Mike Poyzer @ Onza

I hope the "industry" jibe was not aimed at me. My post was not in any way critical of the company, frame or anything else. I would never criticise a competitor on an open forum or any where else. It was merely my observations on our experience with Titanium, which as we all know, if it was that good it would have taken over by now. A competitive advantage would soon be funded no matter what the cost, as is the case in most sports these days. We have dabbled with Titanium now for 4 or 5 years as Rob Poyser will confirm. He used one of our prototypes for a while. It is certainly not the high cost which has kept us from releasing any Titanium frames on to the market.

Its probably made by Ora Engineering in Taiwan as there are very few manufacturers in the world who make titanium frames ( even less now that Morati have ceased production in the Czech republic - they made some prototypes for us a few years ago). Titanium is still a controlled metal and you don't just wack one together in your garage. It requires expensive and difficult techniques to fabricate and you cannot just produce cnc parts to weld into it like you can aluminium. Thats why the frame looks like it does, as all you can really vary is the sizes and angles. You still end up with a basic diamond shape. We have had long discussions with Ora in Taiwan to produce a titanium competition T-Rex but we have always hit problems. Top class riders like Chris will handle a frame like that without causing too many problems and ride it well. Let some of the rest of you loose on it though and its a recipe for disaster. The problems with Titanium and Trials are a, Its expensive, in both materials and construction. b, Your building blocks are basically tubes. c, The chainstay into bottom bracket is always going to be a weak point because of (. Name me a trials frame, with the exception of some steel frames, that doesn't have a cnc b/b yoke in some form. That is because tubes welded straight into the b/b on a trials frame will eventually fail because of the constant battering they receive. I will be interested to see if it gets into production.

To get back to the point,we are in discussions at the moment with the organisers and it is planned to run it again. Nothing is yet signed and sealed so format and content are still under negotation. Thats all I can say at the moment but it will hopefully go ahead.

Thats the patented bit which delayed the launch a week or two. We just now have to work on the weight to get it competition ready.

Didn't Vario have a frame almost identical 5 or 6 years ago?

The half price replacement is done directly with us no matter where you bought it. It basically has no limitations so we replace it half price whatever the problem. You can hit it with a sledge hammer if you want. it is basically a goodwill policy which recognises the abusive nature of trials riding. I would not go as far as to say that we still make money out of it. The only proviso is that you must return either the complete frame or the bottom bracket sawn out which must also show the frame number.

We have Alex DX32 rims in stock in 19" by 36 hole. We also have the 19" drilled hog rim which is the same as Kris's rim but wider 48mm instead of 42 mm ( we use the same manufacturer). We also have the drilled Ronnie rim in 19" with 36 hole.

Sorry to come in late on this topic but I have been away for a couple of weeks. I do feel that there are still points to be made. Our Tensile brand uses the subtext "optimum" on all our products and we feel that it is a fair reflection of our position. We have been developing this freewheel for over two years now as many will confirm. We have tried many different combinations and have had a prototype of a 96 click version for over a year. We settled on a 60 click with 3 sets of two pawls operating on a 20 tooth ring. This gives a sizeable tooth pick up size and a short travel distance for the "hammer" effect which in our opinion is the main killer of pawls. The 108 click freewheel is no great leap of technology. It just means the same three pairs of pawls operating in a 36 tooth ring. This means you sacrifice tooth depth for increasing clicks. We feel that the optimum is our chosen path and we have exhaustively tested the various options over a long period. Time will tell whether our decision is correct but we have sold now over a 1000 worldwide and orders are still flooding in. We are a British company and although made abroad the profits come back here to the UK. Our freewheel is available now to sell and has had excellent reviews both here and abroad. As always though you pay your money and take your pick.

The 50 mm version of the Onza Citrus pads will be the first available. (a couple of weeks or so). Expect a very keen price. Also available at the same time will be the Vee Brake converter fittings which will allow you to use any Magura style pad on Vee brakes.

We have a full professionally edited DVD available at £9.99.

Oh, and the new Onza Pro sealed headset.

Price is the same but it has the new ultra lite Onza Pro front sealed hub (1.50 grams) and an RB booster.

It is now fitted with new Onza Lite Guy, with one piece steerer and disc mounts only ( weight 750 grams). Still awesome though. Oh, and Tensile freewheel.

First of all the Zip frame is twice the cost of a T-Pro frame. It is made in Taiwan not China and is a much higher quality. Its normal retail is cheap because it is our no frills consumer direct brand and is designed to be sold only as a frame, not a complete cycle. We do not sell the T-Pro frame seperately only as a service replacement. We have only made the Zip available as an optional build because we were asked to by several people. If we built a Zona Zenith T-Rex bike it would be at least £150 more than a standard T-Rex. Just because its a cheap frame retail that doesn't mean it is lower quality. With Zona's its quite the reverse, it just means we make less profit.

The first 500 are now ready. 100 to Japan, 100 to Hong Kong, 100 to the USA and 200 here. Ours leaveTaiwan this weekend and should be with us Tuesday

Zona is our budget brand. As I have said many times, there is no advertising, point of sale, promotion or sponsorship. No R & D, no feedback from riders and no testing. We just modify tried and tested designs to bring you frames which are affordable, ridable and are exceptionally good quality. So yes many people will see this as copying but surely this is the best form of flattery. As has been said, we have only produced two frames but more will follow. Mr Bike Riders comments are just part of his ongoing campaign against anything we produce. We certainly spend more time, effort and money on design and development of trials frames, parts and bikes than many of his favourite brands and his comments as ever are treated by us with contempt.

At least we keep the same brand names and don't bring out a new brand with every frame.

Chainstays 375mm, BB 25mm, wheelbase 1070mm all based on a 400mm fork. Weight is approx. 2.2 kilo's. Anything else you wanted to know. And yes we do send the Kool chains out in hundreds and they are the same Kool chain sold most other places at twice the price, and I thought Decca was on old record label. Nice to see Wayne's insecurity with his over priced Koxx manifesting itself in the sort of cheap jibes he has always criticised in the past. The frame is a very nice gloss finished metallic gunmetal colour and is worth a lot more than the headset. All in all another great deal.

I know this has been a long time coming but I can finally announce that the first 200 Tensile freewheels will be with us week commencing 8th of May.

Just wanted to give you all the definitive story after reading such a diverse range of theories, rumours and some half truths. As you perhaps do not know, we own the Onza (and Tensile) brand names on a virtual world wide basis. For several years now our sales have been growing throughout the world and we distribute from here in the UK but also increasingly from our base in Taiwan. The UK was therefore the only country where we distributed to shops and directly to the public. Sales have grown to such an extent that we had to make a decision. Do we expand our UK workforce with sales people and credit control staff etc. or do we find a distributor to take all that side off our hands. We decided to plump for the latter and after some long discussions with various companies we decided to plump for Moore Large and Company. They already distribute, Haro, Schwinn and various other brands and they have a ready made operation for sales etc. We came to an agreement and as of 1st of April we appointed them UK distributors of Onza and Tensile. They are purchasing much of our stock but we will continue to sell it as well, until we run out of everything. From that point ML will take deliveries directly from our Taiwan operation. I stress that we still own and control totally the brand names and the products. A complete new range is currently under development for launch in August. We still control marketing, design and promotions including teams and sponsored riders. It just means that Onza and Tensile products should be available in a much wider range of shops. At the same time that we decided on this course of action we decided to get out of retail entirely so looked to rent out the shop portion of our premises ( only about 20% of our floor space). It just so happened that at this time Raleigh were looking for premises for a flagship Cycle Life store in Nottingham. We therefore did the deal and they plan to open the shop on June 1st. The whole change will give us a lot more time to do what we do best which is to design and develop new product. The deal in no way affects our other brands at the moment ie. Guess, Conspiracy, American Classic, X-Fusion Shox, Spinner Forks etc. etc. which we will continue to distribute. Our UK head office remains here and will do for the foreseeable future. I hope that clears things up.

This info. was from Maxxis in Taiwan where they make them. It was their reply after we placed orders for tyres for our 2006/2007 bikes.

I don't know the reasons and as far as I am aware they are just dropping the one compound. No news on price changes at this stage. Super Tacky is just a soft compound. Slow reezaay also has a slow rebound. In other words it resumes its moulded shape much more slowly.

Just been informed by Maxxis that they have ceased producing Slow Reezaay tyres. All our bikes that currently take them will have to have Super Tacky in the future. I don't know if it is for commercial reasons or something else, but it will have an effect. They are very popular with our customers and it seems a strange decision.

The first ten production samples of Tensile freewheel will be here end of next week, for reps, promotion etc and the rest will be available aftermarket boxed in May.

It is certainly novel as it cures a problem voiced many times on this forum. If it was obvious it would have been done a long time ago. Standard Magura mounts have been around for many years now and the advent of wider rims some years ago would surely have produced this result some time ago if it was "obvious". It was not merely moving holes but is an offset design which is reversable and greatly extends the scope for rim widths. This was our idea and concept and the patent has been lodged before last christmas. If accepted at the search stage it will be extended worldwide during the priority period. It will be our policy in the future to patent all our new ideas, to stop copying and protect our business.