Mark W

From personal experience, the 'new' Nitromors may as well just be a glass of water in terms of getting Inspired's paint off. I've heard Starchem is better. If you want it done properly, I'd agree with Adam and say that going pro is the way to do it. Especially if it's going to be a pretty high end build you're looking to keep for a while?

Well, when mountain bike brands with huge chequebooks want to leverage millions of possible YouTube views to try and help sell whatever incremental change in MTB technology they're claiming is the next big thing, they know where to go don't they... I'll be honest that it does suck that those brands that have no interest in trials keep swiping trials riders without doing anything to support it, but equally, Danny, Fabio and all those that will follow them will be able to earn a good living from riding for them. In fairness to Danny, out of loyalty to Inspired he stuck with them way longer than most other riders ever would have done with the offers he'd been getting after the April 2009 video. I think it's fair to say that with the burgeoning 'athlete management' industry looking to get a cut on whatever deals are there to be made, that kind of brand loyalty is probably long gone. If Hans Rey had had a certain management company of today managing him back in the day, he wouldn't have been with them for 25+ years. That said, the only real high profile departures were Danny in around 2016 and Fabio a couple of years ago? That covers the left and right, but not really the centre It's fair to say they won't be the last as any MTB marketing department will have been able to see how those signings performed, but it is what it is. Regarding Vasha though, might want to cool your jets until he says what bike he's riding for 2021...

Holy smokes! Yep, that will certainly be part of it. Hadn't done the conversion before, but running that kind of pressure means the tyre deforming when you manual isn't a surprise. I run my tyres relatively low compared to most people I ride with, and even then that's still 2.06-2.4bar. When it's more towards that 30psi/2.06bar end I can feel it more when I'm manualling, especially if I'm doing a carve in that manual. That 'dead' feeling is something I thought might happen with the Tannus. You're effectively making the carcass of the tyre thicker, meaning it will inevitably be less supple (plus you're putting more weight further away from the centre). I can see how for some applications that extra damped feeling might be good, but part of the benefit of tubeless is that you're getting a much more supple tyre as it's not being affected by the presence of a tube, or in that case a load of foam. I think it's fair to say that Cushcore are probably the highest performance tubeless insert on the market (and used by a large amount of top riders in most race disciplines), and the entire concept of them is the total opposite of what Tannus have done with theirs. Cushcore is designed to keep the bead well locked in place, protect the lower part of the sidewalls from pinches, while giving plenty of air volume above that. The Tannus doesn't really seem like it has much to help prevent tyre roll (as evidenced by how easy it is for you to fit?), and has the potential drawback of having the bulk of the protection being at the 'top' of the tyre which doesn't really do much to prevent pinches? I suppose it shares the puncture protection of a tubeless setup by virtue of the gap between the innertube and outside of the tyre being so far that it's unlikely anything will really make it through.

Agreed about the I9 hubs - love mine on my Arcade. Good point about the drivetrain resistance too, always forget how draggy FFW setups usually are.

Yeah, assumed it being level with the discolouration would imply that was a factor in it - good to know the science behind it too

Just wrapped up our final mortgage adviser meeting. Came out lower than we were expecting with some decent cashback. Pretty jazzed on that. Still somewhat in the dark with what's going on with the house for now, but we now have all the info we need for our solicitors so the ball should be rolling as of tomorrow. Then it's just rolling the survey gauntlet and seeing what comes of that...

So weird seeing cracks just in tubing rather than at a weld. So conditioned to seeing them there that it's weird them further out from the join! Good call on testing it to find out though, interesting to find that kind of thing out rather than going on received wisdom

Ah fair enough, was curious as to how big a change it would have felt from a FFW setup. More in terms of weight positioning as much as anything, although with how light that hub is I suppose it's getting closer and closer to being fairly negligible between a FFW setup and a freehub. Especially so when you factor in just how good that I9 engagement feels! Out of interest, what fittings do you have to use with those T-pieces? Something that's proprietary to them? Look really neat and tidy!

I found the Conti tyres to be better than Holy Rollers in every aspect. Certainly more expensive, but I found that they typically lasted longer, and performed better. I doubt crypto will really be the sole answer to it though - the fact the cash isn't 'seen' by the border doesn't change the fact that goods going over a border will be. There's still a business associated with shipping the goods, and a recipient associated with receiving them, so the current issue still remains in that sense. Regarding Brexit, there was a significant amount of money behind the Leave movement and a lot of wealthy people were pushing for it, so I don't really know how global elite-y the remain cause really was. The rich continue to get richer even while the majority suffer, even during something like this pandemic: "The world’s billionaires “did extremely well” during the coronavirus pandemic, growing their already-huge fortunes to a record high of $10.2tn (£7.8tn). A report by Swiss bank UBS found that billionaires increased their wealth by more than a quarter (27.5%) at the height of the crisis from April to July, just as millions of people around the world lost their jobs or were struggling to get by on government schemes." They're better positioned to take advantage of any problems, and do so. Look at Leave-supporting James Dyson. He was pushing for a no deal Brexit, but had the money to move his company HQ to Singapore to not be affected by any fall-out from it actually happening. That isn't the only example of a wealthy person pushing for no deal or for a 'hard' Brexit who has subsequently moved some of or all of their operations out of the UK. Nice if you can do it, but for a lot of smaller business owners that's not doable. tl;dr: We're all f**ked, bikes and parts are going to be more expensive at least in the short term, Contis 4 lyf.

They already have - there's plenty of lightly used second hand bikes popping up on Marketplace. It's been a good time for bike shops in terms of being able to sell bikes, but the sudden increase in demand and now total lack of stock is meaning that in effect it's already coming down. You only really need to look at how many bikes TartyBikes have in stock right now to get an idea of the difficulty of getting hold of stuff. It's definitely not for the want of trying!

It's not quite that simple. The "deal" we got is dogshit, and makes life pretty hard for anyone exporting anything from the UK to the EU or vice versa that isn't 'of preferential origin' (i.e. made in the UK/EU). It means for bikes there's a fairly large amount of duty to pay (there's VAT, plus a 14%~ tariff), with a similar setup for parts at a lower tariff. The way the UK structured the deal seemingly means that companies that ship to the UK need to have a tax account with the UK as far as I'm aware. Basically, it's a clusterf**k, but Boris got to go off on one about saving fishing rights or some shit so the fact that his "frictionless trade" was a lie doesn't really matter. This article on the BBC site gives you a bit of a flavour. I think once things have hopefully settled down more and things come to a more stable point that they'll open up sales again, but right now I don't really blame them. I know of a few companies who ship to the EU who have included preferential origin declarations with their shipments, but at some point those declarations appear to not be noted by the authorities and so VAT and customs charges apply, meaning bills appearing with their customers where they shouldn't have any at all.

Out of interest, what setup did you have on it before? Was it straight from FFW to the I9, or did you go to a Hope or something first? Bike looks sweet, incidentally!

It's purely pandemic related as it happens - it's affected it in a few ways though, from delays in production, scarcity of raw materials and also delays in shipping. Due to the boom last year, bike brands put in huge orders for 2021/22 models which has sucked up a lot of the availability of components, but also production time. Using tyres as an example, Maxxis only have a finite amount of production time so if you've got - say - Trek requesting a bajillion DHFs and DHRs to go on their new bikes, you're going to prioritise those over making some random stuff like 24" Holy Rollers. It isn't quite as clear cut as that, but it works along those lines. Despite this all kicking in a year ago, it's still having big impacts now. Pinkbike quoted someone saying that lead times for SRAM rear mechs to OE buyers were up to over 400 days now, whereas in pre-pandemic times they were 30-40. So there's that production limitation side of things, coupled with backlogs on orders, but then there are also shortages in raw materials (in part due to the pandemic) that mean that even if factories have production time, they might not have materials needed to make parts. That also touches on shipping in some cases too. Vital had an interview with Joe Grainey from Santa Cruz where he mentioned they'd been held up with shipping bikes out because they couldn't even get bike boxes made (mail order has grown so much in general that cardboard is in short supply because it's being used by so many more people now). Shipping has also been massively impacted. Shipping to the UK in particular has been hit pretty hard, but in general there's just a shortage of availability for shipping containers in Asia which means that bikes/parts can't be shipped out. It is possible to air ship bikes/parts, but there's a massive increase in cost associated with that. I can't remember if it was Commencal or Propain, but one of them mentioned that they were stuck with having to air ship some frames and larger components and that it was going to cause increased RRPs for the short term future. Bike24 are lucky to have some - they're basically impossible to get from any supplier in the UK at the moment. Anyway, this lack of availability is something that's going to continue on for probably most of this year. The only way I can really see out of it is if some of the bigger brands who've placed insane orders as a result of forecasting that the boom last year will sustain itself this year will realise that it won't/hasn't, and will cut some order quantities down, thus freeing up availability for others. I think we're probably too far down that road for this year though, so I expect it's going to be a rough year for a lot of people in the industry. My local shop have only been able to get a handful of bikes in from some brands, and even then they've been in random sizes/colours. They got them recently as part of the spring drop from those brands, with the next ones now looking like they'll be arriving some time in October... All the while, there are fewer aftermarket parts from the big brands for them to sell because so many of them are focussing on providing OE parts. Hopefully they'll be able to weather the storm, but I wouldn't want to be an independent bricks-and-mortar type shop at the moment.

#walesneverfails

The bars on the Pro spec bikes are relatively low, so you'll probably notice a much bigger change in feel by going to some Arcade or Team risers (or equivalent) than you'd expect. It's seemingly the first change people make to the spec of the Pro bikes, and it is with good reason. I'd generally go for the change to higher bars over a longer stem primarily because you get a bit more 'range' out of them. A longer stem is by its nature fixed in terms of how you can adjust your setup with it, and once it's on (apart from changing stacker heights) you're done. With higher bars, you're getting that whole radius of adjustment of them by rolling them forwards or backwards so you get a more pronounced change that you can adjust to suit your riding. The further forward they go the more trialsy they tend to make a bike feel, with rolling them backwards making them have more of a streety feel.

Yep. That was silly. So casual...

Yeah, can imagine there'd be a lot of hassle to go along with it. Think it's just a case of expectation setting - it's always "We'll give you a call tomorrow morning" or similar. We're not expecting to be moving in this weekend, just say that you're busy and you'll get back to us in the next few days...

Good luck dude, hope it works out! Forgot to really update before, but we had an offer accepted on a house so we're now on the ludicrously slow moving merry-go-round that is mortgage advisers, estate agents and solicitors. Those industries definitely strike me as being similar to 'the trades' in that simply doing what you say you're going to do when you said you were going to do it (i.e. the bare minimum) must put you above 99% of your competition. There's a slight element of f**kaboutery going on with the house we've had the offer accepted on which is somewhat leaving us open for the chance to get gazumped, but we're hoping the fact that we're doing everything we can to make it happen ASAP will count in our favour...

His body position in those first few clips makes it look like that bike rides exactly like I thought it would ride. If you're looking to aim more for the 'trials' end of 'street trials' I can see how it might be OK, but for anything more towards the 'street' end of the spectrum it just looks super awkward. This style of bike is always a compromise but it seems that they've skewed way towards the other end.

If you play your cards right you can use the trains to your advantage - for the last video with Ben, we were battling against the shorter days in winter so we ended up getting a train out in the morning then worked out way back in, or just used it to scope out places further afield then get the train home. In all honesty, some of the rides between spots weren't too bad (less so than they looked on the map), and there were random spots we came upon on the way from place to place. "There's got to be something" did become a trip catch-phrase just because so many of the estates we rode past seemed like there were going to be little session spots tucked away. It really was/is amazing how many great spots there are that never appear in videos. Riders like Charlie Rolls or Jack Carthy could put out some amazing footage from some of them.

Exactly what @Mikee said The Hope style of adaptor in general seems a lot better than the really cheap cast ones, so realistically if you keep an eye on everything you should be good to go. I have a suspicion that loose bolts are a factor in some adaptors and/or calipers breaking, so spending a bit of time checking over your bike now and then will probably put you in a better position to minimise the chances of anything breaking on you than just replacing an adaptor every X months.

That's turned out super nicely! Fair play...

I don't think I've ever done that, haha. I probably should, but I check my pressures every ride and I still see a little bit of sealant as being 'active' when I do that so I assume it's all good. In general though I think that was more of an issue on the earlier generation sealants that weren't particularly 'advanced'. The more recent stuff from brands like Muc-Off and Peaty's seem to last longer, at least from my experience with them compared to the older Joe's stuff. Peaty's sealant is bio-friendly so you could theoretically fire it all over a trail and it shouldn't really make too much difference. To be fair, from the amount of tubes I went through on my trials bikes before I went to tubeless, a bit of latex sealant spread out here and there is probably a much smaller overall environmental impact compared to the mountain of Welterweight tubes I left in my wake...

I know people don't and can get away with it, but the weight penalty is pretty minimal and I found a noticeable improvement having them in for trials. I tend to do a bit of playing around with bump stuff and stair rides so it helps with that, but even for gaps you just don't get that rim-out feeling if you're running lower pressures. The Rimpacts I've got in there are fairly dense (you can use them as a run-flat if you get a proper blowout - when I was trying to take my MTB tyres off last I was surprised by just how much support they gave with no pressure in the tyre) so they really do absorb those hits well. There is a bit of a cost associated with them, but at least they come with some nice valves so that saves you a chunk of expense. It just makes sense for me in terms of ride feel, but also because I like my bikes to be as resilient as possible. It's 85g per 26" insert so not a noticeable amount spread over that kind of area.

Getting tyres to seat and hold isn't usually too bad. I generally seat all of mine without sealant in (and a lot of tubeless kits recommend doing it that way), then deflate them and add the sealant. It means it doesn't go everywhere, but you still get the puncture protection. I've had plenty of rides on my own bikes (and with others) where we've heard the tell-tale "psst-psst-psst" of a hole that then gets sealed with the... well... sealant.