† CETFLY †

Fine by me mate Clearly if something has been fighting me this ENTIRE time and always an uphill battle you need to get your head screwed back on and work out if this is really worth all the money, hassle, pain etc and am i getting any enjoyment from it? No, its not and no, Im not. I quit. Its fine by me. I'll sleep MUCH better tonight over this

Matt...im going to hold back here, but you honestly dont know the full story like 2 other people do who've been through it all with me when all my bike dramas happened on these forums. The stem cap is cracked, not the bolts. Clearly I would just get two new bolts if they were cracked and yes, it would not be the end of the world. This bike is and has been an endless money pit. I cant be throwing more and more money at it. The Hope headset has not cracked. Its just giving me trouble. This whole bike has even before I friggin got it. Ive had enough. I need to walk away to save my sanity, save my money and save wasting my time. I dont even enjoy riding the thing at all because im always waiting for something else to go wrong. Its set back after set back. It looks like im going to have to fully rebuild my custom setup engine of my car, which if thats the case, is months of work after my normal job, then thousands and thousands of dollars in that, then more dyno tuning, the list goes on. The car needs to be resprayed in areas due to really poor prep work when the previous owner (mate of mine) had it resprayed, its all just adding up and getting me nowhere. Ive put SO much into this car, all custom work. Its only 12000 ks and the head has gone due to an incident at the drags and a cheap silicon hose splitting and it overboosting. Everythings going wrong and im over it all. I need to buy a house that i cant afford, need to get a newer, more reliable car which are stupidly expensive here (EVERYthing is in Aus now!) and this bike is past my patience and sanity now. Its making me so furious that i nearly through it into the damn lake we were riding around today. I honestly am so far past this and trials. Couldnt give a crap anymore

I am SO SO over this stupid bike. I need to vent. I go for a ride today and felt like adjusting the bars forward a bit more. Im tightening up the top two bolts only to find BOTH are cracked, stem cap side. Its a Thomson! Yes, im not sutpid and know that anything can and will crack, but a Thomson is far higher quality than Deng etc. Im so sick of this pile of crap. Its been a complete disaster from the very beginning and Ive sunken such stupid amounts of money into it. Im not riding it anymore. Im done. If anyone knows of anyone wanting a stupidly expensive pile of crap in Aus, they can come buy it from me. Do NOT bother asking me to send over seas. Im not wasting even another second of my time on it or packing the pile of crap up. My cars stuffed, the bikes been stuffed (in my eyes) from the minute i agreed to buy it and its so DAMN close to me angle grinding it in half....if you think im joking then you clearly dont know me

Have you guys seen the top cap of a Hope compared to a King or many others? Theyre stepped. The King (for example as i have the old one here) isnt anywhere near as much. To use the Hope cap, the bore MUST be reemed out (which he'd already done to take the larger cap step. Its quite a thick (top to bottom) step, which is why you cant get away with not machining it. He only had to drill out the bore a few mm and it then slots in. It seems to be holding for the riding I was just doing and couldnt really understand why he kept saying I had to change the star nut.... No idea why, but it seems to be holding so im leaving it and riding it. After just watching more of Dirty Tricks and Cunning Stunts (so stupidly cheesey that you cant help but laugh at the outakes with the dummies lol) and it amazes me the control Ashton has in doing a stoppie down a twist brick wall. Tried doing that (after really pulling the handlebars back from their previous way-to-far-forward-position) and they feel a bit better. Its quite hard to get the modulation correct at this stage. Can hop a couple of times on the front wheel. Getting used to holding the manual out longer (still taking time) but the simple things to most of you boys like bunny hops and rear wheel hop (bursting forward I mean, as I can bounce on the rear but cant go anywhere with it yet ) I suck at and really need to work at. Ive always sucked at bunny hops since I was a kid. Gotta keep working on it

Well obviously you can to the front, but not the rear, which of course is pointless unless you want a riding challenge for a while

Hey lads.....any news on these forks?

I thought the same thing. Why change/remove the star nut? I think he was needing to do it due to it being in the way of the tool that is needed to bore out the internal diameter to allow the Hope top cap to fit. Im just sick of these stupid Deng forks. Anyone know of anyone selling any Fatties? If I can get a new set of forks i'll throw these ones off a cliff. Piles of crap. These shouldnt have even been deemed good enough to be installed on a bike. They really shouldnt. I dont want to go to all this trouble and cost, throwing good money after bad, just to still have the same pain-in-the-rear forks. We've done up the stem and assembled everything, but it now makes a cracking noise, so somethings wrong, although it was DEF all installed with grease (on the greasable parts only) and installed correctly with the right tools and facing. Trying to source a king headset now. Hope headsets Im not a fan of now and getting fed up with this crap

LOL classic I was thinking about the star nut itself. Im sure I can do this if needed: Use a small drill bit and swiss-cheese the flat metal paddles which fan out between the nut and steerer. Then bash it down to a depth which wont affect the new star nut which can then be installed above it. I dont want to be bashing the head of the steerer tube what-so-ever. If that outer edge get bulged out, the stem will never clamp properly or adequately. Its bad enough that my stem keeps slipping on the steerer as it is right now, even after being torqued up with torque wrench to just over whats required. Id love some Inspired forks. Stupidly expensive though

Yeah I reckon! Stupid alloy bolt. Couldnt believe it. The dude was saying it will snap too. I dont know what other units Hope have a different stainless bolt which is shaped to the top cap. If not it will need a shim of some kind. I want the top cap to match though mate. It looks great with all the red/black combo now, but want the top cap to be fittable. Whats the best way to remove the star nut? (never had to before) The bike dude wasnt going to dare put the head doctor in there after machining out the tube. He was going to put in a better and correct star washer to make the top cap and hopefully different bolt, work together

My latest saga..... Went today to the bike shop to get the dude to remove the Chris King headset and replace it with the Hope one. We used the Park Tool and got the King out. No hassles at all. Very nice headset. Im completely regretting it not being in red with white writing - MASSIVELY REGRETTING! He checked the surface and it needed to be faced (Inspired dont do this post-production) so that was cool, he faced it. We assemble the new Hope headset, press the bearings in all good. We go to bolt up the top cap....no go. Its completely the wrong top cap. It will never ever fit. The forks now need to be pulled off, put in a vice and have the internal thickness of the steerer tube machined out to take the hope head doctor star nut setup. The top cap cant fit as-is due to the thickness of the steerer tube and that hopes top caps are designed for larger internal diameter, thinner thickness tube. Another real pain. Wondering whether to pull this out and just sell it and order a red and white King. At least they go straight in with no worries.

I have to disagree. Aside from the pitch of the upsweep and backsweep it will be the same. Example: If I had the exact same bar design (with the same upsweep and backsweep but one is 2" riser and the other 3") and you have the 2" with a higher stem and a 3" with a flat stem and theyre the same height from the ground, then the feel will be exactly the same as will the riding. Its purely psychological.

High bars and low stem, to me, are the same as low stem and high bars. It comes down to the handlebar height from the ground. Either way, shouldnt matter I wouldve thought. Dont forget, those pics are earlier on. Ive taken on board what Skoze said about the bars and pulled them back a bit. Thanking him for the advice in one of my replies. The bars dont slip in the stem, the stem rotates on the head tube. Im going to sort this issue out when I get the King headset taken out and swapped with the Hope tomorrow

Waiting for the dvd's i ordered the other day. First one is "Dirty Tricks and Cunning Stunts Vol 1" and the second is DT & CS Vol 2 including "Bi-King" so I can get all the basic moves down-pat before trying all the other harder moves

Have been buddy, not worried as such, just making it how I want it to look - and riding it in between

Cool. Who's "we" exactly? Two other people have the bars do they? Nah, Pink headset will be going whenever my red Hope headset arrives. Ive swapped over the other items as mentioned and I want the headset to match it. The red of the King is different to the red of the hope, and after reading some reviews of particular series of Kings having problems with "creaking" due to the need for a certain pre-loading seal, I'll stick with the very good looking (after reviewing the pic of the one id bought: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Hope-Headset-BRAND-N...=item53dd930b75 i think i'll be happy in keeping it and getting rid of the King.) My King is fantastic and I'd love to keep it if I hadnt gotten those red Hope hubs. The colour contrast is the only thing that bugs me and the only reason I'll be selling it. Heres the creaking forum: http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?t=278648 I'll sell it on ebay as people will be expecting me to sell it for a fiver on these forums I'll also be selling the matching salmon pink seat clamp. The pink King headset of mine has NO noise, no creaking, no nothing. It works PERFECTLY well, its just not a match for the rest of my parts

Cheers mate. Just got the new red hope seat clamp and front QR skewer. Still waiting on the red hope headset and bar end caps Will take pics when its all changed. Still need to order an Inspired seat

So so so strong. Amazing brake for the price. Honestly. Ive got Avid Juicy Sevens on my mtb, with 203mm disc. The bikehut brake is what I would choose for a very cheap, efficient and powerful brake to the more expensive better looking units on the market. Ugly looking, but very very strong, solid brake. Definitely hanging on to this brake as a spare when something goes wrong with the Hope mono trial I can only assume you like that im ordering an Inspired Pivotal seat

I adjust it to get mine as close as I can, but its not inspiring confidence when I dont know if it has slipped a little or is going to slip when on the front wheel....with me looking at the road and wondering....*shall I eat this bitumen with the sand, or oil of the day? Hmmm will I or wont I have a side of truck with that after I start eating?*

Have been this afternoon. Its clear how much learning and practice I need to do on these bikes lol Cant do anything . Cant even pedal kick- at all Kinda got the manualling down a little though (can do that on the mountain bike), wheelies (obv). Was trying to bounce on the front wheel... the bars keep turning no matter how tight I do the stem cap bolt and stem bolts. Cant really bunny hop at all either. Cant get over how high some of you lads can hop! Freakin amazing

Ahhhh thats the weather i definitely do NOT miss being back in sunny Aus Sorry, had to say it. At least you have people to ride with over there. Im not going to learn much at all riding by myself! Just dont want this bike to go to waste.... (pics updated btw, got the wheels built up professionally )

Before and after polishing on buffing wheel Assembled wheel with shiney parts Think I need to change the headset for the red Hope when it arrives...

Cool. They look so weird hehehe. Will take some getting used to like you said. Anybody know when theyre due out....roughly?

They sound great. I dont spose youre allowed to take pics or have pics of them? If not, can you tell me....are they straight like the Urbans?

Hey mate Got any links/pics/prices? The Urbans are out quite a bit. Theyve welded the arm too far down and the welding has pulled it around, as it does.