durkie

hey...i've got some pads that need testing. someone pm me with their address and i'll send some out. they look like this, but in different colors because i'm out of blue:

Also, I've been working on getting something similar to the plazmatic coating going again. In fact...I've been working on it for a couple years. Not consistently of course, I gotta go to school and ride and do things, but for some time for sure. Anyways, there are a couple problems with it, and I don't think it's quite ready for primetime....I have something up my sleeve in the near future, so you can be sure you'll hear about it if it works out well. If you're interested though, here's my original thread on OTN.

I've got alex dx-32 19" rims in 32h. They gotta come from the states though...

anodizing hardens because it grows an aluminum oxide layer from the aluminum surface. aluminum oxide is one of the hardest materials out there (and definitely way harder than aluminum metal). it's still the same compound that forms naturally from exposing bare aluminum metal to oxygen. anodizing is just special because it's a somewhat thicker layer and it's colored. the point was that aluminum oxide is tenacious and protective on the surface of aluminum, while rust is not.

the phenomenon is known as galvanic coupling (or a galvanic couple). almost any dissimilar metals in contact with each other will corrode when there's a mobile electrolyte (water). indeed, this is a problem with the 2 euro coins i believe, because the outer ring and the inner center of the coin will start to corrode after being handled by so many sweaty hands, getting wet in the rain, etc. the reason aluminums and stainless steels tend not to corrode under a lot of conditions is because they very readily oxidize and have a very adherent oxide layer, so almost any surface ever of aluminum is covered with a thin protective aluminum oxide layer, and almost any surface of stainless steel is covered with a thin protective chromium oxide layer (and then steel has iron oxide, but it doesn't protect so well). if you want to see the difference in how well the layers protect, go get a piece of rusty steel and scrub away the rust until you see bare metal. now get some anodized aluminum somethingorother and scrub away the anodizing, and it will be quite a bit more difficult. but yeah in the end, just use use plenty of grease. that will help keep them from being in direct electrical contact with each other, but also the rate of this kind of corrosion is likely going to be very low if it's not being bombarded by sweat all day.

how many do you need?

i can tell a difference, but you get used to it. i'm running 14g/3x both sides , but i don't see any reason at all why you would have to rebuild your wheel because of it. cranking down on the pedals causes a shit ton of flex, but you don't notice it as much because you're not stationary, like when on the rear.

what a bunch of crap. urethane is cheap and plentiful. find someone in the uk that does urethane casting, molded urethane parts or even some sort of supply warehouse like mcmaster. these services are not very high tech or rare...look at thomasnet.com - there are like 800 companies listed in the entire us that do this sort of thing. no one that makes brake pads knows anything about it when they start, and after that it's still extremely trial and error and empirical. your chances of finding a good material are just as good as anyone else's.

yeah i was thinking about doing it with a coke can...i was just wondering if anyone had tried it, because taps and such are surely going to put much more stress on a headset than just riding down the street.

i hear about people with old road frames with slightly ovalized headtubes shimming their headset with no problems....but has anyone ever tried it on a trials bike and had it work worth a damn?

what size disc is the mount made for?

it should go lower? i wrote to him once because it wouldn't go below 24T, and i thought he lowered it to 16t. write him an email...he'll change it.

one thing...there's at least one grammatical error in this brochure, so you might want to go over it more carefully before you submit it. the one i saw is "whether your bailing..." at the beginning of the second page. should be "whether you're bailing..." the gear does look f**king awesome though. and cool that you're using d3o....have you seen they're sponsoring a design contest? might be worth entering these things in to it.

why don't you try this: http://www.peak.org/~fixin/personal/fmu/php/fixmeup.php

i used to get this a lot in my earlier days of riding comps. the problem is hopping! i just think back to beginner sections where you'd be riding, approach a rock, stop, hop for 10 seconds (long time), get front wheel on it, hop some more, get on top, hop some more, ride off until next rock, hop, etc... i think if you work towards becoming smoother/faster/more confident (good goals in general) in your riding, you'll experience this a lot less.

you guys are right about which high quality tools to have...my roommate has a toolset very similar to this, and the spoke wrench and bb tool are complete shit. tolerances are all off on the spoke wrench, and the bb tool comes out of the splines very easily, ruining the bb/tool interface.

you can also drill out the pins easy enough. less destruction.

this is the wrong way to set it up. you should read the manual on the avid website....setting it up right makes such such SUCH a big difference...seriously do this. you'll be blown away.

This was something I was wondering, mostly because of a few months ago when this year's koxx days videos came out. It seemed like a good year-long milestone for "state-of-the-art trials has progressed this much since last year". But no...the koxx days videos this year looked a lot like the ones from previous years. Practically indistinguishable. So I wonder, just how is everyone improving then? Are things topping out or am I just missing it?

rebuilding is really the best option. i think if you've broken one, it's hard to get the rest of the wheel back in appropriate tension when you replace it, and then they all start dying off left and right. i went through about as many spokes on a road wheel before it became too much of a pain in the ass.

you have your reference and i have mine. i'll make sure to keep an eye out for people recommending viz over koxx or the holm over the hog because soandso got the width and center ridge size just right and it makes for a tremendous difference in strength. i find it strange and very doubtful that kris holm, in an even more niche market than bicycle trials, would have this company go clearly out of its way to make this rim out of something other than 6061 (since all of their other rims are made of 6061), especially given the blatantly obvious cheesiness of the koxx/viz rims. something tells me your 3rd hand source is sketchy. in the end, the dx-32 is the only one made of 7075, with the exception of maybe the echos. that's what's going to last.

official facts? see: http://www.trials-forum.co.uk/forum/index....35entry781635 i quote: Mike Poyzer @ Onza: "We collaborate a lot with Kris Holm on Unicycle projects and I can tell you that the rim is exactly the same rim as the Onza ground hog without the hole drillings. It is also the same as the Viz, Koxx and several others. I believe that the wear line is being dropped as he has had several failures with rims splitting along the wear line. This is not a good feature for trials riders. If we produced the rim without drillings or side wall grinds it would be about the same price" the company that makes the hog, koxx, viz, holm rims is called hsin chuan. i have dealt with them and they will make the rim in a variety of widths, in a variety of drillings, including hole shape, with/without brake line indicator, and with anodizing or powder coating (such as vincent's dayglo and white rims). in the end, it is the same damn alloy pushed through a different die and with a different drill bit in. they are all the same.

QUOTE(deanie-b @ Apr 11 2006, 03:23 PM) ←No real loss.... I just hope they get up & running again, Otherwise we'll have a nasty influx of bad-assed americans too late gangsta! mickey d's word!

blowtorch is such an easy way to do this. place the flame for like a minute per pad until you can't smell things burning off anymore. i've done my same set of pads like 4 times, no problems ever with the heat causing things to crack. once they're cool enough to handle, wipe them down with a wet paper towel to remove some of the char and you're good to go. you can do the whole thing in 15 minutes.

all the numbers i find seem to show that britian is damn close to the us in terms of overweight and obesity percentages, and that several countries in africa seem to hold the spot for lowest average iq. but that doesn't make for good american bashing does it? try a little harder next time.