Mark W

Yeah, that's been my experience too. I basically put the pads in when they're new and take them out when they've worn out so ease of installation isn't really a 'problem' for me. In some ways the MT5 style pads make centralising the pistons easier too as you can retain two pistons pretty easily should you need to, whereas it's a bit more of a handful on the individual style pads.

Why not, out of interest? EDIT: Forgot to say - I'd read up about the Tannus before, and it seemed like a lot of MTBers found that the foam kind of packed down over time. That was just for 'normal' use, so I'm kind of surprised Yohan hasn't had problems along those lines bearing in mind the impacts you get from trials use.

The Hex bikes aren't supplied with tubeless kits as standard - think that will just be Inspired sending their team riders some of their tubeless kits to try out. I've been using Rimpacts in my Arcade and on my mountain bike for a while now. I had some DIY inserts before which I have a feeling were absorbing more sealant than the 'proper' inserts do. From the marks I've seen on my Rimpacts, they've definitely saved my tyres a good few times! For the weight penalty they seem well worth it in my mind. I think on the whole, for the 'normal' style inserts there probably won't be a huge amount of difference. I'd expect you'd notice more with the Cushcores simply because they're designed to fit lower in the tyre and interact more with the sidewalls, but that's possibly less relevant for trials purposes.

Not sure what those fitment numbers relate to, but essentially any MT4-style pads (so pads made for MT2/4/6/8 brakes) and any MT5-style pads (the one-piece style 4-piston pads, not the 4 individual pads as found on the MT7) will fit.

Good to know that Dominik, @Ali C and @ben_travis all have viable modelling career options open to them with DFS once they hang their bikes up for good.

The frames look quite Marino-y to me? Not sure if they're just some Marino frames with some different branding, sold on through Dominik? May be totally wrong on that though... That's mainly coming from this photo:

That might be £50,000 represented by bits of fancy paper, but still doesn't really reflect the concept. Nice flex though... That's only in England and Northern Ireland apparently. We pay LTT in Wales (our version of stamp duty), but there's no sign of an extension for us beyond 31st March. Ours is handled by the Welsh Assembly rather than Westminster.

Haven't heard back from the estate agent we put an offer in, but the house has been re-listed on the property sites with a different agent, and they've increased the asking price by £10,000. Safe to say that's a no for our offer, and there's absolutely no way that it's worth what they're asking for now. It's been on the market for a good few months now, and had the price reduced previously to try and help it sell. We found out yesterday they wanted to take it away from that estate agent and go with a different one, and it seems they have now. Not sure how they think this is going to help sell it, or sell it any time soon. For context, it's now about £20-30k more than any houses in that area. It's nice, but not that nice. It had good visibility on property websites and the previous agents had done a really good video tour of it. The agents we dealt with at the house weren't super friendly or that switched on, but we found out anything/everything we needed to to be able to put an offer in, so it doesn't seem like a change of agent is going to be the key to getting it sold, especially with the asking price now being that much higher.

Yes and no - it depends on the affordability of that stock though. I assume most wealthy people buying a second home aren't buying a cheap shitter to hang out in when they're not in their primary home. The location thing has always been a weird one to me. I get that you get "more for your money", but a) there's a reason for that and b) I just don't really care that much about it. It was so tedious when we were first looking for places as it's the same thing everyone trots out constantly. As an example, I really liked living in Bristol. We looked at buying there but it was too much money. At the time we were looking, a f**king giant 7 bedroom house up in MId Wales came up on the market we could have easily afforded. Who gives a shit though? Rhayader isn't Bristol, it doesn't have the same feel or opportunities that Bristol has. At the time of my life when living in London was what I wanted to do and where I needed to be, living somewhere up in Yorkshire being able to count my extra bedrooms wouldn't have meant anything. I value being able to do the things I want to do more, and that is typically more location based. Sacrificing what I want to do with my time for a different sized house just doesn't really add up. Feel free to disregard that above paragraph, it's probably just PTSD from so many conversations where I had to bite my tongue when I wanted to just shout "I f**kING KNOW" at people. All that said, we put an offer in for a house yesterday, so... yeah. Got a mortgage in principle that covers us, just doing a bit more digging to find something that might be better longer term as we've just had a change in circumstances that should open things up more. Kind of feels weird to have done it. We've been doing a bunch of research on places, we've viewed a few here and there, my wife has bought a few houses in the past and gets the process, but it still feels weird to have walked around a house twice then committed to throwing some incomprehensible amount of money at it (it's not a super expensive house just to be clear, but does anyone really know what even something like £50,000 actually 'is'?). We've definitely done our homework (lol) with it, but because it's the first time I've done something like this it feels nuts. Exciting times though. I am looking forward to having a solid base to work from, and to have something we can make our own. Happens to be a fairly easy ride to most trails which is a bonus, as is the pre-installed cat-flap...

Similar position here although nowhere near as baller Is an awkward one though. Got all my accounts stuff that everyone wants, but it seems that some lenders are now being choosy about whether someone's taken the SEISS or not. I projected I'd make a bit less 2020/21 compared to the year before due to the pandemic, so got involved with the SEISS. It now seems that that might count against me. Fun times. We had a second viewing on a house today. We both got a good feeling on the first viewing but had some minor reservations about it (primarily storage space). We did a second viewing to see what we could do about it, and it all looks manageable. They're asking too much for it so we're hoping that (assuming we can get a mortgage...) we can knock them down a bit otherwise we'll probably pass. I know everyone in this thread already knows, but f**k me - everything property related is such a faff. It's impressive how legitimate all the actors involved have managed to make a total f**king racket.

I'm glad you got it built up, but we may need to stage an intervention over that brake hose setup

I've got a dinky little Topeak tool that I use for that. Always worth having around in case any tweaks need to be made here and there.

And a back end shorter than the front end?

When I first fit pedals to my SRAM cranks on my Inspired they can sometimes come a bit loose for the first handful of rides, but they do tend to settle down. Using a decent length allen key to fit them does help, as most multitools won't really give you much torque (especially compared to what they're supposed to be torqued up to). Just keeping a tool with you for the first few rides should help. If it comes to it and you don't have a tool, you can twist them up so they're as tight as you can get them by hand, then pedal around dragging your brake a bit to effectively tighten them on through riding. It's not ideal, but it's better than pedals flapping around in your cranks!

The MT5s and MT7s have a bit more power and better lever feel to me (they feel a little lighter/more responsive at the lever when set up properly IMO), but Hopes have more durability and all the spare parts you could ever need. If you're potentially going to be doing some bashing, Hopes will realistically be the way to go as the levers are a lot tougher. One good hit can totally kill a Magura lever, whereas the Hope Tech 3 levers tend to be a bit more impact resistant. When the MT5s/MT7s are working they're sweet though! Guys like John Langlois and Ben Travis have shown that you can get away with the 2-piston Maguras, but I prefer knowing I've got a bit more power there to make up for my mistakes The bonus of the 2-piston brakes is that you get more pad clearance too - the MT5/MT7 pads sit really close to the rotors compared to the MT Sport/4/6/8 or Hope brakes.

Ah, okey dokey - when you said half an hour over the bridge I thought you meant you were over Newport kinda way. That'll be sweet for getting over the border again though If you're still riding your MTB, there's plenty to go at this side of the Severn too

Yep. Akrigg's a good case in point. He made some absolute dogs look like they rode well, and that's presumably why he's so valuable to the big brands like Mongoose and GT. Generally speaking, there's a reason that geo on bikes today isn't what it used to be 20 years ago...

Having ridden Flipp's bike, I'd say it's definitely the most functional feeling bike I've ridden. It's almost like it's a tool, if that makes sense? Super direct and "positionable" for want of a better word. I think if I'd had one years ago I would have been more on board with it, but it doesn't quite have the same "bike" feel as a 24 for me. I know these are all vague terms, but it's hard to really quantify this kind of thing! Essentially, I like the characteristics of bigger wheels and I'm happy to have the trade-off that you have for a more conventional kind of bike, even if it means that it's not as easy to use as an Alias. If you're more open to the idea of them then they're well worth a look. It felt like you could do a hell of a lot on them, as Flipp and Tom show!

My neck of the woods, eh? Whereabouts are you moving to?

Well, as the saying goes, a bike in the hand is worth two in the order confirmation email... The Czar and Adamant are quite a bit different once you go deeper - they both have the Spanish BB, but the Czar's got the integrated tensioners, slightly more modern geo, some more 'refined' CNC machined bits on the frame, etc. Both were nice though, and should still be a lot of fun to ride Hope you enjoy it!

So what I'm hearing is "more riding time"?

If you've got all the bits there already it's worth giving it a go. It's a pretty easy swap to make, and Ali's felt alright when I tried them out when he was down last. 'Felt alright' is not exactly a glowing review in fairness, but that's mainly due to me not being a huge fan of the positioning and arc you get with the Shimano levers. There's just a different feel to radial piston levers (e.g. Magura, old M810 Saints) compared to axial (e.g. Shimanos now) with the lever when you use it. That's something it's not super hard to get used to though, and if you enjoy the feel of the Shimano levers you're set.

Haha, that's a new one on me! If you've got the f**ks to give, you can melt those staple holes to smooth them off, but then you're kind of entering a turd polishing phase. Pivotals have fallen out of favour in the BMX world so you may find some ones that use the same pan as the Inspired one for pretty cheap.

Is it the Tripod or the Pivotal one you've got? If it's Pivotal, I've seen some stripped generic Pivotal seats before and they're pretty random looking. I believe this is the same pan used for the Inspired Pivotals: I haven't seen a stripped Tripod seat before so don't really know what they'd be like under there, but I'm assuming they'll be fairly 'odd' looking. The way there's no 'no padding' production seats out there suggests that the pan is a fruity one too.