anyone do some research to see what they think it is? Frame design wise, the similarities with BT frames are well observed. This frame is made from the same grade of Alu, and the tubing geometries, junctions and gusseting (including some armour type gussets on the underside of the downtube to protect the BB and Head tube from impact) all conform to the BT frame design philosophy which has proven to give excellent long life. Weight of this first frame is 2122g, or 4.68lbs. A sensible weight for robustness but without being tank-like! I really want to make this street tough frame more affordable than anything similar that's gone before. The test is that the price be fair enough that I would buy it myself, and I'm notoriously careful with my money when it comes to Bike components! The price will be on my website when the info page goes up. My aims are the following for this 24" frame compared to the now discontinued ET: Longer Life Frame, Better Price, Great Customer Care. Hopefully the bright blue with white decals is a fresh and fitting vibrant new colour scheme that matches our intention of injecting new life into the 24" scene. The plan from here is that this frame belongs to a certain rider on TF who will be building it up from this weekend onwards. I won't name the rider for now so that he can have some peace from PMs etc to give him time to get the bike completed! Friday evening I will be adding a info-packed page to my website on the 24UK frame. Including the complete geo of this first example and loads of close up photos. As you'd imagine, there is a considerable amount of money involved in placing the required minimum order of 10 frames. I imagine there will be plenty of riders interested in getting their hands on this frame first, so there won't be any hanging around. On my site, alongside all the frame details I will encouraging online preordering. If I can get the majority of the money upfront from this weekend onwards then it will really help grease the wheels to getting these frames here within the next couple of weeks. For all future information on this frame, including the price - Check out my website from Friday, Jan 20th 10pm Steve

Mark, I'm in your bad books big time I think from looking on TF I hope getting both those books back to you will help! Steve

I challenge you! Seriously though, I've been working with Mike on this frame for the past few weeks....It's something special. It's easy to joke about Mike's previous posts on TF etc, but bear in mind that his English is better than our Polish! So easy to not take someone seriously if they're not a native English speaker. We'll let the frames do the talking for themselves in time

Here's an exclusive sneak peak at a new street tough 24" frame for use with those good old comfortable seats many of us have forgotten about! This is the first one in the country (already spoken for) and more coming in a couple of weeks. More info to be revealed at the end of this week on my website. Steve

The arch needs to be moved up much higher on this one: Steve