niconj

Your comments made me buy the Deores first but after having heard what Martin said about the Ultimates, I bought them and never looked back. That being said, your level of riding probably requires more from the brake than mine does.

Either way, the TNN backings have that integrated dome washer which is really cool.

Just try it. It's not too expensive if you go for Deores. SD7 brakes aren't that good though, only the levers. I have to kinda agree with the maintenance. Whenever you have to tighten the chain the wheel doesn't sit exactly where it sat before resulting in one pad being closer to the rim than the other. With a Vee you just take out your tool and turn the bolt a bit to align them again. I have never had problems with bleeding a brake though. Get the TNN ADV and you'll be happy.

Well... Deores are way cheaper and work almost the same. The thing with Ultimates is that they don't have any play like the Deores. Some people on here say that the bearings wear rapidly and play develops over time but I haven't had that problem yet and @Martin Direske hasn't had this problem either and he's been riding them for ages and is also a way better rider than I am.

Totally forgot about the cables... I rode a Racing Line lever with Magura Slaves and ADM pads; later on, on that same bike, an Avid Ultimate with ADV pads, Odyssey linear slic cables, SD7 levers and Shimanor carbone booster. The Vee certainly has more hold and is quieter than the other brake. The bite is supposed to be worse than a HS33 but I didn't notice any difference. I run the same setup on my Rockman now* (it has Vee mounts) and cannot fault the brake. The feeling is different though. Pretty mushy (you can almost pull the lever to the bar) but once you get used to it it's on par or even better than a HS33. *With a crappy Tektro booster as my Shimano isn't wide enough. Will make my own carbone booster in due time.

Cheap = Deore Brake + Avid FR5 lever and TNN ADV pads. Expensive and hard to come by these days = Avid Ultimate brake + Avid Speed Dial 7 levers (or Ultimate or XTR) + TNN ADV pads. Always with a booster, preferably an XTR Booster (if you have a V-Brake frame) if not, you'd need some adapters of which the Heatsink are the best in my opinion.

Tried to do some brakeless stuff the other day and shit my pants every time. It's like learning everything from scratch. I imagine it helps a lot later on but I'm just too much of a coward.

Too short! He's the only rider I like seeing do barspins.

Can you post the link? I cannot find it as it probably has GEMA content and doesn't show in the search results in Germany. edit: Never mind. Found it using DuckDuckGo

Where's the video that's 9:47 minutes long?

Front wheel laced and ready to be mounted. Unfortunately, my dealer still hasn't gotten any delivery from Trialtech. Echo SL¹ by niconj, auf Flickr Echo SL² by niconj, auf Flickr

But too short for what I think @isitafox runs. 115mm head tube, 22mm headset, 45mm stem, 10mm stackers = 192mm.

The latter.

It's the now very rare echo disc frame. Geo is just like a normal 24'' frame even though this one is pretty long at 1070/+70 I'm so very jealous of your riding Ross...

Now it's near to impossible to get Rockman Spades in black. Will get my Trialtech SLs by Wednesday.

lol Pretty much what I'll be building. Dunno about the silver rims though. I'll take the black ones. Black hubs, spokes and rims + red sapim polyax nipples. Is this yours @isitafox? I thought you were riding disc on the front. Do you happen to have more pictures of it? What are these forks?

I've got a spare one I'd be willing to swap for one of those bikes with a seat.

Drop down into the water and gap to front back out on the left.

5'10''

As I can't really do a rear wheel manual, I won't have to worry about the front either. Too old and too afraid. But it certainly looks good when Flipp does them on his brakeless bike.

Those frames aren't really made for trials abuse I think.

I imagine a nose manual is a lot harder than a rear manual, isn't it?

For the rear I would never go x2. On the front it's not that much of a matter although x2 on a 32 hole rim is not ideal. In any case after having had a look at my garage I found the right spokes for radial lacing and will do so. Sucks as I laced the wheel twice yesterday thinking I had only spokes 253mm and up. Could've used those two hours for something else.

Nothing wrong to lace a wheel 2x. It is equally stiff.

Well... this is the front wheel and when calculating with an ERD of 532mm I have to take 255mm spokes (crossed twice). I did this and they fit perfectly. Even better than the 253mm spokes I used before. I think the rims are from 2009 though. edit: If I put the front onto the rear rim there's about a 4mm difference the latter being narrower. This seems about right according to my measurements. I may have gotten a very rare batch.