Sponge

,.

yep me, hodges, rodriguez. almost 100%

.

yeah, stock

Hey, this might seem a tad ostentatious or show-offy, but I really thought it was worth mentioning as I am so proud of myself and those of my fellow yearmates who completed the 50 Mile walk. My school, Charterhouse (boarding school in Godalming, Surrey) holds a traditional event every summer before breaking up for the AS yeargroup. We get driven down to Brighton where we must walk 50 miles, yes literally! (wel, 56 to be precise) to find our way back to the school's archway. We had a 24 hour time limit to complete it, I finished with a group consisting of two friends and myself in 19 hours, which is an fairly OK time, (of course several groups finished earlier!) We walked through day and night from 4pm wednesday through the hills and countryside of Brighton moving slowly into Cranleigh, Surrey. Night time was hellacious, I mean walking through the woods seemed taking forever as the terrain and scenery seemed the same for miles and miles and hours and hours. Some of my other friends (girls mainly) were crying, full of blisters and aches, yet not giving up quite yet for a long long time, it just added to the overall anguish of the walk. Many had to pull out because of the ridiculously harsh toll it took on the body... I am so damn glad my parents bought me blister plasters and foam cushioning plasters the weekend before. It was a lot to do with preparation! The last 15 miles or so were absolute hell. Absolute hell. I have never experienced such pain and agony, both mentally and physically. Had it not been for my two teammates motivating us all to pull through to the end, I may well have not made it. There came a point when we promised ourselves at any cost to complete the walk to make it worth all the pain and suffering we went through. I would have felt terrible to pull out having done half or 3/4 of the walk... I felt that I had to justify going through the anguish, as did the rest of us. Finally, the walk came to an end, with the three of us running up the last hill through the school archway, arms on eachothers' shoulders. What a way to end a gruesome 24 hours! So we all received our 50 mile walk school ties and certificates as a symbol of our achievements. It will look very impressive on any CV, and I personally feel that I learnt a lot from this. The mental and physical agony we all went through has probably been the worst we have ever felt yet. I know now that whenever I go through hard times or need to motivate myself to achieve something, I'll think of this walk. If I could beat the walk, then anything is possible. I'll use that as a source of motivation wherever and whenever. This all being said, I am now totally broken apart. The blisters and acheing legs are bad, but hell.... this killer of a stomach ache and excessive diahorrea is FAAAR worse! One source of motivation for the walk was that my new bike'll finally be completed this weekend. So I can finally ride again after months of no riding! The headset and sprocket came to my house according to my madre, so I'll just have to pray that the chain tensioner comes in the next few days, and I'm done! I do realise that some of you will have done harder things. Such as going to the armed forces or even bigger walks/marathons. But for me, and my yeargroup, this was something special. I'm sure many of you'd know the feeling. Wow, I need some sleep now.

.

'thread tapping' the BB shell could work very well. It is definitely worth a shot. It just gently cuts/sharpens/smoothens the threads back to perfection in most cases

regarding shimano QRs, are there any differences between the models other than aesthetics? Like any particularly better than others at clamping or something with the design?

or are there other cheaper brands that do this same type of design? the only reason these skewers are so costly is cos the axle is ti? EDIT: just read Ad's post, how come that's the case? Are these allen skewers a bit flimsy or don't grip too well?

,

Hahaha, But did you guys not know that you can get Neon parts cheaper off Fan Ming (aka, Chris, ZHI)?

Fair enough, did all of you find that 160mm was still good enough to hold all your weight on an endo? and be able to lock into an endo after riding walking pace? If so, that's good enough for me. If it still slips a bit at walking pace (with a full finger grab at the lever) then it's not quite what i'm looking for then.

,

;

here

Aww i miss it so much already. Well, I've got my new stock being built up, frame is on the bed. Post your pics up sam!

Waynio's right. The same sorta thing happened back in 03/04 (before my time, but you can still find the infamous topic on OTN) where the Coustellier St.Blaise was apparently 'ripped off' by the now-famous Pitbull. Deng saw the design and copied it within a week or a bit more. Meh, copying's not bad, it happens. The factories in have a catalogue of individual frame pieces and any brand can mix and match really... there are some really obvious examples of this.

I don't like gaps to front, end of! It's always a big oomph to the rear

should be still on sunday yeah, was busy today sorry glen! who's going then? Me, joe, chai, others? Slightly weather dependent of course... and if trains are running!

,

come on y'all

Oh cool, thanks for clearing that up and, would a 160mm Avid BB5 be far too weak for a stock front end? I'm not necessarily after hardcore on-off locking like a craazy 203mm Hope Mono trial, but would it be OK for most stuff? I'm not into stuff like tap-to-front moves or similar, but yeah would it be enough to hold my weight on a heavy endo at least, say?

,

Cool, thanks I'm just still not completely sure about what you meant about the 'cams' though? Also there are quite a few models of Shimano QRs, are there any specific ones I should consider? Also regarding the anti-theft ones what good brands are there?

Yep, I did indeed I just wondered about Adamants... meh, just a late thought. I'm very very very much into the mod flicky style, and not really traditionally a stock type rider where I use smooth rolling techniques. I'm a lot more static. It's an influence from mod and uni riding, but it's damn practical anyways. Good backwheel control and comfort, as well as comfortable sidehops and gaps are paramount. Tapping and rolling stuff is all secondary, so that kinda puts high BB ahead of low BB for me. As a general question for a 26" newbie... I'm probably getting a King classic rear wheel, but it's got a QR axle... how have people found these hold up generally? any troubles? and say if I got a decent QR like Hope, do they EVER slip at all? One reason for moving away from mod was I was sick of the rear wheel being shifted out of centre. If a Hope QR can do a decent job of keeping a trials bike's rear end firm and slip-free, then I'm happy and how about tensioners? this is a very ambigious area for me, I don't know much about it. I'm after something cheap and reliable that'll do the job fine. I've looked at 74 Kingz and the Onza/Viz singlespeed tensioners, are there any other similarly cheap or simple ones out there? Cheers