shovel

once the wheel is all laced up and about half the threads is showing on each spoke its best to put a tiny bit of xc chain lube on each thread before you tighten the nipples up to the end of the thread, this makes it alot easier in future to true/tension the wheel and prevents any seized nipples as long as the wheel is also kept clean we do this at work with all wheels that are built and there are never any problems with them :lol:

my bike seems to be alright in the crap weather harsh grind and heatsink blues on back, very slight grind with same pads on front. no problems at all with brakes, very strong, even when the wet gets on them only thing that lets me down in the wet is front tyre, panaracer fire xc pro, bit on the slippy side :)

ermm, i can't remember what the difference between louise and the other disc that magura make, bled both recently at work but. . . you'll be able to tell by looking at it, if the grub screw uses a 3mm allen key then its the same as hs33

yeah Lance Armstrong may ride a Trek factory frame but it is a madone carbon frame which costs at least a grand. . . . . well at least that since the full build of a similar spec for joe public to buy is about four grand

you can bleed the brake like that but its a bit of a shortcut and the brake will feel crap you will need: -bleed kit (sirynge, tube, connecter for screwing into caliper) -mineral oil (preferibly magura blood) -allen keys -think magura resevoirs use a small torx bit, so that too lean bike up against wall, position brake lever so resevoir is sitting horizontal, fill up syringe with magura blood/any other suitable fluid, make sure there's no air bubbles in tube or syringe unscrew grub screw from disc caliper and srew in tubing using attatchment on bleed kit, only needs to be hand tight, now unscrew the resevoir top cap from the brake lever, you might want to put an old basin under the brake lever at this point pump the fluid through the syringe, you should see fluid overflowing from the resevoir at this point, keep doing this until the fluid overflowing looks like the new stuff and until theres no air bubbles coming out now replace the resevoir top cap and then remove the syringe and tighten the grub screw back into the caliper jobs a good un' :)

for forks echo urbans would be a good choice, i've just changed from a set of fatty-r forks to these in 4-bolt and they are very good, bit lighter about 10mm longer and a bit stiffer too, they're also available in 2 bolt mounts/disc option too, looking at £82 for them for the rear rim you won't want something too wide for the frame so an onza ronnie rim would probably be a good choice, about £35 for that i think the stem will come down to personal preference in the end but any of them would do, maybe 100mm 5 degree would be about right for what your doing, varies though, some people like long stems some like short, up to you on that one

very cool video, some real good riding too those backwards stoppies were amazing :)

yeah trials is quite cheap compared to other biking, although this year i've replaced everything on my bike apart from front wheel and brakes which i'm glad i did because i love my new set up, although it did take alot of saving (worked almost everyday during easter holiday to pay for my king :) ) most of us don't have suspension so we dont need to worry about buying it, servicing it etc and the cost of dh and high end xc/jump frames is getting quite a lot these days saying that though trials is hard on the bike and stuff will need replaced frequently, it does help with costs a bit though working in a bike shop :)

you missed out high roller dh super tacky 2.5" rear tyre very good tyre and has tones of grip, slightly better wear rate than the slow reezay too

sorry didn't mean to "bum" the echo rims to be more informative the wheel will not build up well if you can lace it up, by this i mean that it will be very hard to get completely true as spokes will be missing at points of the rim, this will also mean the balance of the wheel will be out and give excessive up and down movement to get the wheel even close to straight you will have to tighten some spokes alot and some not so much, so the spoke tension will be very uneven over both hub flanges, causing extra stress on the hub i'm guessing that you're not the smoothest rider and that's why you have resorted to a double rim like this, so with some big heavy impacts to the wheel it will add even more stress to the already stressed hub and thats what will kill your king and buckle your wheel very easily hope that helped :)

hmm, after spending all that effort welding two rims together it would be a shame to waste it by bodging up the wheel build, also it will void the warranty on your king sell "bob" and get yourself one of the new echo rims, its wide, strong and in 32 hole

deffinately a 2.5 st high roller on the rear personally i think the high roller is far better than the minion, i've been out riding recently at a spot that has alot of slate which is wet at the moment and the tyre grips alot on it, in the dry its pretty amazing too, also if you look at the shape of the tread on the high roller it looks a lot squarer and like it will grip on the edge of things more than the minion would as for the front tyre i'm not too sure, i run a panaracer fire xc pro 2.1 because its cheap, light and a good width, although in the wet its slippier than a slippy thing

re-bleed them with magura blood, that way you won't void your warranty so if there are any more problems with the pistons you can return the brakes and get them fixed

i think you should run your bike the same all the time, theres not really much point needing to faf about with changing components over before comps with tyres its different though, you could keep a set of new tyres and use them for comps as they would have tonnes of grip although not really much point as it means buying an extra set of tyres (Y)

there are two other video clips in his profile part of the site that video is very cool, some really crazy lines there in his profile it says: eats:sugar-for hyperactivty sounds familiar, eh ben

my toxsin, just replaced my fatty-r forks with some 4-bolt mount urbans last night and the front end feels so sweet now, bit lighter and just feels awesome apart from that the best mod i've probably ridden would be towlers echo team, its real nice, like the feel of the 05 maguras and just the general ride of the bike

its not really as easy as banging the axle out and in from the hub, hope make a tool kit that some shops will have that includes bearing drifts and also specially designed seats for the hub to rest on so the axle can be removed in order these tools are quite important as they stop the cartridge bearings from being damaged when the axle is being removed or inserted you can try it yourself but it will take alot of time and patience to get right as i'm pretty sure the axle is thicker inside the hub so bearings on one side will get knocked out and need pressed back in

i normally find its best grinding with a newish disc as the edges of the disc are still nice and square so it'll dig more sharply into the rim and give you a better grind but yeah slowing the grinder down should make a big difference as if its too fast it'll be too fine and really smooth which is alright for the front, but not the rear

yeah by doing this you've changed the geometry that the bars were designed around, therefore you're putting strees on points of the bars where its not designed to be they'll snap, you'll hurt yourself, put the grips back to normal and start saving :P

i used to wear a piss pot style helmet, but usually they are quite poorly ventilated and you end up sweating so badly out on your bike a while ago i bought a giro e2 helmet and it's really good, one of the higher end xc ones so its very light, comfortable and it also has brilliant ventilation to keep you cool :P

clean off all that tar from the rims and put a nice harsh grind on the rear rim accompanied by some heatsink blue pads, i've been running this for a while and never have any problems with the brake, the pad wear rate is also very good on a harsh grind it also helps if the brake is set up well, you want to have the pads square to the rim so when the lever is pulled the pad makes full contact with the centre of the braking surface, this will reduce the spongy feel of the lever and make it work alot more effectively if you need any help on grinding rims do a search for "grind" or "rims" etc and you'll find some decent info

was doing papers on my bike few years ago, front brake locked on in a gutter at the side of my road, over the bars i went followed by bike. caged pedal punctured a small hole in my head through my beanie (was really cold + was only doing papers so thought i wouldn't need helmet (Y) ) beanie was soaked in blood and had to get the hole glued up at A&E after about a 3 hour wait

not sure about that, i use easton ea70 mid rise bars tilted forward a bit with a thomson elite stem 100mm 5degree stem (both of which are more mtb items than trials specific, especially bars) on my toxsin and it rides really good

most of the riding i do is on my own since there isn't much trials riders in Aberdeen city, i do ride with other friends from work and other trials riders sometimes i like to watch trials vids that i download over and over and watch better riders techniques, this gives me motivation to go out and practice and try and make my own technique better so i can gap further or get up bigger obstacles etc. i like to go out sometimes and just ride smaller stuff to keep my balance and practice new moves, then go out into town and ride bigger things continually trying to push myself you also gain motivation by keeping your bike well maintained, i hate riding my bike if the brakes aren't working well or if my bikes dirty so i always keep it clean and make sure everythings working perfectly when i am out with other riders like ben, towler, darren, then i do like to push myself and try differnt lines they're trying its all about having that urge to be better, but most importantly to have fun (Y)

some pretty awesome riding there, really cool video keep it up :P