Mark W

That's not really anything new for TMS. The Silex frames used to have different head tubes and headset types depending on the frame colour you bought. With that one I think it was just delivery timing of different batches coinciding, so the standard head tube frames were 'old' and the integrated head tube frames were 'new', but they were delivered at the same time. It may be a similar story here, but it could be they decided to do an equivalent of Inspired's Pro vs. Team frame kit specs, just with no real mention or explanation of it anywhere.

A simultaneously elegant and deeply unsettling way of solving that problem.

A picture paints a thousand words, so how many words do pictures of words paint? That aside, Inspired are running a video contest this summer - here are the details... The title logos/image can be downloaded at bit.ly/video-contest-title

Also have the V1 in both of my bikes too (both trials and MTB). I don't think you really need much more in all honesty! I've got a few cuts in my rear inserts from rimming out on stuff, but they still work fine. My understanding of them is that the Pro would be less susceptible to those cuts, but they make virtually no difference to performance so I'm not sure the extra weight/cost is really worth it.

Just to add another random one into the mix - I do broadly speaking what you do in terms of riding, and I've found the Troy Lee Designs Stages pads are good. I had the Fox Enduro D3O pads before and they were OK but not super comfortable, slid down over time and didn't really have a huge amount of protection. I briefly used the 7iDP Sam Hill pads too. They had a lot more protection but were pretty thick, took a while to heat up and start to shape properly, and were just hot to wear. The only other ones I'd used in that kind of style were the RaceFace Indy pads - they were along the lines of the 7iDP pads, but were just a bit too chunky for me. I only ever ride in trousers and they just didn't work well under them. The TLD Stages pads have a decent amount of protection (have had a couple of crashes and came out unscathed) - they certainly feel more protective than the usual lightweight all day style pads that just have a sheet of D3O equivalent foam in them. The structure of the sleeve seems to help keep them in place well too, as do the silicone grippers. The only thing I'd say is that part of the reason they stay reasonably OK temperature wise is that the back of them is quite a fine mesh. This isn't a problem for me as I only wear trousers, but if you ride shorts and run flat pedals you might find you're more prone to catching a pin on them and giving them a bit of a tear. That was typically the only negative I read about them on reviews, and even though it's not relevant to me I can see how it could happen or be a problem. From memory the sizing on them is pretty random, so you maaaay find you have to try a couple of different sizes to get the right fit for you, but the flip side is that you can quite often get them a bit cheaper than RRP online so even if you've got to pay postage a couple of times it won't be quite so bad... e.g. 30% off at Wiggle: https://www.wiggle.co.uk/troy-lee-designs-stage-knee-guard Seeing the photos of them on Wiggle also reminded me to say that they're really well shaped from new, so they slip on and feel 'right' straight away. They're not like the flat-D3O-panel pads where they don't really sit well until you get a bit of warmth in them.

Out of interest, how are you measuring that? If it's the normal trials reach measurement, the Arcade you've got there has a much longer head tube than the older one which will skew things a bit.

Experience teaches that you can generally take Hope's 'reasons' for problems with a pinch of salt. e.g. with the Pro 4 they said there was a faulty batch of pawls that might have affected around 30 hubs, but that clearly wasn't the case as there are plenty of reports out there of people exploding some of their pawls, and the pawls themselves had a re-design. There have been other things like that in the past too, but more specifically with the Tech 4 there have been people getting leaking brakes straight out of the box which was due to a few different reasons according to Hope. I have a friend who's had two brakes (the initial one then the warranty replacement) leak from the lever for seemingly no reason. You can also find similar chat in the comments here. That said, wondering bite point isn't unique to Hope - Shimano are notorious for it, and I've found my Maguras can be too if they're not set up perfectly. As soon as the caliper is a little bit misaligned they develop that same feeling almost immediately.

Yeah, it's a bit on the soft side and I'm not sure how absorbent it would be - most inserts are keen to specify they're closed-cell foam. You can just buy closed-cell foam and cut and ziptie it to suit. I got some from eBay ages ago for some DIY ones, but ended up switching to Rimpacts and I've been happy with them. They're £50-ish for a pair, but come with some really nice valves (that work way better than normal valves do with inserts) so you're getting a bit more value for money with them at least. I think you can get Nukeproof ARD inserts for a bit less, but you have to cut and shut them to suit your own setup so for the difference in price, I'd just get the nicely made Rimpact ones instead. I've had them in my trials bike for ages and have had them in my mountain bike wheels for the past 2 years and they're all good. Some chunks taken out courtesy of some unorthodox line choice, but despite the fact I once had to ride quite a long distance with my tyre completely flat, just relying on the insert in the rear they're in good condition overall. Inspired have a tubeless kit out for £59 - it's more than the Rimpacts and ARDs, but it comes with the inserts (which you need to cut to length), some nice valves and tubeless rim tape too. If you've already got a tubeless setup ready to go, appreciate that that's probably less of interest to you...

Some weird driving in this, but the quality of the clips and the range of cars is cool. The clips are all taken from longer onboard clips on the guy's channel, there's some nice stuff in there:

I've got them front and rear tubeless and they've been spot on the whole time. All the older clips of Danny and Duncan (and Ali when he was on 24") when they were on Spank rims were using those rims, and I think they were all tubeless for the most part. That was on 24" obviously, but it seems most 24" tyres work out being wider than the typical 26" tyres people are using these days, so if there were tyre roll issues they would be more noticeable. The only other caveat is I used/use inserts with them so that would give the tyre more support, but I do know of other people running them without. I went to them from the Spank Stiffy 40mm rims and was concerned about going to narrower rims. They do feel different simply because the tyre profile changes dropping the inner width that much, but that was just a case of getting used to the feel of the tyre rather than a problem to overcome. I think I added a couple of psi just to get them feeling 'right' to me, but it really wasn't a huge change in pressure at all. As far as everything else goes though they're great. Stiff, strong, durable, really easy to build, etc. - couldn't really ask for much more.

Sounds ideal! Glad it's all coming together for you

In case any of you want to experiment with stem and spacer combos, this is a handy little tool: http://www.yojimg.net/bike/web_tools/stem.php

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention - if you're not having a jacket and just going waistcoat over a shirt, there's seemingly a razor thin line between looking like a groom or looking like a waiter. Some colour combos definitely look groom, some 100% just look waiter. Certainly worth trying them all on as a full combo to see which side of that line you come down on! Is your venue down this neck of the woods or are you off further afield?

Fair enough! Fortunately for me there weren't really that many people we were getting stuff for, and they were all well covered by off the peg sizes so it worked out being much more affordable for us than having to go fully tailored or anything. We were also working on a super tight timeframe of less than 3 months (a late cancellation in a venue we both liked coincided with my brother being over from NZ) from getting engaged to the wedding itself, so being able to just buy standard stuff certainly helped. I ended up just going trousers, shirt and waistcoat as we were also in August (and suit jackets can get in the sea). We had mixed weather, but that combo was a good level of comfort throughout the day. I've shot weddings over summer before where grooms were fully suited and booted and it looked like it was hard work! Going for the works does look nice, but I think a few of them would probably have enjoyed their day more if they weren't cooking away for a lot of it. It's just being realistic with what you can expect on the day, and reducing the severity of your hangover the next day by not having sweat out every drop of moisture in your body during the wedding itself.

Are you hiring/renting or buying them? If it's hiring: ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯ If you're buying, I found that getting bits from different places worked out easier than trying to get one complete setup from one outlet. Unless you're going baller and going made-to-measure, something from a complete set is going to fit like shit. I can't remember the full list of places we ended up getting stuff from, but I know there was something from Moss Bros, something from M&S and something from a totally random other one - may even have been somewhere odd like Matalan... The good thing about that is you'll probably get a better variety of sizes and fits for each item. Takes more legwork to make it happen, but I found it was worth it to wear things I felt somewhat comfortable in.

Yeah, you'd just need to get a 22mm Spanish BB and the Arcade V2s would slide straight in there One of the prototype Arcade frames had a press-fit BB and was used just like that. Makes sense with the Racing Line-style cups. At least you've got a bit of room to play with in terms of how thick you can make the adaptor, should be fairly straight forward to get it strong enough

The Inspired Integrated bashrings fit them, plus you can get SRAM direct mount double spiders so you could run a 4-bolt bash and 4-bolt chainring if you were so inclined... Are those bearings sized to fit straight inside the normal SRAM cups, so you'll basically just be pressing a sleeve into your BB that the bearings will then go into directly? I still don't really see how it all fits together properly in light of the non-drive bearing seat being way out of place if the bearings you're using are going to be within your BB shell (rather than being an external cup, where the inside edge of the bearing would be around 8-9mm further outboard than it will be if they're located inside the shell)... I know the drive-side bearing can pretty much go wherever on the axle as that's how they're designed to work - it's just the non-drive side, and getting things lined up properly I'm struggling to get an idea of. Intrigued to see how you get on though!

Have you checked the Middleburns definitely fit? Seem to remember a lot of newer frames had/have compatibility issues with them due to the low Q-factor/offset they've got. Might be worth throwing them on if you haven't already just to make sure before you spend some money on them.

Unfortunately there's no adaptor for Spanish to BSA. BSA threads are a shade under 35mm, so there's basically not really the room within the shell to actually fit any kind of adaptor between the Spanish BB bearing race and the BSA cup. You could theoretically do what Swoofty said and just find bearings that have the right axle diameter, but from memory the GXP BB axles are stepped so you'd need a different size bearing for each one. I would have thought the chances of the bearing races on the axles lining up with an inboard-positioned BB would also be slim. If that's what Swoofty has managed then fair play to him!

Goldrush is a shop in Japan - the frame is listed here: https://www.goldrush.shop/shopdetail/000000003463/ Unfortunately it seems like it's out of stock now.

Jumping on that high pivot ilder gearbox MTB hype on the hardtail. 4D chess.

Yeah, for MTB use I'd give them a swerve. They glaze fairly easily if you're slowing down a lot from high speed. They scrub in again really quickly, but I would probably skew pad choice more to suit what you're doing most of the time (i.e. MTB stuff) than a little of the time (trials stuff). For what it's worth, I've got the MT7-style Magura Race pads on my MT5s and they've been really good. They've lasted me a surprisingly long time considering they're the top end pad, and now they've bedded in there's not really much in the way of pad knock that I can tell. I don't tend to do all that much trials stuff on my MTB as it's basically a one-way street to removing your rear disc mount from your frame, but when I do they hold fine. It does take a while for them to settle in like that though - the MT5 pads don't really have that issue, but I found that the MT7-style pads have less issues with heat than my MT5-style pads did, for some reason. I was underwhelmed with the Magura Performance pads, but the Race have been sweet.

The Jitsie pads are the same as the Trialtechs: https://www.tartybikes.co.uk/disc_brake_pads/jitsie_disc_pads/c83p12236.html?pos=1393&search_params=YTo4OntzOjg6ImluX3N0b2NrIjtpOjA7czoxMjoiY2F0ZWdvcnlfaWRzIjthOjE6e2k6MDtzOjI6IjgzIjt9czoxNjoiY2F0ZWdvcnlfcmVjdXJzZSI7YjoxO3M6ODoia2V5d29yZHMiO3M6MDoiIjtzOjk6ImJyYW5kX2lkcyI7TjtzOjQ6Im1vZGUiO3M6MzoiYWxsIjtzOjQ6InNvcnQiO3M6OToicHJpY2VfYXNjIjtzOjEwOiJjb3VudHJ5X2lkIjtzOjE6IjEiO30%3D No experience with the Trickstuff ones, but if you were/are happy with the Trialtech pads then sticking with them (but getting some Jitsie stickers instead of Trialtech stickers when you buy them) wouldn't be a bad call.

Yeah, it's a cool video! Stan's editing suits his riding really well. He made a great choice with the music for that one! Have a lot of great memories from the after work Blackpool and Southport sessions in that video.

The thing that stood out to me about that video on the Whyte was how shit that GT e-bike must be. The video Akrigg did on the GT one made it look like hard work, and really stuck with me due to how it looked like it was hampering his riding. He usually made whatever turd Mongoose or GT gave him look pretty capable, but that bike looked like a struggle. In contrast he looked like he was flying on the Whyte! It seemed more of a return to 'classic Akrigg' which was nice to see. I'd still rather he was doing better stuff on a normal bike, but beggars can't be choosers.