Maintenance Justice

I believe it's one of the employees from Echo who runs Extention (happy to be corrected if I'm wrong!)

The Extention Rise uses a 'standard' tapered head tube, in the sense the frame will technically work with any standard tapered fork. The headset bearings are fully integrated (no internal cups here), so are straight forward to replace and widely available. Now you mention it, I will measure and update the listing to include info and links to relevant bearing sizes 🙂. As for frame standards, the Rise uses a 116mm 'closed' rear drop out. It looks like a thorough axle, but it is in fact a standard M6 116mm hub. The front fork is also a standard M6 fitment with 100mm OLD, and again, closed drop-outs. The wheels fit by removing the hub bolts, and there are machined slots on the inside of the drop-outs to guide the hub into place in the frame and fork. It's a neat way of doing things, and reduces stress from having an open-ended drop out. This does, however, mean you will have to use a roller tensioner with the Extention, regardless of the hub that you fit. Lastly, at Tarty, we stock the common spares for the Rise including cranks, hubs, sprockets and bearings. If you do need a spare, we should have you covered! We have sold through the tensioners, but have a few kept to one side for emergencies. More will be landing on the next order. @Yukon Hopper as for which bike, personally I prefer the Rise. You get much more for your money (tapered fork, stiffer cranks, better pedals etc). The finish quality over all is a little nicer than the Comas, too. We purposely specified Magura MT Sport brakes on the Rise to keep the price down, but they still work great, and are really easy to set up. The BB is a standard external 24mm (Shimano Hollowtech II standard), so easy to replace should it be needed. @La Bourde Extention seem pretty keen to continue with the Rise, and they're still making a good selection of trials parts alongside their street, and newer dirt jump products. We'll be looking to re-stock the bikes and spares on the next order. Hopefully that helps answer some questions!

I'd really like to see a bike that's a bit more versatile generally. Something which can run a modern drivetrain and forks, but with a more trials focussed geo (steeper head angle than the current, super slack 64° variety - I had a Genesis hard tail with a 67° head angle that felt like a real sweet spot for trail and trialsy riding) and perhaps some features geared towards trials riding, like a much lower top tube, a grip shift to save bruised thighs and standard post mounts for 200mm rotors. A hard tail would be the obvious candidate, and I believe TMS prototyped something along these lines, which is looking a bit more polished now: I think bikes like this could be a hard sell to the target market of the MTB community but, like @Ali C says, something with a back end engineered for preloading, perhaps even using some clever, compact, suspension design borrowed from slope style or 4 cross to make it more appealing to the MTB community who pretty much expect full sus these days to take anything seriously, might just scratch the N+1 itch. Especially if you market it as the bike you need to really progress some new skills. I get a lot of feedback, especially from older riders, that they want something akin to what they started off riding (converted MTB) but that actually works, and benefits from modern technology and engineering. Something that rides well at a pump track, and the local dirt jumps might just interest younger riders who could be drip fed trials riding with the influence of talented Pro riders showing what the bike is capable of beyond what they're initially going to use it for.

Cheers Luke

Ben from Tarty here, A quick heads up. These two bikes were purchased, we believe, with a stolen card. The case is ongoing, but the evidence is pretty damning. I recommend avoiding these as it'll most likely be a case of 'when' not 'if' this individual has to answer to the police for fraud, and inevitably that will lead them to track the goods that he has acquired and sold. We have made a report to the Police and if the case goes against this individual, they will be following it up. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/204452929352?hash=item2f9a581f48:g:hGkAAOSwupNk-L-k https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/204452578785?hash=item2f9a52c5e1:g:Z2wAAOSwnVlk-GaE

Finally got around to developing and scanning the few rolls of film I shot at this year's Radfest. Here are some of my favourites from the weekend. Tin Hat Tom is a particular highlight. I quite like Serghei's pre-ride stretch routine over the pipe, Tom having the best time with the leaf blower, Josh Leech always smiling, the uni-cycle beam balance (apologies, not sure who this is) and the big 'aerial' shot of the bar hop competition. For those interested, the camera used was an Olympus OM20, circa 1983, 35mm film camera with the stock Zukio f1.8 50mm fixed lens. My go to 'rough' camera that I don't mind being knocked about a bit. The film was Ilford FP4 iso125 pushed one stop (camera told it was loaded with iso200 forcing it to under expose slightly) then push developed using Ilford ID11 at 20° for 15 mins (developed as if it was an iso200 film i.e. for longer, to give better contrast). I really like this combo, it's cheap, and the push processing allows the use of a finer grain and traditionally slower film to be used in poorer light or in this case for faster moving targets. If there are any other 'vintage' (blergh - it's just photography to me) photography enthusiasts here who might be able to recommend a better OM lens, I'm all ears. The stock Zukio is great, but something faster with better quality optics would be nice. I'm resisting going to a medium format range finder because they're massive and the cost just goes bananas.

The Varial seems to have morphed into this purple and yellow statement so I thought I would roll with it Cost of the material is really cheap, I think about £5 for the length here which is enough for two wheels but @AdamR28 will probably put me right on that. You still need spokes to make the 'anchors' which the rope is glue'd onto, but I guess any silver spoke (or black if you want to take the paint off) will do, so some old ones would serve to save a bit of cash. Running the Pro 4 because it's what I've got, it's purple and it works! It was the first hub to get the 116mm treatment and it's still going strong without a single hiccup in about a year now.

So we’re doing this. MOD disc, rope spoke wheel set. @AdamR28has done an insane amount of R&D and multiple prototypes and we feel fairly confident that the current iteration is up the job of 19/20” trials wheels. Naturally I’ll be doing a hideous deng colour scheme. The rims are some new trials rims from Extention, basically very similar to Jitsie / Echo / Clean. They’re branching out into comp parts picking up where Echo left off so it’ll be interesting to see how they hold up. Rear hub will be the Pro 4 and front hub tbc.

Insider info: Hope tell me the engagement system of the Trials S/S will be the same as the standard Pro 5 hubs - 108 with a 3 pawl offset. As far as I know, the actual hub dimensions and free hub design haven't changed, but no doubt there will be an aesthetic update. No idea on weight, will need to weigh one when they arrive, which should be early March.

An update! It's been a while since I last visited the site, the busy Christmas trading period and few other things in the background have had my full attention. However, on Saturday the 18th, we were finally able to get on site to drop materials off! We did try and do this before Christmas but struggled to get materials off the building merchant's compound in the time we had so we scrapped the plan and decided to revisit this year. CHC (Cheetham Hill Construction) of Bury kindly donated some pipes and tyres for the first part of the project and even helped us load them too! A good friend of Tarty, Danny, helped us by borrowing a low loader with a Hiab to load and move the materials. We had a bit of an issue with getting onto the site, the only access is a small bridge with a 17 tonne weight limit, the wagon weighs 10 tonnes empty so we were fairly restricted in what we could bring in one hit and the access road is narrow to complicate things further. Basically the worst possible access for a site and job like this! We managed to get in without too much trouble, thankfully. With all the big, heavy, materials on site, we can now work towards getting everything in place. We decided to try and dig in a tyre to see what the ground was like to start with. We were without a digger on the day and the ground was awful, full of huge rocks about a foot down. Needless to say, we didn't achieve much but we know for sure it's diggers or nothing for getting everything in. We're needing to be fairly flexible in regard to the initial plan. We'll stick to it as closely as we can, but availability of materials, the ground itself and access are all playing a part in what is actually possible on the day. I'm sure with an army of machines and a big budget we could create something really amazing but so far, with the kind help of volunteers and free donations, I think we're doing pretty well. What's next? I'm going to be working on getting some aggregate delivered - we'll need this to form the 'path' for the skills loop and potentially place around obstacles. I'm also going to source some natural stone to make up the 'path' of the skills loop and supplement some of the bigger obstacles. The plan next time is to have all the materials, machinery and labour on site in one hit so I've got some serious organising to do. It's been a long drag to get this far but I'm much happier now the bigger obstacles are on site. It may be some weeks or even months before we manage to organise everything and everyone to finish the job, but my goal is still to have this finished for summer.

Is that some weird half bash style arrangement on that XO crank? Like the look of that. Always irked me that you couldn’t really get a bash for 1 by direct mount MTB chainrings. Also I’ll never be able to afford this, ever, going off past top tier kit RRPs

Dug out the 35mm camera for last Tuesdays warehouse session at Tarty. Been meaning to get back into film photography after a long break and really enjoyed the process so I’ll definitely be doing more over the summer on TNT rides.

Nice work. Like the seat, kinda got a 90’s DJ vibe about it

An update! I’ve submitted my plans to the Council and they’ve been approved. We arranged a meeting on site to talk through my proposals and perform an on site risk assessment which I’ve submitted and is provisionally approved. In terms of working with the Council it’s been surprisingly easy. Again having that contact through the existing pump track users has been massively helpful and the head of the local club submitted the initial plan on my behalf. I didn’t use a template for the plan, I just tried to keep it simple and the details concise whilst trying to relay the benefit the project will have for the community. I don’t think you need to worry about anything super official. It just needs to show your idea clearly and that you’ve thought about it carefully! I’ve attached some pictures of the plan if you’re interested in how it was laid out. The risk assessment was much more official! Lancashire Council had a template they use and kindly gave advice on how to fill it. As trials riders we can be a bit risk blind I think so it’s prudent to get outside advice if needed and there is much more than you might think that needs to be considered. It’s easy enough and the on site visit was really helpful in talking through what the Council wanted to see in the assessment. There has been a change of plan for access. A good friend who works in concreting is helping to deliver / put in place materials and advised the planned route for delivery wasn’t suitable. He also recommended a smaller wagon! This means we can access the site via the main entrance. Having someone with knowledge and experience of lifting heavy stuff has been invaluable. The Council aren’t much help here so independent advice is a good shout and the material supplier is used to handling much bigger loads. I didn’t realise the issue with access until it was pointed out to me so a good save there. Today I started prepping the site by moving existing obstacles to make assess for the wagon to lift the pipes in at the rear of the site. It was tough going manually digging out the tyres but I had a helping hand from Phil at Dirt Works BMX who is currently working on the pump track with a digger to move the tyres once dug out. We now have access for the wagon! I’m looking to arrange a materials drop of the main stuff very soon so exciting things will start going In shortly.

Definitely! I was planning on calling the pipe cluster I’m planning ‘Mario World’… Any help is much appreciated, ultimately it might be man power that gets it done!