Mark W

Whatever works for you @Davetrials! Something is better than nothing, whatever format it may end up in. If you do some experimenting and find the things that work best for you, it's pretty easy to put together a routine or just have some 'tools' you can come back to to use if you can feel certain tight spots creeping in. Once you get them dialed in and you know how they should feel, they become second nature. I find when I'm in the kitchen making my breakfast in the morning or in there to make a coffee, I'll just do a stretch or two while I'm waiting. There's quite a lot you can do holding onto a counter or similar to get into different positions, so if it's my hamstrings/quads/hip flexors that are tight or maybe my lower back, it's easy enough to do a quick stretch while I'm killing time. EDIT: Forgot to say but I'm still kind of shit at really doing it as a proper routine. I know I need to, but quite often I'll have days where I get wrapped up doing other stuff and even though I can feel I need to do some stretching I'll not get round to it. Knowing about it/awareness of it and knowing how to solve it is half the battle though, so if you've got that then even if you're not doing it consistently you've still got things you can do to help when you really need it.

As I was saying If you're having to use water to find where a leak is, there most likely isn't enough sealant because the sealant would generally direct you to where the issue is. Just on the valve movement front, I f**ked a ride with a friend at a trail centre by not being the gentlest when I was attaching a pump to my valve (Presta valve, Presta rim) and breaking the seal a touch causing it to have a super convenient slow flat the rest of the day. If the locknut is done up firmly then there will still be a bit of movement and you do need to be relatively careful when doing stuff like adding/removing pressure. Schrader valves won't alter that because they're still a tapered rubber base, it's still an O-ring of some sort, and it's sealing against rim tape at one side of the valve hole. It's never going to be fixed in place.

Essentially, this. I don't really know what you're doing to them to make them move, but like I said before, if the valves were the issue then you'd see sealant bubbling around the base of the valve stem whenever you put air in the tyres. If you aren't seeing sealant there, they either aren't the problem (so you don't need to change them, and can keep using the Rimpact valves which are good) or you haven't got enough sealant (which you didn't). In terms of valve movement, it's worth remembering that there's a tapered rubber base, and the sealing part under the locknut is an O-ring, so it's never going to be solid. The first tubeless setup I did had Schrader valves and they still moved a little if you wiggled them. The key thing to note here is that you don't need to wiggle your valves

Believe the tyres are usually fitted to the rim (not fully inflated though) at Inspired's warehouse, then dealers would do any final checks to the bikes. If the tyres have to be let down for shipping (can't remember if they are with Inspireds) then that can negate that, obviously. It is possible to get the tyres to seat properly, but with the variation in Conti tyres due to them being relatively handmade it may just be your tyres are a bit harder to fit than others or something. As before, you don't really need to go for Schrader valves. I've got Presta valves in a Schrader drilled Spank rim on my bike now, I've had Presta valves in other Spank rims drilled the same way, Duncan used Muc-Off Presta valves on his Team rims before he got some Reserves on there, Ben's used Presta on his Inspired rims, etc... It really isn't a problem, that's why the valve stems have such a taper to them. As Ali mentioned before, the faff of non-side drilled valves (which accounts for basically all Schrader valves I'm aware of) being used with inserts far outweighs the marginally improved sealing you might get around the valve stem.

This is exactly why I really, really dislike a lot of bike shops. That's just flat out bullshit. If you don't do it properly, when you're injecting the sealant through the valve it can start blowing back out of it, but if you're unaware of that and what causes it you really shouldn't be working at a bike shop... For the rim tape, Cap's school of thought with it was to go just for the rim well, so you're not on the section where the tyre bead sits on the rim. I think part of the reason that it can be hard to seat them is just the shape of the 'shelf' where the bead sits. If you look at it on the Team V2 rim compared to a random other rim, you can see it's a little different. It seems that tyres can get a bit hung up as they get pushed across sideways, so they don't necessarily seat fully against the outer edge of the rim: I think the diameter of that 'shelf' where the bead sits is different on the latest generation V2 rims which is why Inspired refer to them as being better for tubeless. On the rim tape, you don't need to compress the tape or anything like that. Just go for any kind of adhesive rim tape and you'll be fine. You're supposed to apply it with a good amount of tension as you roll it off the tape so that it's a good fit to the rim and doesn't have any gaps or air bubbles to let sealant escape. If you've done that, you don't really need to do anything else with it as it's as in place as it's ever going to be. "I think it might also pay to let the tyres seal without the Rimpacts in and then install them afterwards." That's a little self defeating in a way as you'll have to break the seal of the tyre to get the insert in. The only real thing I'd suggest as far as that goes is to seat the tyre with no sealant in with the valve core removed, then once that's done let the tyre down, inject the sealant through the valve then reinstall the valve core and pump it up. Taking the valve core out makes a big difference to how easy the process of seating the tyre is.

That was really cool Fully on board with that ender wodge to wodge to wodge line... Some sweet clips throughout that. Big fan of that one in Bristol at about 30sec!

Couple of things. Why I was asking about the amount of sealant before is because tubeless setups are pretty simple. If they're not sealing, it can only really be one of four things: - Your tyre, indicated by sealant coming out from either a hole on the tyre, or from around the bead*. - Rim tape, indicated by sealant coming out around your nipples or by the valve. - The valve, indicated by sealant coming out around the valve stem or core. - The quantity of sealant, indicated by air loss without any of those things I just mentioned. Checking them off is a pretty good way of sorting things out. I had a feeling that the amount of sealant may have been part of it. If there's a leak somewhere and you've got plenty of sealant in the tyre, there'll be residue where it's dried or you'll be able to see it bubbling away. The Rimpacts don't absorb sealant, but they do get coated in it so you need 20-25% more sealant than you'd expect for your wheel size to mean that once they've been coated fully there's still plenty kicking around to seal things up, handle business with the tyre until it essentially has a non-porous layer around it, and then seal up any other problems that pop up. I always run quite a bit over the suggested amount in the wheels of my trials bike and MTB because for the negligible weight penalty of having an extra 30ml or so of sealant in each tyre you know that it's going to have plenty to seal the tyre up properly initially, and also have some for if you happen to burp the tyre/cut the tyre/ride over some thorns or glass or something. The cut in the rim tape for the valve stem looks a bit bigger than I'd normally go for. I generally pierce a really small hole in the tape (usually using something like a 2mm allen key or something), then use the valve itself to enlarge the hole as I push it through. This way you know you've got the minimum possible hole in the tape, giving it the best chance of sealing. As before, it may be worth having a look around the rest of the rim tape to see if there's any issue elsewhere. Once the sealant has got past the rim tape it's hanging out in the cavity of the rim, so it can come out pretty much anywhere it chooses. When I initially converted my old MTB wheels to tubeless, they'd been taped from the factory so I didn't bother adding any myself. Turns out they're done a shit job, so I ended up getting sealant bubbling out through the rim join and random spokes. That all came from one bit of the tape that had gone wrong, but you wouldn't really have known where exactly just from looking at where the sealant was appearing. *That is somewhat simplified - if you've got a really porous tyre then you will get air leaking out through that, but that typically won't be much, especially with those Conti tyres. If you've followed the point below it about having plenty of sealant, after a few rides it stabilises and you don't get the same kind of air loss between rides.

For my MTB it took multiple 3-4hr rides and some pumping up overnight before they got what I was looking for from them. That said, they didn't go totally flat. When I had a setup that did that it was the one I mentioned before with there being a tiny notch in the rim tape that was leaking air.

Forgot to mention before but when I first set my MTB up tubeless, it took a few rides for the pressure to stabilise. As you alluded to before, it does take a bit of time for the sealant to get fully worked around the wheel, and basically shaking it/moving it by hand isn't the same as riding around and letting that force from your wheel's rotation make that shit happen.

That info was correct at the time that was written, but that was a few years ago (that bike is the 2017 Fourplay). He's using a tubeless setup now.

The rim width is certainly part of it, but the overall tyre design plays a big role in it. In terms of Presta valves in Schraeder rims, that's how I've had a few bikes set up (including with Rimpact valves...) for a while and I've never had any problems with it. The tapered base means that it doesn't really come into it. If you've sliced a big hole in the rim tape for the valve to go through that might not be helping. If you've got a leak elsewhere in the rim tape that can also manifest itself through the valve hole, although that sounds like it shouldn't be the issue with yours... If the tyre is super tight to fit and they've used tools to fit it it could be that the tape was nicked/damaged, maybe? It's weird to see the tyres are leaking that much air, but as you said it may just be a case of needing to either ride the bike more to get the sealant moving properly, or possibly doing it without inserts at first to let more of a free flow of sealant happen. On that note, how much sealant was actually used? Has it been measured out at any point or just guessed? You do need to use quite a bit more than normal if you're using inserts, and if the tyre is that porous it could just be a case of requiring more.

Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how that pans out. Kind of have a feeling that if Russell hadn't binned it under the safety car last year and then "taken out" Bottas at Imola that he'd definitely be the favourite for 2022, but it sounds like Toto's not fully on board with him at the moment. That said, with how well George did with barely any notice before jumping in Lewis' car last year, if he had a pre-season to get used to the Mercedes he'd be a proper force. With the Williams being a bit all over the place it does make me wonder how much that's affecting the mistakes he's been making.

The biggest thing I've found to help my riding now my riding time is a little more limited/sporadic is stretching. I know I've banged on about it in The Angry Thread (if you check out my recent replies to Dave there's some bits in there that may help), but it really does make a huge difference. Before I got more into stretching (and general strength/conditioning stuff by way of bouldering), I found that the first parts of my once or twice a week rides were my body getting used to being used again, and I wouldn't really feel like I was ready to go and ride at the level I wanted to. Doing some basic stretching keeps your body moving nicely, so when you get on the bike you're much more ready to go. It also has the bonus of making you a bit more resilient to injury too as your body should be moving and performing in a better way. The other thing I've found has helped is doing some basic strength/conditioning work on my core. Because I got really into climbing that naturally did quite a lot for improving my core strength, but that combined with being more flexible means that when I get on my bike now I feel like I'm ready to do stuff again. Before, I felt pretty wooden and stiff and just couldn't get my body to do what I wanted it to do. In particular I found that my hop height was limited and my style was super shonky just because my lower back was really tight. In terms of bike handling skills and having that in tune with your bike feeling, I found that riding 2-3 times a week kept me in a good spot. If you're only riding once or twice a week you're kind of just treading water in a way, but if you can push to 2-3 times things tend to progress. If you're particularly wanting to improve, being a bit more mindful of what you're doing when you ride helps massively. Quality > Quantity! Over the past year I've only really been riding my mountain bike so I've had a lot of things to learn on that, and specifically going for rides where I know I'm working on whatever I know is one of my weaknesses has helped me feel like I'm still making progress. When I'm nailing 3 rides a week I can really feel it all come together vs. only getting to ride once a week. EDIT: Listened to the Matt Macduff podcast with Dennis Enarson this week, and in that he talks about how now he's in his/approaching his 30's, he feels he's in a much better position than he was in in his 20's simply because he's more careful with what he's eating/drinking, stretching, doing strength training and stuff like that. It seems to ring true for a lot of the more established BMX pros who are still raising the bar in their 30's and 40's - you can get away with a lot of shit in your teens/20's, but just because you've got to be more switched on with how you treat your body in your 30's doesn't necessarily mean that your riding has to stop improving.

In other news - considering how inept Mazepin has been at every race (and in most sessions) so far, does make me wonder if Haas will have enough spare parts to actually get him to the starting grid. Suspect he's going to be getting pretty familiar with the barriers.

Yeah, it does seem like they're only 8.S at the moment. The way Magura's codes work are that the '8' pads are the MT7s with the '9' pads being the MT5s, so you'd be looking for the 9.S pads. May be worth doing the odd search for "Magura Disc Pads 9.S" from time to time and seeing if they pop up, but it looks like they may only be offering them as an 'upgrade' to MT7-style pads.

You can use those pads with any rotors, they're not specific to their eStop rotors. Magura are just jazzing their same old stuff up by putting 'E-' on it, so don't stress that aspect of it. The MT5 eStop calipers are the MT5 calipers (are the MT7 calipers...). The only thing I would say is I'd take those Magura 'graphs' with a pinch of salt. The eStop pads are basically made to be hard wearing, and there's inevitably a trade-off with performance to achieve that, so unless you particularly want less outright performance I wouldn't really change to them.

That's definitely true. The only thing I'd say with that though is that I imagine a lot of brands could afford to pay athletes more, but the way the game is rigged means they don't have to. A lot of riders have a stipulation in their contract that they're not allowed to disclose what they're paid or how they're compensated for their work, and that helps deflate the overall wages of riders. I believe Katy Winton mentioned it in either her Downtime Podcast interview or in one of her more recent videos, but basically team managers expect riders not to talk to each other about wages (especially if they're told not to in their contract), but they talk to other team managers about wages. That said, I do agree that a minimum wage isn't necessarily the right way to go. In all honesty, someone scraping a top 40 on the downhill or EWS scene isn't going to be a household name, someone who's likely to influence people's purchasing decisions or someone offering much exposure to the brand through their racing. If they can demonstrate value to them through other avenues then fair enough, but I imagine most probably won't be able to do so. I'd say the UCI roadie teams having a minimum wage is a different story as those teams do pretty much straight up own those riders, and if you're 'just' a domestique on those teams you're never going to be in a position to elevate your own position to become as well known as some of the top names in road racing. Your role is still vital though, so the fact that you're on the road constantly slogging for those teams deserves to be properly rewarded. There must be some insane budgets for those teams though. I happened to look at one UCI World Tour team page on the UCI site after I read about the minimum wage, and they had a 26 rider line-up that would be earning that upper minimum wage. I'd assume that some of them will be on more of that too, but even if they're not that annual budget for the team just for rider salaries is over €1million. They also had a big line-up of what seem to essentially be B-team riders who are also on a minimum wage, albeit a lower one. Crazy money...

Yeah, know what you mean. Was an odd choice. Giving them the benefit of the doubt I guess Max's pace might have dropped off faster than they were expecting and Hamilton passed earlier than expected, so they didn't assume he'd get a chance to come in? I suppose they might have assumed that Bottas could actually do a fast lap too. Unfortunately they forgot to factor in how average Bottas is being this year. If he hadn't got that pole the other week when everyone blew their second Q3 runs, he'd have very little to show for this year. I can't see them going full Red Bull and dropping him mid-year, but he's not delivering at the moment. If Red Bull had a capable second driver Bottas would be under some serious pressure, but luckily for him there's not really anyone threatening too much. I read that he said that he didn't give Hamilton an 'easy' pass because he didn't want to lose too much time as he needed to get a pit window in front of Leclerc, but I think it's safe to say it was probably also frustration. He didn't have to run Hamilton that tight into turn 10. He's saying he's frustrated with team orders, but the only real way to not be a victim of them is to not be ridiculously far behind your team mate...

With how many sponsors Kenny has been through, I'm not sure he's totally the model to point to for how to 'do the industry' right. Riders don't tend to change sponsors that frequently if a relationship is going well... In terms of longevity, he's pushed the demo side of things a lot which isn't really an avenue open to most MTB riders. They did mention in the PB article that some riders do go for a reduced salary in exchange for their expenses being covered. I'd imagine that's probably how most brands would want to play it as they're getting the most value out of their riders that way. I think part of it is that realistically, most of those riders aren't really spending an entire year racing at all, or even close to it. In pre-covid times there weren't that many top flight DH or enduro races. There's training and so on as well, but from a brand's POV they're getting very little coverage of a rider if it's exclusive race related. Even less so for the EWS riders with the lack of coverage that gets these days. Covid and lockdowns has probably helped nudge some riders into the kind of media they need to be doing to really justify higher salaries to brands.

Ideally not, just because you don't really need to. The tyre is covering a decent amount of the rim, so it's only really the spoke holes and any holes around the join (and the join itself, which you can do different things with to seal up) that need to be covered. The tyre forms a seal with the rim itself so you don't need tape under there, although on some setup with loose tyres it can help by making them a tighter fit. As before, the Conti tyres do seem to have a habit of kind of sticking on parts of the Inspired rims when you're inflating them. If the tape is full width and it's sticking that could well be contributing to it. You can sometimes resolve it by dropping most of the pressure out and trying to kind of massage the tyre across with your hands, but if it's a tight fit (as it sounds like it is) with the tape there that'll be harder to do. If it's holding air, that's basically good to go as far as the tubeless setup itself is concerned.

You don't necessarily have to fully seat tyres to have them seal - if they're a tight fit because you've got the Gorilla tape full width they might just not be popping quite out to the same spot on the bead, but may still seal. It's worth putting some sealant in and seeing how it goes. Having spoken to Cap, even seating those tyres with a tube was sometimes tricky if the rim tape had slid a little inside the rim and was on the section of the rim where the tyres sit. You can do other things like using soapy water to act as a form of lube for the tyre on the rim to get it to slide and pop into place properly, but again, if it's holding air and the tyre isn't noticeably all over the place it's proooobably going to be fine to run.

If it's your day off, a good time to start doing some of this:

So this is pretty interesting: https://www.pinkbike.com/news/how-much-do-professional-mountain-bikers-get-paid-pinkbikes-state-of-the-sport-survey.html Some random facts from it - 21% of the top 40 riders in the UCI DH and XC World Cups, EWS and Slopestyle events don't get paid a wage from their sponsors (they may be paid expenses, but that wasn't covered in that survey). Nearly half of the top 40 downhill riders in the world are paid between $0-5,000 per year (again, not incl. expenses). It's pretty nuts that most of the riders in those disciplines are paid so little that they couldn't afford to buy the bikes they ride at retail price on their salaries. I assume there might be (must be?) some non-endemic sponsors helping them out, but still, they can't really be making much of a living with that. As a slight contrast, there's a stipulation for teams taking part in the UCI World Tour road cycling events that they have to pay each of their team riders a minimum wage of €40,045...

I've seen a few break, but it's worth bearing in mind the Arcade bars have been out for 7 years and are undoubtedly the most popular bar out there, so it's kind of inevitable that some will break at some point. I know how many bars TB used to sell every week (as aftermarket, not on complete bikes), and even just from the amount they sold the amount I've seen or heard of breaking is going to be a tiny, tiny fraction of a percent. When you factor in all the other shops and all the bars that came on bikes, they're still what I'd consider a super reliable bar. As with anything, I'd always recommend visually checking the bars thoroughly around the bar clamp area to see if there are any warning signs going on there, but creaking from the front end is usually just something not being quite ideal in the bar/stem interface rather than a structural problem. One thing you can try is filing a very slight radius on the edge of the bar clamp area of your stem. Bars will always have some degree of flex to them, so there will be movement against the edge of the stem. If there just happens to be a very slight imperfection on the edge of that interface, it might lead to a creak. Filing the edge of the stem can help remove that potential issue, especially if you've already done things like greasing bolts and so on.

So they don't appear to have that same video available any more, I think they've paywalled it. They do a similar-ish one that you have to do an email sign up for which seems to take you to this which is similar, but more recent (and bizarrely filmed like shit, considering the original one was just on a tripod and worked really well...). That's more of a follow-along type thing, but they also discuss the individual components of it here from around 1:25 onwards: As I mentioned before, it's really basic, but I found that it gave me a surprising amount of benefit. Being simple also means it's easier to just get it done with/without the video. I don't do it every day any more, but I do still do some of the individual bits during the day if I feel like I need them in particular. The "dancers circle" thing seems to work well for my back when I make sure I do it with proper form, although to be fair the cat/cow and "reach for the sky" thing do quite a bit too. As before, they're really basic but they just work. If you're not great at forming new habits/routines, it's a good place to start.