F-Stop Junkie

Eh? Which bit of the pistons? And why? There is no interface there which could benefit from grease...

My Dad made one from a kit, but it had half a dozen different games on I think. Being orange doesn't narrow it down much, I think everything was some shade of orange or brown in the late 70s/early 80s. Just look at your toddler photos poopipe Oi! Bloody young people with their house music and their drugs and their funny trousers. Some national service would do you all good! You couldn't say things like f**k in my day! Would have made Vera Lynn faint!

Especially ones where you could win a prize, or collect for gifts?

Yeah! The 500ml ones! It was like being allowed a kingsize mars bar when you're young. Was great. Then the bottles came along, and our lives changed. Try it with a can of Relentless now, it's still good

Ok, this is a fairly long post, but it's worth reading. Remember, a looked after drive train will not only last longer - saving you money! - but is less likely to skip, jump or for the chain to break. Look after your chain, and it'll look after you! I think there's a lot of people who run bikes until they start to go wrong, then wonder why. Trials is a killer for chains, high torque and small sprockets mean high tension, and lots of stretch. When a chain wears it stretches and doesn't sit right on sprockets and chain rings, and this causes premature wear. No problem if you can replace a £10 sprocket, but potentially it's causing extra wear to your pricey new freewheel. Want to know how worn your chain is? Sheldon Brown has an excellent article on it: So now you're measuring your chain for wear and replacing it before it does any damage, what should you do to look after it? Again, go back and read the article as he has many good things to say. Having worked as a mechanic for several years, I'd add a couple of pointers A light lube is great in the summer. It doesn't attract dirt and should last well if you don't wash the bike too vigourously. In the winter though, either switch to a heavier lube or apply a light lube frequently.Once you're in the habit of lubing your chain, make sure you clean it every two or three lubes, especially when using a heavier oil! There is nothing worse than adding layers and layers and layers of oil onto a chain, as it mixes with dirt and grit to form a grinding paste, and bye bye chain.Do not use motor oil. Please.I should point out here that when I'm talking about lube, I mean proper stuff - Pedros, Finish Line, Black Gold. WD-40, GT-85 and 3-in-1 oil are not chain lubes. They're not designed to stay on your chain, or bare the loads put on a chain. What WD40 and GT-85 do well is disperse water. Spraying some on a chain after a wet ride will help push water out the chain and stop rust forming within it. Also spraying it on the frame will help stop mud sticking to it while you're riding. BTW, the difference between WD40 and GT-85 is this; WD40 evaporates away (not good for chains!), but GT-85 leaves behind a thin film of Teflon. Neither is good for chains, but I prefer GT-85 for lubing cables and things like that. Be careful though when you're spraying canned lubes around, as once they're in the air it's easy to contaminate discs and pads. For chains, it's much better to use a dropper bottle and just put a little oil on each link. Give the pedals a few turns, then - if possible - leave to stand to allow the oil to really penetrate. If you're using a heavy oil, it's ok to run the chain through some kitchen towel or rag, just applying a little pressure to the side plates. You're not trying to get it off the top and bottom of the chain, but cleaning up the side plates will keep your trousers a bit nicer. As for greases, best thing to do it go to a car shop, and get a tub of grease. It's cheap, and most bike shops do exactly the same thing. Lithium grease is wax based, so it tends to break down and wash out more easily than petrolium based grease. Best bet is to stick with something fairly sticky and transluscent. If you're using lithium grease now, then no worries. It's also a good idea to have some anti-seize (also known as coppa-slip, copper grease, or assembly compound) if you're working with titainium. It's pretty specialist, and not essential. For general maintenance, I firmly believe in if it ain't broke, don't fix it. That said, if you've been riding a lot in wet weather, or a lot of mud, then it's worth picking and afternoon and stripping down bearings if you have loose (rather than cartridge) bearings. Pack in plenty of good grease, and you'll be good to go. Don't worry about servicing cartridge BBs, as there's nothing you can do. Run those till they die, then get a new one. Same for any cartridge bearings. If you do wash your bike, be very careful with any sort of high pressure hose or jet wash. These will push the grease out of bearings, hubs, BBs, and also lube out of chains. They're fine for rinsing a frame tube or tyre, but bearings need care and attention! As for wheels, find a good local wheelbuilder. They will be a great asset. If you are having constant problems with a wheel, ask them to retension it, as that will probably solve your problems, and give a stronger wheel to boot. Also, a tighter spoke does not mean a stronger wheel!

I know I'm getting on. I chose a sensible car with reasonable mileage and a good safety record over something fast as heck with 120,000 miles on it. I just used the expression 'fast as heck'. When the 'music' on Radio 1 just turned into noise, I tried Radio 2 and really quite liked it. I pay into a pension scheme. House prices worry me. People younger than me are now pop stars, Formula 1 drivers and 'celebrities'. I don't understand why 90% of people are 'celebrities' these days. I don't think the clothes in Next and River Island are cool or fashionable, they're just showing off, but the clothes in M&S are becoming increasingly appealing. I think how good it was when coke was 25p a can. I'm seeing fashions come around from when I was young to being cool again. I remember a time before the internet, reality TV, mobile phones, mountain bikes, and the two martins.

If all you're worried about is the mech banging on the frame, then just wind in the b-tension screw (the little cross head one poking out next to the mech hanger) and that will limit how far your mech can rotate and stop the banging.

Spin Spin Sugar - Sneaker Pimps, though I can't remember the mix. Saint by The Orbital is in there too. The good tracks though are Non-Stop Operation and What Time Is It? both by the Dust Junkie!

Metronome?

You really don't need to use the 350D manually like some cameras. Best bet is to use it in either green square mode, or if you want to control the ISO and metering then use P.

Caveat Emptor

Unless it's to Pete Wright.

If it's Pete Wright, then sell it to him. He'll make it compatible, or return it to the manufacturers as faulty with a big report as demanded by his NDA Anyone else, tell them. Not worth the potential hassle and guilty concience.

Nah, I say get a contact from Nadine for 'Mike', drop him a mail saying the thread will be pulled, and we'd like to discuss launching the frame to the forum (twelvety million members and counting) and did I mention we do targeted advertising?

The BB tap I used to use when I was a mechanic weighed, well, loads. I imagine it'd cost a fiver or more to send through the post. Also I used it sometimes on new frames just to clear out the threads and help the BB go in easily, it wasn't because the threads were damaged. However, it's easy to knacker the frame if you use the wrong end of a BB tap. Unless you know exactly what you're doing, I'd just take the frame down to the LBS and ask them to do it. Cheapest, quickest, safest way.

Please post bike pics in the bike pics sticky!

Can you do it? Yes. Adapters for forks are rare though. Would you want to do it? No. It would be rubbish.

The DMR catalogue had pictures of Eddie Tongue gapping one when it came out. Quite a few people had them at the time, but DMR got increasingly frustrated by trials riders returning kit under warrenty, and when the sidekick developed a following as a jump bike they continued to develop it alongside the trailstar, but without trials in mind.

Link And go easy with the punctuation, there's people in the third world without a single question mark or semi-colon, and you're throwing them around like toys! Conserve punctuation so those less fortunate can have some.

If you're getting paid to do this - and I assume you are - then by discussing what you're testing and so on then you're breaking non-disclosure agreements which are legally binding documents. Which is bad. Also, by providing a list of your suppliers, someone could send them posts you've put up here with kit that you've been testing, showing what you've been doing. Also bad. Stop being so condescending.

Pete speaks the truth. You can only advertise wanted and for sale in the main forum, not new members chat.

Right, computer networks 101. You can not find out the MAC address of a PC unless you are on the same physical (layer 2) lan. You can not even find out the MAC address of an internet facing network port unless you're on the same layer 2 lan. IP (Internet protocol) is layer 3 routable protocol which can traverse many physical lans. Any IP details (such as source and destination addresses) can be found out by examining the packets. This is why fancy web pages can tell you your external IP address. As MAC addresses exist at layer 2, and ping is IP based and therefore running at layer 3 upwards, you can not 'ping for MAC addresses'. The only way to find out the MAC addresses used on a network is to comprimise a multilayer device and use that to look it up. This can not be done some l33t skiddie with a point and click utility from outside the network. Any office of reasonable size will use two things to monitor internet access: a limited number of external addresses and auditable logging. The latter point these days is a Sarbanes-Oxley requirement under compliance law. Many companies now say in their staff contract that you are responsible for your internet usage, and any complaints will be traced back to the user in a heartbeat. As for utilities which can break 'any' network, it's very different from a home user with all default settings, to a properly secured network. To gain access without comprimising a machine within the network would neigh-on impossible, even for you Pete. For the record, I hold qualifications from Cisco and Checkpoint, I work with Verisign on a regular basis, and I have a degree in Computer and Network engineering where my final year thesis was "Security and Network Methodologies"

Polishing up the sidewalls will have no effect whatsoever on braking. With a little use there will be a layer of rubber over the braking surface anyway so they will then be identical. A smooth rim is a smooth rim. If you want to polish it for looks, then good luck to you. Only problem is that some grades of alloy used for rims are not high enough to get a decent shine on them.

The big problem with carbon fibre is delamination. If you give carbon fibre a good whack the layers within the carbon will separate, but from the outside it will look fine. Give it a second whack and it will fail catastrophically with far less force than it would usually withstand. In the Canadian Grand Prix, Oliver Panis suffered two broken legs when he crashed. What left him injured, but where others have been protected, was the fact that he hit one concrete wall and the car deformed and then it turned and he hit a second concrete wall. The carbon had delaminated as it should for a crash structure and it left little protection for him on the second hit. What this means for a trials frame is that if you give the downtube a good whack and delamination occurs, then a much smaller knock or heavy landing could cause the downtube to collapse. Similarly scratches and so on will cause stress risers with massive potential for premature failure. For a carefully looked after frame, ridden by a good rider for specific events, then it's fine. For an everyday bike for an everyday rider, the think alloy or steel.

To give an update on this, I've hit two big snags. 1) Good quality calenders cost a bloomin' fortune. While I could probably hit the £15 price mark, it would mean little or no donation to BiketrialUK which would be a bad thing 2) 98% of my shots are portrait style, while most 'we make your calendars' companies only supply calendars based around landscape style shots. Now if the sheet with the photo on is A4, then the image size is still A5, so not too bad, but not ideal. The only way around these two problems is to go with something custom printed. This is either more expensive for small quantities, or a reasonable price for 500 of the blighters. And I'm not about to take the chance and have 400 calendars left over. So what to do. Well this is where I need the help of the TF massive. If anyone knows of places that custom make calenders, then please PM me, especially if it's one you've used and can recommend. Any option - short of printing them myself - will be explored. The other option is that the calender is produced on a landscape orientation, but we use the white space to sell advertising. This will ensure that we hit a price point where people will buy, advertisers get a pack of keen trials riders staring at their logo for a month, and BiketrialUK get some money to help keep the sport going along. Given that we're approaching the end of the year quite rapidly, all thoughts and suggestions would be appreciated. Also could any of the retailers offering their services check the VAT status of calenders to ensure nothing is lost to the tax man there.