Heatsink

A nice set of photos there :lol: They've come out really well with the flash and the moves are looking pretty decent. Shall I mention the helmet issue now to get it out of the way? Steve

Don't waste your money on books! All my Uni ones I barely read because they were'nt very readable and had too much detail. Best really is to gen up on subjects from different sources on the internet such as the ones Adam pointed out. So much easier for it to make sense when you can contrast two different explanations. Then if you want to find more worked examples, borrow some books from the library. In my experience I rarely want to use less than a few percent of the info in any sciencey book since there is usually too much irrelevant and in too much detail stuff. Steve

You're right George, there also will be a frictional resistance per unit length of the fluid tubing, and ther is also friction resistance at any sudden change in dimeter ("pressure loss" is what is talked about when you have a look at the maths) So another test that someone could do to investigation this is to compare two different length of the same diameter tube, pouring water in the top as described before and measuring the flow rate. Steve

Well, the important thing which governs the "sluggish" feel thing is the smallest diameter in the system. Imagine that you were to hang the maggie lever on a coat hanger, with the bleed port open on the lever and on the slave which is hanging below. If you pour water through the lever bleed port so it runs through the body of the lever, the fittings, and the hose into the slave and out the bleed port the water is being carried by a force, it's own weight. If you replaced the hose with some 2mm diameter stuff, then the flow rate would be less. You could measure this scientifically to confirm this in the following way: Work out the flow rate by letting the water fall into a bucket, and then weigh it before and after since 1g = 1 cm^3 of water. This divided by the time you ran the test gives you the flow rate in cm^3/secs. My magura is in pieces at the moment, and the smallest diameter seems to be 2.5mm from my digital calipers. So introducing the tubing of narrower diameter would indeed create a relative constriction. I totally agree about the hosing resistance to squigging comment. Adam is right about the sponge being in the pads, and it's back to the old chestnut of springs in series to see that it does bugger all to mess around with changing the stiffness of the stiffer components when you have something many times softer in the path. Playing around with this springs in series equation is the same thing which proves that bike mags are talking tosh when they talk about the "feel" of a frame, since the tyres in the system (changing the inflation levels) hides any feedback from the road coming through the handlebars. Another example of marketing replacing facts! Steve

I've never run my magura with water, but loads of people do and swear by it ;) Advantages: 1. Very responsive "snappy" brake 2. Water is free, magura oil is a rip off If you use a small amount of anti-freeze/car screen wash (see the container for some idea of quantities) then you can make sure it won't freeze at the normal 0 deg C, so that you don't have the problems of the water expanding on freezing- jams brakes on at best, cracks fittings at worst. The only thing to point out is that any anti-freeze/screen wash you may add could affect the seals in the long run. But then again you could say that there are so many people who have run this set-up for years without problems, that this is probabily not an issue (Y) Steve

The Goodridge/Hope tubing has a 5mm outer diameter and 2mm inner dimeter. Normal magura hosing is 2.5mm inner diameter. It's frustrating that we never get a full spec for bike components from vendors. It's only now that riders are setting up shops etc that we're starting to get the dimensions and full specs that empower us to make buying decisions based on facts rather than marketing (Y) EDIT: Just seen the full info on the Hope hosing from Tartybikes from the link posted whilst writing this - Good to see you can get hold of the cross over fittings and that the braided outer has a transparent plastic coating to address the paint rubbing issue ;) Steve

Hey Waynio! Do you get the elusive cross over fittings with the Hope branded hose for maggies? If you're running water instead of mineral oil (maggie blood / LHM oil), then I'd wager that the much reduced viscosity (honey for example is very viscous, water not) would mean that the performance would still be great with the reduced internal diameter of the braided hosing. Steve

I'm 99% sure that the Hope braided hosing (all types) is manfactured by Goodridge. Goodridge's catalogue lists the hose and the variety of fittings to suit Hope and Magura brake systems, and there's just no one else to rival Goodridge as far as their size and how well they are established in the braided hosing market. Also Hope mention theirs is UK sourced and there just aren't any other UK based braided hose manufacturers making hosing of the size required for maggies and MTB braking systems. I believe that the advantages of the braided hosing compared to the plastic hosing are: 1. Tighter bend radius acheiveable without kinking 2. Hose robustness (Guaranteed for 10s of years) 3. Look The disadvantages are: 1. Cost - Around £30 for a set 2. Smaller internal bore - The outer diameter has to be 5mm to fit through the magura guides on a bike, but the thickness of the innner hose in PTFE plus the braided outer means that the internal diameter is reduced from 2.5mm (standard plastic tube) to 2mm, which means only 64% of the cross-sectional flow area compared to a plastic maggie tube. 3. Hose rubs paint off frame where it contacts more readily than plastic hosing. 4. Some people find it trickier to cut and fit the hosing in a way that it doesn't leak 5. You don't get any cross over fittings so will have to run a plastic cross over spoiling the look. I've heard that the UNEX stuff is rubbish and the Goodridge or Magura braided hosing (Magura naturally charge more for theirs even though it isn't likely to be better) are the only ones to consider. I'm sure that I'm not completely right about the above points, since I've never owned or fitted any braided hosing! I look forward to being corrected ;) Steve

The pigmentation is only a fraction of a percent of the blend. I bought them because I wanted to see whether the hype was merited. Since making my own pads I've resolved never to post a bad word about any other trials pads on TF, so I'll let you all form your own conclusions of my assessment of them! Clue: Also the title of a Shania Twain song..... Steve

Not wanting to be controversal, but I'd disagree about the pigmentation of the pads affecting pad performance for a given compound. The reason why the colour has no effect on the physical properties of the compound is that the pigmentation % additive level during preparation of the material is very very small. Any perceived differences in performance can be explained by 2 things: 1. Material performance/softness tolerances from manufacture which can be substantial depending on the sophistication of the material processing equipment. By nature, two different coloured samples will have been prepared in seperate batches and so be susceptable to these material tolerances. 2. The subjective and variable nature of other parameters comprising the braking system. Talking in general about brake pad testing, to get an accurate comparision (by making all aspects equal such as brake set-up, surface condition, grease level etc) which you can put figures on, testing off the bike is required on a "rig" which rules out the variable parameters in the braking system, and so makes everything equal so only the pad performance is under scrutiny. In this way, two important things to quantify are: 1. Coefficient of friction 2. Wear rate From this it's possible to say such things as pad 1 is X times more grippy than pad 2, and that pad 3 wears Y times quicker than pad 4 for the given abrasive medium. I've got some very interesting results from my own testing across many samples of each of the commercially available pads. Of course, the bench mark for high calibre performance needs to be set on the bike itself, but then by taking the testing off the bike, you can see that that's where you find out some really interesting things and get to the truth of the matter! As a general rule softer pads have a higher coefficient of friction, but for a manually operated braking systems, too soft is bad news because of: 1. Soft brake feel 2. Difficulty to retain pad on backing due to the peel rather than shear mechanism under braking 3. Distortion under braking causes exaggerated rounding of the corners and such. This localised wearing can prematurely shorten the life of your pads! On the brake pads falling apart thing, check out what happened when I took a brand new and unused pair of Coust pads and put them onto a loose slave cylinder and then tried to remove them: Sorry to all of those sick to the back teeth with topics about pads for bumping this back to the top of the board! :"> Steve

I recognise the FEA program to be Cosmosworks. It all looks very pretty, but drawing any conclusions can be difficult since the welds haven't been included (which create a smoother transition between joints and hence would reduce the stress rising effects) I use that program regularily and I must say rathering embarassingly that I'm good at creating studies which don't bear any relation to reality! If you put rubbish in you get rubbish out! You've really got to give full details on the set-up to allow the results to be taken seriously, and the lack of weld fillets is already one area which reduces the accuracy. Assuming the geometry was spot on, stuff I'd want to see: 1. Material properties 2. Mesh set-up 3. Constraints (Where forces/stresses applied, which bits are fixed etc) Someone's been busy preparing all this though, so thanks for sharing it (Y)

Nice one Mike for the vid :unsure: The course looked superb, and some great riding going down too. Most importantly it's clear that everyone was having a cracking time! No better advert really for the Indoor Trials Events than these Vids. It's the perfect way to convince people to put the effort in to travel to attend these unique and top notch events that Tom puts so much time and effort into organising (Y) Wish I could have made it, like I did for the first one, but with a 5 month old, it was extra tricky. Steve

Simply astounding riding from all and top notch editing from Lee :sleeping: Good to see those white pads are holding under all your crazy moves Wayne!! Only wish I'd been over in France with you guys - Did you know I did my Mechanical Engineering degree with French, worked there for a year and absolutely love speaking French when I have the chance! Francophile Steve

I sent them today Dan :lol: These were quite delayed so thanks again for your patience (Y) I'm not taking any new orders for pads at the moment incase anyone thinks I'm still making them! Only clearing outstanding ones... Anyway, back to the thread in hand! I look forward to catching up with people I know and meeting the many new people I've spoken to on TF etc :P

Saturday for me. I'll be wearing a Tee with this new logo on in some form, with the possible addition of a web address:

I was considering a BMX type helmet too, I was wondering if any of the ones on CRC's website have the better lining you mention John. http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Models.aspx?ModelID=3798 Before I picked up the phone I spotted this favourite of trials riders ^ I prefer the look of helmets with visors, although am I right in saying that the BMX helmets are good for more than one crash, so better value for money?

That's a really nice looking site :P Thinking back, I think that I may have suggested the TrialsQueens name, which is nice :P More power to your collective elbows! Steve

Your best bet is to have a look on yell.co.uk for electroplaters in your area. For your needs, you won't get a great price because it gets more attractive when you do a bulk job, working out cheaper for each part. As you'd expect, a really shiny finish usually is the most expensive since it involves extensive polishing of the "Substrate" before hand, more work. For chroming, aluminium receives more than one coating too, nickel and copper are common before the chrome layer is applied. Have a ring around and see if you can find someone that would be interested in this small scale job :P Steve

Another option is to buy a DVD (4.5Gb) player for your car which will fits into the same usual head unit space, plays CDs, MP3s on DVDs etc. I'd say that a problem with listening to music in your car is that you can't easily browse and select the tunes you want when on the go since it's neither safe nor are the screens big enough to enable easy browsing. You'd have to give up on this and instead preselect albums, or go for the shuffle option. My home DVD player, even though it has a TV attached, has a very basic user interface that really isn't any comparison to the basic one you'd expect on a simple PC. With the sheer quantity of albums/songs you can fit on a DVD, an easy means of navigating this is a must! I'm not a fan of the cassette adapters either - they do indeed hiss in my experience :- Surely the Zen offerings are the best if you want to the flexibility of taking them with you out of the car, although you may need to think carefully about security of them if left on display in the car - so you can access it aswell! You may need to unplug them every time to pop into a service station, or altenatively you could mount them in the glove box. I'd avoid Apple and Sony for reasons detailed in many other threads.

I belive that chewing gum is illegal in Singapore!

My set-up with a ground D521 in a Base frame and a simple magura booster over the top plus the same white Heatsink pads is a very noisy begger (Y)

Caution: Listen to my fashion advice at the risk of alienation from your friends! ^ Space slippers!

Hi Dan! You say that independent of pads used you can't get a squeak out of them? I think you'll have to take a photo or two of your brake set-up to show how you've got everything postioned. That said, that won't capture how they behave as you pull them to contact the rim, and that's where you have to examine them carefully. I only wish that my brakes would be quieter since it seems to annoy my neighbours on the few occasions that I pop out in the road! It can be hard to see whether your brakes are set up completely flat with the rim. I thought mine were when I first bought Koxx bloxx, but they didn't squeak. After a little riding I took them off and could see that they hadn't been in contact with the rim across the whole area. Spent some time setting the brake up, inspecting it from various angles as it hit the rim (making sure one end didn'y contact first), and low and behold it squeaked with very little provocation after that. If you can get it mastered, you'll be treated to a very low and loud grunt of those blue pads vibrating (Y) Steve

http://www.royalelastics.com/ I had a rather natty pair of shoes by these guys a few years ago. Really unique looking and so comfortable - used to wear them riding which killed them, but without any laces they were perfect. Grippy soles too, better than my skater shoes. Places like shuh used to do them. I had two successive pairs, with the most recent being the dark blue ones shown above. Their new shoes don't look as good though.