Sponge

Yup, we are going for sure! See everyone there! Saturday Sunny Intervals Max: 5°C Min: -3°C

I've sent across 2 PMs, Tim. As for Abdab, I am shocked to see what's going on. As soon as I read this morning that there was some issue, I called Abdab straight away to see what was happening. From what he said, he told me: 'I got my mum to send it off the saturday before last'. If this is true, then it's going missing in the post and needs to be resolved. I agree, Abdab not responding is very frustrating and doesn't help the matter at all. It is always frustrating when people ignore you when you are in need. As I said in the PMs, I will do my best to get to the bottom of this, and see what's going on. I've tried contacting him on MSN these past hours, but no reply. I have his mobile number though. If I can help, let me know. Sponge

Just curious Nick, but just how does one go about snapping a BB7 caliper?

Yes, crucial thing I forgot to mention. Montys break far too easily. Yes I know they are 'comp' frames, but that doesn't mean purposefully designing them to break... heck any fool can imitate the geometry, and to be honest Kamels aren't that much lighter than a decent Deng frame. People buy Monty for the name, and because Cesar, Ot Pi, and Comas all get big time big 'dolla' glory in the world competitions. .. it's all propaganda, and it's all a bit superficial. Not to mention, the quality, and warranty is pretty wack... Heck, Koxx are similar but at least their frames are actually very neat and 'cutting edge'. I do say too that the frames are probably stronger than Monty too.

The 08 rim-brake Lites might ride fine; but their design is horrid. -6061 aluminium (fine, it's OK.. but Ultra 6 or 7005 are simply better?) very very soft metal, and just a very bog standard material. Nowadays the choice material for low-end frames. -enormously large dropouts (which is the common crackpoint for the 08 rim-brake Lites in particular) {NB: 08 Disc Lites and 06 and 07 rim brake Lites don't really suffer from this as their dropouts are a different design) -Unnecessarily low-slung design.. makes it look so squashed and smaller seattubes generally mean flexier overall chassis. I would really advise going for the 07/08 Echo Team, those are strong and very beefy. They are actually somewhat elegant in their design, what with the in-built booster, Ultra 6 tubing, and more dent-resistant downtube. Only a few grams more than a 'Lite', but so much better in other aspects. 08 Lite discs are fine frames too. Monty frames are a con. No really, Monty heads should stop being so proud of 'traditional gear'... seriously, Monty's frames are very very poor in aesthetics, and design to a degree. It's all very backwards. The dropouts are always the cheapest everywhere and the higher end frames cost nearly 1000 pounds (yes just a frame!).. just look at the 221/231 Kamel, it's about 900 pounds for the frame and the dropouts are really pretty disgraceful... it's just a stamped sheet plate of metal.. not to mention it IS cheap, horrid, and the chainstays/seatstays on the 221PRs and maybe the Kamels, have open-ended tubing. Not the end of the world.. but not ideal.. Heck, Onza and Deng's budget frames are burlier and 5x cheaper than Kamels and feature way better dropouts and overall mechanical design. Montys don't even have solid chainstay yoke pieces... it's become a modern standard these days and for good reason! Improved stiffness and MUCH higher resistance to bashing and crushing from failed taps and sidehops. Why can't Monty just catch on? If they weren't the 'original' biketrials brand, and were an altogether new brand, would YOU really want to buy their Kamel FRAME ONLY for 900 pounds? I could think of much better things to spend my money on (Deng/other frame, food, party, travel, and more to boot...). Monty rant over

Yeah, that is a bit of a problem that needs correcting. It's a damn pain and a half trying to remove freewheel when you haven't got a vice around!

Yeah it's the real thing; very very abused and the downtube is a warzone. Chainstays aren't dented though, but I guess they are pretty thick after all. Yeah the geo was really bizarre at first, since the front end wasn't all that long, and the back end is a shade shorter than production pythons. Felt a tiny bit small for a Python at first, but now it's fine. Very very controlled feeling but there is that major downside of it handling like a barge. Streety stuff just isn't gonna happen comfortably, even if I'm using a huge stem. The booster is a little alternative yes! Fairly eagle-eyed observation there. The end of it has a little cut out, whilst the front pointing bit isn't stuck against the toptube, there is a little gap. Bashguard mounts were never on it to start with since it was a prototype. I believe that this was the proto for which Deng was experimenting to see how a mod handled no-bashplates. Hence the release of the first properly-designed-in-mind bashless mod, the 2005 Python. This frame here lacks the bash nub on the right chainstay yoke though.. It's also got old-style toptube cable guides with two opposite facing prongs, so I don't need hose clips; twas convenient. I am impressed how long it's lasted too, and I plan to be riding this for a while. Geometry feels spot-on for standard traditional trials moves; but yeah, manuals and bunnyhops aren't too nice, as there isn't a 'flick' when you pull the front wheel up from just rolling.

It's most probably your chain length. Try and shorten it down a link or so. Post up a picture of your bike's dropout area; I suspect that your axle is near the ends of the dropout slots. With a shorter chain, the axle should be closer to the innermost part of the slot... so pulling on snail cams will make it pull out a few mm. If you find you can't shorten the chain because it's already slightly shortish (but still slightly too long...), then try and get a new chain. Older chains tend to be stretched and so the length is affected. There is always a really 'inconvenient' length on chains, where it's slightly too long to have decent consistent tension and it's slightly short so that taking it down 1 link won't fit on your drivetrain. If that's what you suffer from, then get a new chain. But yeah, just try shortening the chain a tad first.

On the ISIS BB i'm using, which is the Echo TR one, they are supplied with a little thin washer ring for each side of the axle. Basically it' meant to slide on and have the cranks press against it. Without it, my cranks don't stay on tight. Look on Tartybikes and you'll see the little washer rings i'm talking about. Also, try and get new bolts, and put blue loctite on it... it'll make it a damn stiff and squeaky process if you want to ever extract the bolt, but in the mean time it completely eliminates the chance of the bolts vibrating loose.

This just backs up my reason for never wanting to buy from a European trials brand. (with one or two minor exception perhaps) to be honest 2.5 months of play riding is a joke for a frame to die. You should see the condition of the frame I'm riding now, it's what, a bit over 4 years old now?...

As with most Pythons I've ridden: awesome leverage for gaps and sidehops. Awesome leverage which no other bike I've ridden has given! But at a cost... no flicky feeling when pulling up the front end into a manual or bunnyhop (even with a 20mm spacer and 180x40 stem! ). Damn! Unless anyone's got any ideas how to get it to be able to pull up flickily? Ultra-rise bars of some sort? haha.. Leeds 18th here it is again!

Try-All tyres, Monty Eagle Claw, and Maxxis are all soft and sticky compound tyres that are popular for street and natural. Try-All tyre out of these three are the heaviest, and Maxxis is 1042g (sad that I know it off by heart...) and Monty is 996g. As for front tyres: Try-All is the lightest here (unlike on the rear), with Maxxis and Monty trailing a little behind on the weight factor.. all grippy compounds Onto Echo, these are the heaviest modern tyres, and aren't a sticky soft compound like the other three, it's more of a solid compound with very hard treads. Rolls better, it is noticable. A tad thinner than all three of the above tyres even if the stated 'geo' is 19x2.5 and 20x2.00. Get 'em if you want, but they are a bit generic. Try-All rear tyre has by far got the most solid sidewalls. It is pure beefy rubber; whereas if you look at the Monty EC and Maxxis CC both of their rear sidewalls are slightly papery and you can see thread outlines. Echo's sidewall is sorta in between the Try-All and Maxxis/Monty. For front tyre, get a Try-All. For the rear tyre, get the Monty it's basically a Maxxis CC V2... lighter, bouncier, and less pinch-prone. (this is a popular weight weenie setup ) Try-All rear is a very very good tyre, and in my opinion, the most solid all-round tyre. It definitely has the best manufacture and design quality about it. Slightly heavier than Monty and Maxxis but lighter than Echo. Atsuya (the Japanese wheelie/manual/stoppie kid) uses them, so does Keita Miyaoka and Marco Groesnik... all of which are very 'streety' mod riders. Take your pick EDIT: aimed at the post above mine... From a factual standpoint.. Maxxis CC wear out the fastest of all tyres (judging from the 11 Maxxis CC's that Joe Hodges and myself have used) and Try-All do actually last longer. Try-All lasted both of us a surprisingly long time.... and we've used 6 between us. Maxxis is a total no-no if you're aiming at a Danny Mac style.. since it's totally suited to short-term natural performance instead of drawn-out long-lasting fast-rolling street. And to the point about people not getting rear Try-Alls is because of the relatively higher price of them and the fact that some weight weenies dislike the extra 50g or so it has over a Maxxis... (not because Try-Alls wear quicker... that's totally untrue, and feel free to challenge me on that ) Performance-wise, the Try-All and Monty are far superior to Maxxis CC.

Firstly I do advise you change your display name and signature. Not trying to sound rude but people don't really care that much about what bike you ride or are getting, it just all looks very childish. Again, I don't mean to sound like a dick! In a few years' time you'll look back and think 'god that looks babyish'... But to the point... Echo Lite 06s are good! From a design and strength perspective I like them far more than the horrid 08 Echo Lites. The 08 Lites seem to suffer a lot from dropout cracking, and thy do have excessively large dropouts... for what reason? I'd try and get a decent geo'd frame first and foremost, and if buying from Deng, aim for one of his U6 models. 6061 just isn't too great a material for trials frames (Echo Lites and 06 onwards Pures are made of this)

But Inur, KOs suffer from other serious problems. Not to be shitting on Dan or KoBikes, I have respect for anyone who starts up their own brand and produces parts... but, the KObikes frame itself is from an engineering standpoint not too great a design. Dan asked a few people for help on products including the KM1 frame... including Chris Antoniou (xris_x) this forum, who's got one of the best minds in metallurgy and engineering I know of, and from what Chris told me, There are other problems with it for example, brake mount vertical-axis alignment... a lot of people have issues (albeit minor, but still..) with the brake mounting and it sets the pads and cylinders in odd angles unless properly forced... (and I know there will be an odd handful of you out there that attempt to beg to differ..!) The whole rear end of the KoBikes frame is based off an Echo Team 2006; just look at the shapes of the chainstays and the yoke between it and the BB, the same except without a bashguard mount pretty much. Heck, even the booster is the same except with a different logo. Both frames evidently lacked the S-bends in the chainstays and seatstays which many many good frames do (check your chainstay from a vertical birdseye view, and you will see a slight S shape to it). I know it's a minor detail, but just copying negatives from a frame just isn't good. If I wanted to base my product off something already existing, I'd make sure to iron out any previous design faults or negativities. It all seems rather 'pimpy' and 'bling' than properly effective as a design. Taking the most eye-catching bits from different Deng frames and moulding it into one frame is nice from an arty point of view, but not from a new radical trials engineering perspective. Not aimed at only Inur! Feel free to criticise me and unload your frustration on me, but hey, what's done is done, what's said above is truth. Again, meaning no disprespect to anyone! But just had to make some facts be known. The paragraphs above are based off points made by Chris (who is a rocket scientist, yes, the actual career of being a rocket scientest...) and has a degree; so honestly it's not very constructive to try to argue against and prove your point based off trials-forum-level engineering talk. Unless of course, you do have a degree in engineering and are an expect in bicycle manufacture.

Just curious, but Porquoi you chose a Monty freewheel over a Tensile or ENO from Aspire? Not meaning to discourage you, but just to warn you of the possibility of major disappointment, the Monty freewheels aren't all that strong. The Zhi Greeneye, Viz, and Worldcat freewheels are all the same ones but with different coloured anodizing.. and people in China choose welded ACS Claws over them; which came as a bit of a shock to me, but they say it really is that unreliable... .. If possible, could you not just send it back to wherever you bought it and get a Tensile (12 fewer EP, but much stronger, and cheaper?) or an ENO off Aspire (50 pounds incl. post and pack+tax)? Oh why do I have to be the one that tells the kids that Santa Claus doesn't exist? (anyone guess which film that's from? No googling!)

Looks cool! Colours are nice, my Baby Pitbull's a bit blandish apart from the ever-attention seeking glow of the stickers. Maybe I should start small, with coloured rimtape. On another note... damn, does that bike look long? for some really odd reason? super lengthy up front? Oh and how are you finding the chain/drivetrain surviving without a bash? I'm hoping a KMC and my Tensile can take a bit of bosh, for the time being, as having a halfring set at the wrong angle is a pain!

painful looking and scary pasty!

I'm just curious Mike, but is there any chance you'd be able to release a few stainless headtube rings separately for sale, given the demand? I mean, they won't be expensive to produce but those with slightly flared headtubes or those worried about flaring could use them? If it took a bit of excessive reaming to clear a space in the headtube, and bond it in. How exactly are these steel rings fitted in the Onza headtubes? Slightly wider internal bore for the aluminium headtube, and the steel ring pushed in with epoxy resin around it?

For two reasons, no: 1. The Hope Saw rotor I bought is pretty much new, i got it only a few days ago, and i'd rather keep it 2. That other Avid rotor on the other BB7 in my house, is to be sold with that particular BB7, so it'd be unfair on buyers if I used it...

Haha.... you do realise that I have two Avid BB7s? One with a short cable that is on my bike (the one in question on this topic), and the long cable'd one that's sitting unused on a sofa ready to be despatched for anyone who wants to buy it. If you'd like, I can take pictures of both of them together in the same picture. I'll appreciate in future if people aren't so quick to judge! I would not sell a brake that I am using, especially not one that is having minor issues. The brake described in my for sale topic is a totally different Avid BB7 I do not use. That's why in the picture I sent you, it had a long cable and the Avid roundagon rotor that came with it. If you check in my 'Baby Pitbull' topic in Bike Pics, you'll see my actual used BB7 on the front of the bike with a Hope Saw rotor, as described in my posts in this topic. Both completely separate brakes, which I understand you might have got confused, but just to clarify they are two different individuals. Sponge.

I'm in half a mind to remove the freewheel and readjust the position of the halfring, as I'm not too happy about how it protected on a few slipped sidehops. Other than that, all's dandy, just need to try and re-bed the front brake a bit, hopefully the boiling worked!

Point is it's a new rotor... used for a few days. It was slightly bent out of the package from Tarty, and I put it on. For some reason the rotor decided to bend even more slightly, left and rotor in tiny tiny tiny increments. I can't exactly tell what the true straight orientation is. It' only shiftin left and right by 1mm or so though. The tri-align system is the post mount adaptor system where you tighten the bolts. When the rotor is slightly bent in a place, this is the worst system suited for it... since the caliper will align itself to the bend , if you get me? Now, if the caliper is preset slightly angled, thanks to a slight bend in the rotor, this'll mean the whole of the rotor has to get accustomed to the new angled position. Meaning gradual warping, and no real power...

If I had a brake like Hope, then it'd be alright, since they are in a permanent fixed caliper position. The problem lies in the fact that I use a BB7 where they have the Tri-Align system with the post mount adaptor. Basically, it means there is no 'fixed' caliper position, so right now my caliper is most probably bolted tight in a position to suit the rotor at a bent/slanted position... this'll just worsen the rest of my rotor if I drag it.

Sorry, but that's just really very ignorant and thick-headed. Simply, when your rotor is slightly bent left and right, and caliper misaligned...riding down a hill like that? that's the worst idea... i don't want my pads to wear at an angle which will cause further problems later on.

yep yep, all that was completely done correctly as per th BB7 online instructions. It's done now; I realised that the pads had to be PUSHED damn damn *hard* into the caliper. We're taking gripping the prongs of the pads with pliers and pushing in HARD. Jese, so a bit of beef-handed-ness was all it took? Haha.. But on a new note, whilst we're on BB7s.... I've got a rotor which has slight bends here and there... it's new though, and the reason it's bent is because of the Tri-Align system of an Avid, if say you set up the caliper when the pads are rubbing onto a 'bent out' part of the rotor... this is sheer bad luck and bad news and the caliper will align itself to the bend and in turn... after riding about, it will bend the whole rotor ever so slightly to align to the caliper.. ^Anyone had problems like this? What was your fix? I've come to the point where I can't even tell what part of the spinning rotor is the true 'straightness'. Last resort, could take off rotor and try bending it here and there whilst using a flat surface as a 'truing stand'?