Mark W

I've seen a bike or two come from a pretty well known brand where the brake lever bolts had been tightened so much they'd broken the bar clamp on the brake lever. They'd been assembled by an assembly line who typically worked on motorbikes, and used power tools to fit components, so they just whizzed the brake clamp bolts up fully top and bottom. Giving people the correct training would probably have been more time and cost effective for all concerned.

After a summer of lockdown, comps are starting to return. The Biketrial Federation UK website has all the details, but just to point people in the right direction: • SBTC Competition - Newcastleton, TD9 0TL - 20th September: http://www.biketrialfederation.uk/events/scottish-bike-trial-championship-newcastleton/ - Bike Trial Academy UK Club Competition - Bike Trial Academy UK, CB23 2UP - 27th September: http://www.biketrialfederation.uk/events/bike-trial-academy-uk-club-round/ - UK National Championships (UCI rules) - Derbyshire Biketrial Centre, DE4 4AF - 4th October: http://www.biketrialfederation.uk/events/uk-national-championships/ Thanks to all the organisers who are working to put these events on in difficult circumstances. At the best of times running a competition is no easy matter, so juggling COVID-19 guidelines/restrictions, a compressed window for running events and just the general hassle of 2020 must be a nightmare.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The online entry form is now up at that link

That's the key word. Everyone I've ever ridden with has used 'back hop' to refer to hopping on their back wheel - in the same way that as Ben mentions, front hops as just hops on the front wheel - and a 'backward hop' if they were hopping backwards (or most recently fakie hop). It's also worth noting that Martyn, Martin, and more crucially Patsy Kensit all refer to it as a 'back hop' in the voice overs/pieces to camera throughout Tricks & Stunts.

The weekly shop rides I go on here start at 6pm, so we're firmly in 'need lights' territory. I have an existing bar mount setup from aaaaages ago, but the helmet light I just picked up cheap from Amazon is dogshit. What lights are people finding are working well for them? I'd prefer one that's got an integrated battery setup rather than the corded battery pack style. I know Exposure and Hope are good, but those prices: no.

Better not look like a noob and call a coaster wheelie a 'manual' either.

Carbon copy of what happened to me and my friends in my second year of uni in London. The agent we were with just didn't bother filing our paperwork for a day, and in that time the property got taken by someone else. That's not the only reason I f**king hate letting agents, but it's certainly a part of it. For what it's worth, it ended up that we got some other stuff sorted out and it worked out in a fashion, and we still had a good time. If you're with decent people, even being in a dogshit house is still fun in a "we're all in it together"/looking back and laughing kind of way. Hopefully you'll find somewhere good though!

I like watching Sergi ride, but I get what you mean. I think Jack and Charlie look a lighter on their bikes somehow, whereas it looks like Sergi is muscling his bike around more. He's f**king good though, I'll give him that!

This is a biketrials forum, so you may have more luck at a more moto-specific forum like www.trialscentral.com or somewhere similar Hope you enjoy the bike either way.

This is the 2020 Fourplay, but the CS length is the same as the 2019 one - you should be able to take a link out and get the tensioner angled more like this. It gets close to the stay so you might need to be careful when lining it up, but it does work...

For a street trials bike, learning to bunnyhop stuff without pedalling is the way to go. They work much better for that, at which point the gearing is kind of a non-issue and you can keep it around 22:16-ish to keep it sweet for more static trials moves. If you're changing, don't change the rear by more than 1 or 2 teeth. It has a much more pronounced impact than changing the front. As an example, with BMX gearing if you dropped 1 tooth at the rear, that was equivalent to 3 up front. The Gusset Double Six, Trialtech Sport Splined, Shimano DX or anything along those lines will work fine with that setup. Those sprockets are all compatible with 3/32" which is what you'll need. You'll need a chain whip and a cassette lockring tool to take the old sprocket off. A regular chain tool will do the trick for that particular chain, and you'll need to take a link out if you drop down to 15t. It looks like you could get away with taking another link out as it is with 22:16, so with that bit of extra slack you'll generate I'd get one whipped out.

Haha, I specialise in providing after-sales confidence support... That is my Arcade, yeah. I just sprayed over everything. Pro as f**k. As I suspected, the paint has started flaking off the tyres due to the sidewall deformation, but it works fine on the rims. Halfords black paint works really well for covering up stuff like that on anodised black parts - you can't see where the logos used to be at all. I've done it on other rims in the past and it works fine long term too. If you find a suitable way of getting rid of those Conti logos, feel free to shoot me a PM

That gap towards the end is f**king ludicrous. When the first 50 tricks were supermans in different locations I thought it was going to be one of those edits, but then that shit stepped up significantly.

That looks pretty much the same as their regular SD-series levers. Think when people are talking about BMX levers not having the right kind of leverage/cable pull they usually mean this kind of thing that you'd typically use with a U-Brake: The pivots are usually in a different place to a V-Brake style lever, whereas if you check that SD2 compared to your FR5 (?) lever, they appear to be a similar configuration so it should be all good.

The Trialtech and Jitsie pads scrub in really quickly so they'll probably feel decent after a bit of the water+pulsing action I mentioned before. The rotors will probably take a little longer, just because they're the harder of the two and you've got a lot more surface area to be bedding in. You'll know when the rotor's done because you'll have a pretty much mirror finish across the braking surface area. You can ride it before then though, the Jitsie/Trialtech pads have a lot of bite/hold, and the MT7s are really powerful in themselves so it's not as bad as if you had a lower powered brake with harder pads or something.

Yeah, Hope adaptors too - as before, for the Hope brakes it'd be all Hope, and likewise for Magura. Looks like he's just switched the brakes out. Just as something to do while you're fiddling with them, if you very slightly (and carefully!) undo the T25 bolt holding the banjo fitting in place on that back brake, you can rotate it so the hose goes to your seat stay a little neater. It just means you can straighten out that bend in the hose.

If that's come with the Magura upgrade as standard from an Inspired dealer, it'll have Magura MT7s with Storm HC 180mm rotors on it. They don't mix and match the rotor and brake brands - if it's a Hope brake bike, it's Hope brakes and rotors. Likewise with Magura. Just be careful with switching around rotors and pads - if one is contaminated, it'll generally contaminate the other, and if you then re-use either part with a new 'other' part, it can then go on to contaminate them too. Disc brakes are really good on the whole, but the major downside is how much contamination messes them up. Even touching them with your hand can lead to a dip in performance due to the oils in your skin. EDIT: Oh, forgot to say - they will feel pretty bad until everything has fully bedded in. Pouring some clean, cold water over the pads and rotor and riding around slowly pulsing the brake on and off can help speed that process up. Just keep adding a bit more clean water to them before it all dries out, and you'll find the performance should gradually increase.

As with most 4-piston brakes, the MT7s are super sensitive to how centralised the pistons are. If things are a bit off, the lever feel will be pretty spongy and the bite and hold won't really be there. This is the basic principle of getting it done, but basically, spending some time with a screwdriver/allen key to get your pistons set up evenly/properly is well worth it: Just doing the usual thing people do where they line the caliper up and just pump the lever until it firms up doesn't work as well. Get the pistons pushed back in fully, line the caliper up with the rotor, then pump the lever to get the pistons moving. Once they're most of the way there, find the piston that's sticking out the most and hold that in place (using the pad) while you pump the lever to even up the others. Keep doing that until you've go all 4 pistons hitting the rotor evenly. As before, even being a bit off makes a huge difference to the brake feel, so it's worth spending a bit of time on In general, I'd stick with Magura rotors for Magura brakes. Magura and Hope rotors aren't the same thickness, and although it's not a massive difference it's just a little easier to use like with like. Storm HC rotors work really well with them, and Trialtech Sport or Jitsie disc pads have been really good in mine. From my experience, running MT5 pads in the MT7 calipers gives noticeably less pad rock/knock.

It's got a Clean sticker on it which quadruples the value of the bike. For serious though, it's collection only so it'd probably be worth having a trip over there to see what you think of it and check the condition in person. Spec seems generally decent (apart from the 180mm rear/200mm front rotor setup), and has some expensive stuff on it which would kind of explain the high price tag.

How come Rusevelt changed his username?

As we're still within the EU for now, you won't need to pay duties. When you're on the website it'll probably have the price shown and say "incl. tax" or similar - that's because you're paying VAT for that country. If you were buying a bike from somewhere like the US, you wouldn't pay those taxes as you'd be paying duty when the bike arrived with you in the UK. Assuming it's trialshop.pl, that's run by @Greetings

Just had a gander at Passats. Seems you get a fair bit of car for your money with them, and not just because they're about 4 miles long. Hmm...

Yeah, had had a gander at some Octavias. Don't seem to be a huge amount of them out there though. Weirdly enough, one of them popped up not far down the road from me. In all honesty, Alfas reliability reputation kind of put me off it. That said, my sister's got a Giulietta (albeit a 2014 plate model) and that's been pretty good for her. That 159 does look cool in a particularly Alfa-y way though!

Another one joining Team "f**king off their MX5s"! Mine made it through its MOT, but it's time for something a little more practical. Could fit my Inspired in there, but the MTB is... well... yeah. Looking at getting hold of a cheap-ish (£2-3.5k~) larger hatchback or mid-sized estate, anyone got any tips/recommendations? Been taken by a few Volvo V50s I've seen, but I don't really have a huge frame of reference for them and as Trials-Forum is the font of all knowledge I thought I'd see what the consensus was here...