La Bourde

You have also the JOFR academy, 40/50 minutes away from Heilbronn. https://jofr.academy/

Be careful with reach adjust headsets. Most use external cups, which can increase the height of the headtube. Thus the head angle becomes slacker, and the wheelbase difference becomes negligible... It is the same for the reach. I saw some people using +8mm reach adjust headset with external cup to replace the integrated (or semi integrated) headset on their enduro or dh bike. The reach is almost unchanged, cause the external cup rises the headtube, shortening the reach... It is even worse when the head angle is slack (for example on a dh bike) or with a short wheelbase. So do the maths!

That is really funny. I know the problem with the moving bite point too, it is really an issue. To solve it, I just remove the wheel and pull the lever 3-4 times. That is enough for a couple of rides for a few months. But it get worse with time and I eventually bleed the brakes, which is something really easy compare to most other brakes. That is why I still ride some Shimanos. I hate Maguras. The levers are so bad, I don't want to ride with. On my HS33, it is still OK, I can accommodate with. But I don't like how weak they feel and if I could find better levers, I will go for them (A friend has some Jitise and he does not like them that much, he has to adjust them regularly cause the adjustment screw is always getting loose). And I am always pushing back the axle of the lever... A friend of mine has MT7 on his Inspired, he is constantly adjusting the lever, breaking some parts of it ... To me, they have to move away from this carbotecture. But the HS33 and MTx brakes are really powerful, easy to dose and with better levers, I would buy some disc brakes of them for sure. Sometimes I have the impression there is no good hydraulic disc brakes on the market... That is why I use some mechanical ones on my street/trial.

you are alright, the rotor seems contaminated on the picture. Sharp eyes! Did you wipe out the surface after spraying so brake cleaner? I found this article. These might explain why brake cleaner give a first wrong impression: James Alberts, SRAM's brakes Product Manager, has this to say: "Disc brakes work best when there is a consistent braking surface created by material transfer from the pad to the rotors. We have found that cleaning with isopropyl alcohol does a good job of maintaining this relationship while removing grime." Recently I observed that after cleaning my rims on my comp trial with these brake cleaner - I had dirty fingers and touch them, the HS33 wasn't loud and did not bite as it did. The rim is ground correctly though. I rode a little and then it went back to normal. I think this is because the pads material was no longer present. I used the brake cleaner a friend used in his car repair shop. There are different brake cleaners too : Hope told us "We recommend either methylated spirits or isopropyl alcohol as these both leave no residue on the rotors. Keep away from white spirit as this will leave an oily film. "If using brake cleaners make sure you use bicycle specific ones as car brake cleaners sometimes include oil to stop cast iron discs from rusting." They recommend to use soap. I am not sure it is a good idea though (Soap is created by mixing fats and oils with a base)

That shows that this market it not regulated. In some other industries, it won't be possible to release such parts. Some MTB stems are dangerous, they have sharp edges on the back ... I never understood that too. You have also some parts that are designed without doing FMEA (Failure Mode and Effects Analysis). It is so obvious ... Shimano does FMEA and that is why the brake bolts have an extra retention system or the brake lever has this pin to remove it from the bar. But don't expect this from other brands ... I heard it comes from the Japanese regulation which seems to be more exigeant.

I use only organic pads. Either stock pads or Trickstuff power. This is how I proceed when I have trouble with pads: I first spray a good brake cleaner on the pads before I burn them. When they are contaminated, a black/gray smoke is produced. As long as they are hot, I spray some brake cleaner further. After they cool down, I send them to remove what the brake cleaner dissolved. My next step is to spray some brake cleaner on the rotor and to whip it with a tissue. If there was some oil, the tissue gets some black marks. I repeat this step with a clean tissue until there is no mark visible on the tissue. To finish I sand the rotor slightly. Mostly the first brakings are not so powerful (maybe because I sand the rotor and pads), but after a few brakings, I have a good result. Something a friend and I noticed with Shimano organic brake pads: somehow, after a long period not being used, they do no brake correctly as if they were contaminated. Sometimes they are even loud. After a 10 minutes ride in mud, they brake again as they used to. I read also some similar feedbacks on different forums. Our assumption was, that it has to do with winter and wet roads contaminated with oil. But somehow I had this on my DH bike and I don't ride with it on the road ... So the next hypothesis was that the pads somehow oxidized. Executing the procedure I described above solved this issue.

I have the old blocky ones and I filed the sharp edges to round them. I hurt my self many times, my ankle still has a mark. I have no idea how they came to this design!

The prices of the brakes are quite crazy I agree. On the other side, they are made in Germany in the black forest, with high quality standard, good material and respect of the environment (at least they communicate on this). It is a niche product too. I doubt the 6 piston caliper of your VW has the same quality. The rotors are also made in Germany. They are more expensive than other brand but they are still affordable. (For my hobbies, I prefer to buy a product which is locally produced and/or in respect to the environment. This is just my hobby, it is not so important if I do not ride the best bike ever. There is more to get from training than from better parts. But this is just my opinion. I love to try new stuff though!)

Did you consider the Trickstuff Dächle or Dächle UL? They are 2.05mm thick (if the diameter is superior to 160mm for the UL) and the UL version has a lot of cut-outs. They have also a good call. A friend of mine prefers the Dächle to the Shimano XT. They are quite expensive though. I stick to the Shimano RT66.

Removing anodization is easy. You don't need to sand the part. Just put the parts in drain cleaner for 2 minutes and you are done. For a perfect finish, you can polish the part.

Fully agree. I like those brands that just do small incremental changes. I got you right and I agreed with you, but I was thinking further. If a boutique brand really wants to get the most out of composites, then it could change the layups and geometry of the frame, like a steel frame builder will change the tubeset to fits his customer. That might be a real improvement, because between a 60kg and 110kg trial riders, the stiffness of the frame is not perceived the same way. To me, this could be really a decisive argument. As you said, I think most brands currently use a margin, because the level/weight difference between riders can be huge and also if they have a recall, it is much more expensive and difficult to execute than for a boutique brand (imagine if Apple as to recall its last IPhone ...). But in other industries (let's take the smartphone example further), I have the impression they test and control their production instead of dimension everything with a huge safety margin - maybe cause the market is much more competitive. There is also one aspect I would like to tackle. I think the current production of comp trials frames can be split in two categories only: the entry level (that is reduced to its minimum) and the competition like frames. I think the market lacks of a BT raven descendant. Something with a high bottom bracket (>+60), long stem/bar combo, long wheelbase (around 1080), but a little stronger (and heavier). Neither a street trial bike nor a comp bike. More a TGS bike. Crewkerz had the Desire, which is was more for the beginners, but was it stronger? I have an old Crewkerz Cleep 2 (that I really love), but I think I would have buy something a litte heavier and stronger, cause I don't compete and I am not such a good rider (more an advanced rider I guess). For me reliability is more important and I want a bike to try lines and push me out of my confort zone. As much as I love my Crewkerz, I sometimes avoid to try a new line to not damage the frame. Thanks for the inside Mark and Jere_h, this is really informative!

Maybe due to COVID and its consequence, there is still enough demand and small production batches, so that they don't care that much about customer. See how difficult it is to find some Inspired, Crewkerz or Waw products currently.

And at the end, because they did not change the tubing that much, the user has no advantage of it in term of stiffness, only the drawbacks to have proprietary stuff. But you can read "tapered" in the specs. Your point is valid I think. I am not sure how a boutique frame layup is taylored to fit the customer needs or whishes though. As far as I know, there was only one size available for the first Unno frame. The Atherton bikes seems to use the same tubing, only their length and the lugs differ. Do not forget that a chunkier frame bad dimensioned will also fail ... maybe somewhere else though. But I agree with you, I think big brands try to play safe here. To me the main problem is scalability. Being a manual process, laying up the carbon fiber into a mold cannot scale up properly without quality issues, or the cost will be enormous. Another problem is that a composite faulty frame cannot be recycled or down-cycled. It just goes to trash. So if you establish an adequate quality control, the faulty parts cannot be reused and cost you even more money (trash). This is not the case with aluminium frames, that can be down-cycled (and I think it happens really in the industry). It is not easy to check against voids and even less to judge whether they will really be a problem or not.

I think while Crewkerz and all the other brands do their best for the customer (or waht they think it's the best), the trial sport is such a niche that it is difficult to push the technical boundaries. And most owners of those brands are riders themselves. To me, I think already the current giants of the mountain bikes industry are still not taking real advantages of carbon. If you look at frames like the Last, Antidote or Unno, you will notice that they weight much less than the one from big brands. To build an Unno frame, the brand required between 20 and 50 hours (for the XC frame they said even more). It still done per hand (alternative like the Atherton bike with lugs required less time to assemble the bike, but you have to print the titanium lugs, which is crazy expensive and time consuming). That is why I think the trials brand shall focus further on aluminium instead of carbon. It seems to me that the whole MTB industry is still not so far with the composite technology. How can a niche brand access to this technology? A solution will be to develop in house the technology, but as Mark said, the molds (and autoclaves) are really expensive. And I am sure everyone will profit of use of standards instead of the proprietary stuff. But brand still don't understand that, like a lot of IT companies did not invest in open source software (but look how Microsofts opinion changed in this regard).

Good luck ... My AS30 crank from Crewkerz don't creak at all. I don't understand why people think pressfit cranks shall creak. That is such bullsh*t. It is like saying all headsets shall creak because they are also pressfit. The issue is not inherent to pressfit but to poor build quality, which is unfortunately common in the bike industry. From a mechanical point of view, pressfit is even better than thread BBs - the thread implies a slight non-concentricity. Clean is maybe less expensive, but is the quality the same? If it is the case, then Crewkerz is maybe too expensive right. Regarding carbon, this is a good material, if done correctly. If you take advantage of it, you can really reduce the weight and optimize the stiffness of the frame better than with other material (specific stiffness is higher than aluminium, steel and titanium). So the result can be excellent. But it has also drawbacks: developing is really expensive, and I doubt a lot of iterations with prototypes are done in trials (due to the small market and costs involved). Recycling is really bad (basically there is nothing done by the brands currently, they just ignore the problem) and often you cannot see the damages until it suddenly fails. Unfortunately injuries with carbon are really bad (sharp edges and splits of carbon can be difficult to remove). The build quality is also really important, having a void in the frame will basically drop significantly the local stiffness of it (factor 5 to 10). And I still doubt the quality of the current MTB carbon frames is really good (you can see a lot of production video where workers do not wear gloves, mask or a hat to prevent contamination). I don't know how trial frames are done though, maybe from some specialists.

Again a really nice video! The line at 1:21 is amazing and well filmed. Maybe you can film one of the show again? or how you prepare/train for it? It can make a good vlog too. Wish you a lot of fun during the shows!

Hi, sometimes youtube's algorithms work correctly ... I found this video really nice to watch. Hope you like it too.

Dies he still ride? He is also one of my favorite riders. His videos were always on point... His manual lines

I have also a Clean 135 (the splined version) and it skipped after a few rides. I think I bet it in correctly. It did not fit the splined interface well neither, I had to file it a little.

Hi, A few words about my own experience. My first trials moves were executed on a typical XC bikes from the nineties. I learnc the basics this way. Around 2004, I bought my first trials bike: a Koxx cheat code, with a geometry closer to a dirt bike than the current Inspired Hex. Later, I bought my first comp trial, a JB zark. I did not enjoy that much this bike. Many years after the bike was stolen, I bought my first street trial bike. Now I ride the fourth one and I really enjoyed it. But I bought recently a new Como bike, and it is a lot of fun too. It can be more frustrating though, cause it is not as versatile as the other one. I think i had to progress to enjoy the comp bike. I was surprise how difficult the new one was to get used to. A lot of basic moves are much more difficult due to the extreme position.

You are on FIRE!

Hi, if you want to ride in Stuttgart, do not hesitate to contact me. We are a small group of riders (4-5 riders). There are basically three big spots around Stuttgart: der "Park" close to Stuttgart Universität (close to the S-Bahn Station Stadtmitte), TGS/Street stuff Stuttgart Universität (S-Bahn Station Vaihingen), mix of TGS, Street and Comp Birkenkopf aka Monte Scherbelino, more for Comp trial Unfortunately, I don't know Heilbronn. You can also post on mtb-news.de, under the trial section. Hope to ride with you soon! I think one of my friend mentioned he meets someone from Heilbronn. Can ask him if he has still some contact with him.

Really like this edit! The riding and the music too... Dead meadow and colour haze both meet my taste.

Trickstuff power. The Tricksuff brakes have a really good call in MTB and I can tell you from experience that these brake pads are amazing! I never used EBC red unfortunately, but you won't be disappointed with the Trickstuff power.

Hi, The geometry of the current DJ bikes evolve a lot, 10 years ago the stays were 10 to 25mm longer than now. Be careful though, on some recent models designed for pumptrack, the stays are getting slightly longer again. But if you are looking for a bike to mainly ride street, go for a park frame. They have a bottom bracket much higher than the DJ but also really short chainstays, steep head angle. It's like a 26" BMX. You can ride a suspension fork on it. It is easy to throw, still a little harder than a 24" but it spins already really well. The DJ frames have a lower BB (and maybe a longer top tube) making the rotation more difficult. Here a list of park frame: Octane01 spark (cheap and great geo, no tapered headtube) NS majesty park (older frame) NS suburban park (older frame) current NS suburban (it has a tapered headset but a lower bb than the old park version) NS capital (brakeless, but the most playful from all listed) some Dartmoor I can't recall the name I built a street/trial bike based on an Octane01, you can see the result [url=https://www.trials-forum.co.uk/topic/199250-my-26-steel-streettrial/]here[/url]. A lot of fun, an really versatile: trials, pumptrack, park, street ... A street/trial like the Inspired Hex is also very nimble (the geometry is close to the Octane01 Spark).