Mark W

Sweet, that's pretty much how I thought it would be, just worded much more succinctly. What Dave's doing is basically what my wife's parents did. They bought their current house 35~ years ago knowing they'd be there for a long time, and paid it off a while back now. They already had one kid and were expecting another so just bought a house 'with potential', then did it up, extended, changed the layout and so on and have added a shitload of value to it. Naturally the fact they bought it in the early 80's and it is now 2023 has also added a fair chunk of value in itself... They both worked for Natwest so had access to the best financial products/vehicles available so that also got them in a great position, and the teachings from that are also why we were able to put such a big chunk down for our house (courtesy of Nic's lifetime of savings guided by her parents). Cross-threading, but I posted a bit ago about our chimney situation in the angry thread. Safe to say that's £700 we are never getting back from the c**ts who 'fixed' our chimney. We've had another roofer out and it's £1200 to get the chimney removed. They should be coming in early-to-mid Feb to get that done. We've been mega lucky with not having had any meaningful rain for a couple of weeks so our bedroom/loft has had a bit of a chance to dry out, although it does suck seeing how much we're going to have to repaint courtesy of their f**k-up.

I don't really understand this stuff particularly well, but I suppose ultimately the bank own your house until you've paid off your mortgage so the higher value just means they feel more comfortable giving you better rates for things as - in the worst case scenario of you just totally stopping paying them - they're still well covered? Using Mike's example, if he's paid off a few grand from the mortgage over the first year or two and the house price had stayed the same, if he then just ghosted his mortgage provider they're probably going to wind up either just breaking even or losing some money if they move the house on (assuming they lose some money from fees, housing market fluctuations, negotiations on the sale, etc.). As it is the house has suddenly gone up by £66k, so they're now preeeeetty well covered in any eventuality. It means they need to try and screw less money out of Mike every month as they're better covered (effectively their £269k loan is now secured against a £335k asset), plus I expect that having a more valuable asset benefits them as a mortgage provider because it gives them more heft for negotiations of their own in the financial industry as a whole? We've been in our place for just over 18 months now and holy smokes I am glad we went for a 5 year fix! Because of my change in employment (basically down to part time from full time-ish) we would have been really struggling if we'd been on either a 2 year fix that was about to expire, or on a tracker of some sort. I assume there's still going to be quite the bump in terms of what we have to pay when this runs out, but still, we're in a much better position than we would have been otherwise. Related to that we got our annual statement type thing through the other day. lol. The smallest of dents in that...

Holy smokes that back tyre looks meaty, haha. Think it's the rim that really makes it look chunkier. Glad you got the tensioner to work one way or another

Great video, Mike Really enjoyed it. By the end I'd stopped reflexively thinking whenever you did a smith that you were about to eat shit because you'd missed the front on a sidehop - think that's just the PTSD I have from doing exactly that shining through... Always impressed by the creativity in your riding, I'm glad that doesn't seem to be diminishing in any way!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-64346971 This reminded me of this thread. Hope you're all good wherever you are dude.

On-off power is what you're after, really! The end goal is to use your rear brake as little as possible for manuals, so although it'll have a bit less modulation in that setup compared to if you had it set the other way, you'll get more usable power for trialsy stuff which is where you'll rely on the brake most. As has been said, you'll probably feel a little more of a spongy/mushy feel to the brake but good cables should offset a lot of that. From memory the Element is a reasonably stiff frame but if needs be you could throw a brake booster on there too.

These should be a pretty similar compound to the pads Ali linked to - Empire are a great shop, so if you're choosing to support Amazon or Empire I know which way I'd go https://www.empirebmx.com/kool-stop-flatland-brake-pads Koolstop describe them as "AN EXTREME COMPOUND FOR ONLY EXPERIENCED TRICK OR TRIALS RIDERS needing a compound that WILL INSTANTLY LOCK THE WHEELS." With that level of caps lock usage you know they must be serious... The pad compound will most likely be the same as any of the generic clear pads out there, so on a smooth rim you'll instantly get much better performance. If you follow the other tips the guys above have given you'll find a night and day difference in how your brake works compared to what it's like now. The Element is a really capable little bike, by the way! It's an older model compared to what's out now, but they ride really nicely. He's on the 26" version of your bike in this, but here's David Sellero doing some cool stuff way back when: The line at 2:18 is so good...

That Webcyclery pic took some finding to be fair! Those cranks are about as illusive online as they are in real life now it seems. You're right about CNC-only cranks - there are some applications where I wouldn't have issues running them, and that decision would certainly be design based too. It was more that for me, a lot of trials cranks are just CNC'd because it's the cheap option, and the lack of any real testing from the majority of trials brands means the customer is the one who gets to find out just how strong they really are. Things are better now than they were when those Racing Line cranks came out, but some of that is just because a lot of the sketchier brands have fallen by the wayside now. Trying to beat established competition on simple metrics like weight was the way everyone was going, and the only way to really do that is just to cut more material out. It always seemed ironic to me that there was a switch to a larger axle standard partially under the guise of improving strength and stiffness, but then they'd hack all the material out of the crank arms and make them weak and flexy instead. There's a lot to be desired with the way the trials industry is currently (we really don't need 5-6 different front axle standards, and Jitsie's tapered steerer standard needs to get in the sea), but the way that there's been an increased focus on durability over simply dropping weight is one of the better aspects of it.

With this being a bit more involved, and with how burned we got on the last one which was essentially a handyman who knew some people, I think we're going to opt for the 'proper' roofers this time. We've only had one quote so far which was £1250, but to be fair in comparison to how much we paid to have the lead work done that's a bargain. Everybody else either isn't replying or is replying to say they're swamped so can't do anything for now. The reviews for the roofer who gave us a quote were really good, so in the seemingly more likely event we do go for him hopefully it'll work out OK.

That's what he's working with. There's so little material in there anyway that although removing some to round things out might help in one way, it would probably be detrimental in another. To be fair though, there's a large part of me that just wouldn't run CNC-only (rather than forged then CNC'd) lightweight trials cranks, so adding in all the other factors I would just be throwing them in the recycling bin in all honesty.

They were breaking because the design was shit, basically. From memory cracks would develop between the hexagon cut-outs in the back of the crank arms, and then they'd snap. You can run them, but you'll need to watch them carefully.

Glad to hear you got your roof sorted Mike, although sorry to hear about the other stuff! Hope you guys can find a way through it all. We have some fun new wet patches in places we didn't before those cowboys came round to f**k with our chimney, so that's nice. My sister and her partner came round to take a look at it - they're both architects and have done building condition assessment reports and stuff like that so know what they're talking about. They worked out what the issue was, why the roofers did what they did (they were dogshit) and what we can do about it. It sounds like realistically getting the chimney removed is the way to go. The rest of the roof is fine, despite being pretty old at this point. It hasn't been replaced since the house was built in the early 60's, although it's had more felt added to it some time after 1980 or so. It means that we don't necessarily need to lash out all the cash for a full new roof, so can just get our pants pulled down for removing the external section of the chimney instead. Now we've just got to find a roofer who will actually return our calls/messages and want to do it...

Here's an orange Arcade for you @javimic Bike looks sweet, Matt! Good choice on the colour. Looks like a great finish for not being 'actual' chrome. Hope you enjoy it!

I think part of that will be that that's what you'd usually get on a mod and it's what he'll have had supplied on his bikes from Crewkerz, but also part of it is just that it helps out more for UCI comp stuff - even more so now that UCI sections are seemingly evolving into a series of static hooks on awkward stuff, so all the help you can get with pedal clearance will help. I always ran 175s, but 22:16 felt a little too light and 22:15 felt a little too hard. 170s helped bridge the gap. I stuck with 22:16 when I fitted the 170s and it made my gear ratio feel a bit harder, although definitely more towards the 16t side than 15t side. I think a few others switched to 170s for similar reasons. I wouldn't say there were any particularly notable performance advantages for one over the other really.

Just wanted to say that's a great photo, dude! Bike looks like it should be sweet too. Those tanwalls work

www.instagram.com/mindcontroltrials have posted some clips of Carthy doing some sizeable things there. Looks like a few people made it out at least!

Probably not. As Craig said, the issue you're likely to encounter is the top jockey wheel. I can't remember which brand it was (maybe Trialtech), but a while back a company offered their tensioners in 'Short' and 'Long' versions. The Long version is basically what you can see with the latest gen Trialtech tensioners where the main tensioner arm is fairly long, and allows you to run larger sprockets. The Short version had a stubby tensioner arm similar to that Reverse tensioner, and the sprocket range was basically the same as the one Reverse mention there.

They've been in stock at most of Inspired's bigger dealers since Jack Heard posted his. The bike Aaron was (is?) riding was from one of Inspired's US dealers. I've seen a few riders share theirs on Instagram, but you're unlikely to really see all that many - I think it's one of Inspired's lowest volume models, and there's so much noise on social media it's hard to really see much anyway. Even if you search through things like #rideinspired there's loads of other random content that people have started spamming in there. Those generic "@mtbcontentdaily" type accounts that just post bike photos they've ripped from other accounts and use loads of unrelated hashtags just to try and get views need to get in the sea...

Nice Also managed to get out yesterday, but a little later in the day: The contents of my water bottle was getting pretty crunchy towards the end of the ride. Not ideal! Everything was running remarkably well - so firm it was like summer again. All fun and games until you hit a random icy root...

Quadzilla is just tough regardless, simply due to how they've laid that trail out. The grade isn't particularly steep, but all the switchbacks mean that you're basically having to generate speed almost from stationary over and over again, so rather than just spinning a nice easy cadence and maintaining your output you're almost doing interval training. Basically everyone here has an ebike and they love that trail. I can see why as with a motor it'd make it a lot more engaging, but Twrch is way more fun on a regular bike! Related to that, but I'm typically the solo regular rider or one of two regular riders if we do a group ride to BPW. It means that it gets pretty rough towards the end of the day! Last time up there we did the full bottom-to-top climb, and the first trail that got nominated was a top to bottom... Riding with the guys down here and having to chase ebikes has certainly improved my fitness! Just going back to Cwmcarn, the Twrch loop takes me about an hour and 20-30mins to do, and I find it kills me way more than doing a similar ride locally. Most of the 'unofficial' stuff down here is more winch-and-plummet kind of trails, so fairly standard fire road climbs to then bomb down stuff. Because those trail centres are designed more as a loop they take a bit more doing - there aren't really the same kind of natural taking a break points on them (especially something like Twrch which is quite undulating for the top part of it), compared to most other setups in South Wales. There are some exceptions to that rule, but because of the hills being fairly short and punchy they lend themselves more to winch-and-plummet. It means you may find that if you've got some more off piste local stuff it might be a bit easier to build your fitness on, but it depends what's closest to you really. As one example there's a place known locally as Mojo (as Mojo Suspension are based right by it and I believe used to use one of the lines there to test suspension) which is a little closer to you than Cwmcarn, and that's a series of different runs that all descend off one main climb so you can choose what you want to do, then either do a spin-and-push to get back up. It's here, and is contained within the two little woodlands you can see on satellite view. Also just remembered about Wentwood! Wentwood is just North of you (find it here), and has some super good trails there. Again, winch-and-plummet, but a lot of fun. They can be a little tricky to find, but if you parked in the normal forestry carpark and lurk the heat maps on Strava you'll probably find the trails themselves easy enough. There are some easier ones and there are also some absolutely ridiculously steep ones that I was pretty glad we didn't ride last time we went there... There are loads of walks in Wentwood forest, so I'm sure you could take the family up there for a stroll some time and surreptitiously keep an eye out for trail starts and finishes on your way through

The usual antifreeze:water ratio I ran was 100:0 It's such a small amount of fluid in the brake itself that you may as well, really. That looks like a fun time though, those first snow rides when it's still crisp and actually has some grip are super fun. We're on day 4 here so I suspect that my ride later is going to be more 'sketchy/lethal' than 'sketchy/fun', but we'll see...

That Zig Zag bit I think is Quadzilla? They've put signs up for all of the sections on it now but I'm usually too busy thinking "Why did they make it like this" to really take those details in, haha. Some bits of Twrch got switched up a year or so ago to make them more doable. The climbs had eroded on some of the techier bits (probably in large part down to how many ebike riders use that trail, they'd almost scooped bits out of it like when MX bikes get ridden up MTB trails) so they resurfaced some of it and altered others. That has in turn deteriorated/weathered in a bit so it's still a good challenge, but less haggard than it was. Is FoD pretty compact? I don't really have any frame of reference for it. Is it pretty quick to get back up to do different trails, or is it BPW-esque where it's a pretty long climb to get up to do more runs?

Sorry to hear that Daan! Hopefully the recovery goes well.

Yeah, over lockdown a lot of really fun off piste stuff got added, and they've also developed and added to the existing network. There's a blue and two reds and blacks now, along with the old school DH track which they've done up too. The Twrch climb is certainly rough to be fair, it's fairly relentless. Both Cafall and Twrch (which are the two 'normal' climbs) are hard in their own ways - Twrch is the awkward techy rocky one, and Cafall is the one that appears to be 90% hairpins... Still need to get over to FoD! Seen so many videos from there and it looks fun.

It's also a stress riser. I've seen forks break at the cable guide before, and it's the reason that Trialtech and Inspired forks don't have them. There is some pressure from some riders to have them on forks to give a 'cleaner' look though, so I can see why some brands do it. Hope you enjoy the new bike in any case, must be quite a change!