Mark W

The Eagle GX cranks are weird in the sense that the have relatively long machined races (they're not races but I don't really know what you'd call them...) on the axle, and basically the BB bearings can sit at any point along them. It seems you can play fairly fast and loose with the BB cup spacing/positioning without it being an issue. I'm more used to setups where the axle/bearing position is a little more fixed, so it took a bit of getting used to that drive-side there's nothing between the outer race of the BB bearing and where the bashring starts other than fresh air. Fairly sure the BB bearing preload is handled by witchcraft or something. I suspect that the current standards clusterf**k is probably why they've done this though - SRAM generally seem to gear stuff towards making it easier to sell as OEM, so if you've got a crankset that's compatible with almost everything out there without needing to play around with spindle lengths and so on you'll make life easier. The bit about the width in comparison to a 68/73mm setup makes sense though. Most BB bearings are around 7-10mm wide, so if they're within the frame with a 92mm shell then it's not really much different to external BB on a 73mm shell.

It was/is Bessell. Stan's Kloud 26" is still going too

If you're finding MTB to 26" a big jump, you'll find it even more so going to 20". 20" trials bikes feel fairly alien compared to 26" trials bikes, which in turn feel fairly alien compared to most 'normal' bikes. A 24" bike will feel a little more like your MTB just due to the geometry being more conventional (albeit much better for doing trials moves on than your MTB would be), but as Swoofty said the real way to progress is to get comfortable on a bike, learn how it feels/responds to inputs, and go from there. If you're chopping and changing too much you'll spend a lot of time re-gaining the feel of a bike rather than making progress on it.

That DOB looks like it's got one steeeep head angle! Agreed though, looks more like a kids bike. We had an Oset at TB a while back and we had a quick roll in the warehouse on it (after being told to by the owner :p) - I can see how they'd be a shitload of fun. Electric motors in cars are getting interesting with all the torque vectoring they're doing - there must be so much scope for that for motorbikes too, especially mototrials stuff. Not just a slave to a conventional powerband from a combustion engine, getting able to have torque/power applied pretty much however you want.

better than getting scammed by yt amirite For serious though, what is the second hand market like for mountain bikes? Is it as f**ked as the trials market or do bikes actually hold some form of value?

That kind of comes down to how good the shop is though, in much the same way that direct sales rely on how good the company is that you're dealing with. If shops are decent they'll be able to keep you in the loop and look after you rather than you having to chase them up. If they're not, they won't. To look at it another way, it's about how much attention you're likely to get from a customer service team too. If you're dealing with a company selling direct (e.g. YT), they're selling thousands of bikes internationally. They probably won't have a massive customer service team so you've got whatever that number of people is dealing with thousands of potential owners worldwide, whilst also dealing with sales queries, etc. If you're dealing with a bike shop they'll have a fraction of those sales, so you're more likely to be able to get the focus of their customer service team. That doesn't guarantee them giving a shit, but again, that's why you buy from decent shops. I can see direct being the way things go in future, and if I was in the market for a new bike the YT or Canyon bikes would certainly be tempting, but it doesn't seem like the customer service side of things are that dialled in yet.

If you're concerned about your ankle ligaments then you'd probably be better off just getting some decent shoes and some separate ankle supports. A pair of high top shoes won't give you the same support, so you'll be making it harder to find some decent shoes whilst not really giving your ankles the help you might think you are.

The double wheel sprung tensioners they've just put out aren't particularly great compared to other sprung tensioners out there, but what "most stuff" have they done that with in the past few years? I know in the past they were a bit snakey, but they've done their own thing for a while now. It seems that was the key number for him, otherwise wouldn't he have said "I wanted shorter offset forks"? What I meant was that people are fixated on the wheelbase figure over everything else, and attribute changes in ride/feel to a difference in wheelbase rather than the geo relevant to it. It's something I see a lot when people are asking for recommendations on frames, parts, etc. That was the Freed, which got replaced by the Desire. The previous Atomz Premier was broadly similar though too. When I binned mine off after going for a Sky, Ali built it up briefly and enjoyed riding it. The Freed was the frame that people kept asking for, but not many people actually wanted to buy (see also: every V-Brake frame/fork for the past 10 years). It had quite a lot going for it. Simple design, some nice details, integrated tensioner, good geo, etc. - it could just be that the brand was wrong. Crewkerz have an 'image', and that doesn't necessarily square with the image that people wanting that kind of frame looked for. The people who did want the Crewkerz 'image' wanted to have a bike more like a Jealousy. When the Freed got replaced by the Desire they gave it Jealousy-ish geo, presumably for that reason.

This is also really, really good:

Trials riders and the fetishisation of wheelbase. Never changes. I thought he was the development/test rider for those Yess frames so it seems kind of strange he didn't get the geo done to what he wanted, rather than bolting some forks on backwards to get to an arbitrary wheelbase length.

BBB are a bit different - they're a Dutch based company who do their own products. That said, those forged stems are reeeeasonably all much of a muchness. They should be fine.

So good:

I'm not sure you're quite on the money with the negative offset thing, it seems that things are stabilising around 30mm again after some sub 30mm forks cropped up over the past few years. Street trials stuff is a little different but again around 25mm seems to be where things are converging. It's only really Echo going steep on HT angles on 'normal' trials bikes too, most others seem to still be around the 71-72° area like they have been for a while.

Most of their selling points regarding that appear to be due to it being an upside down style fork though? Just in terms of leg diameters, and those diameter in relation to the crown. It's just one of those ideas that doesn't intuitively make sense to me. From the way Cannondale have had to spend so much on R&D to create a fork that on their website they won't even do a like-for-like comparison to a 'regular' for just doesn't really scream confidence. I know that it's not a particularly reliable indicator, but the way that no other bikes really use a single-sided fork rings an alarm bell too. There are obviously benefits for things like road bikes too, but again none of them are using them. It's not like they're common on any form of motorbike too. Like I say I realise that that doesn't mean much as some industries are naturally resistant to change, but if there were these myriad benefits to them it seems like they would have been implemented in other genres/disciplines by now.

What are the benefits of a single-sided fork, especially as far as trials is concerned? I had a look at Cannondale's blurbs for their Leftie forks but the way they've written them is a bit disingenuous for want of a better word (talking about how fork legs splay out sideways, but not actually factoring in a hub bolted between them keeping them in place, for example).

Believe TB do 175mm, 177mm and 180mm so not quite what you're looking for unfortunately. Just had a look at some BMX shops but it seems they typically go longer than that... @aener - if you're looking to go 3x3x in future, Source BMX do spokes in the right length for you (192mm?) in black or silver. They're £14.99 for a set of 40 spokes and nipples.

I really like the videos you're putting out Max That Family Guy reference... yes. Good work for trying out that concept, it's interesting to see how you got on with it. Some old bike tyres ziptied to those Inspired platforms next?

Yeah, I don't blame you for not wanting to go with Fords again. Yours seemed to be problematic and my Focus was a leaky, rusty, rattly bag of shit. Part of it was me being absolutely shafted by the garage I dealt with, but there was a fairly long list of things that people said often went wrong with the petrol Focus I had, and basically all of them did. A lot of it was due to stupid spec ideas by Ford too, so it wasn't the usual kind of failures you'd expect for high mileage engines or what have you. Nic's Mum has had a few new style Fiesta and Focus models and they've all had to go back to the dealer she bought them from for multiple issues too, thinking about it. Similar issues to mine with it being mistakes built in to the car as well. Her heater matrix has shit the bed on her 1-2 year old Fiesta several times now. Despite the dealer admitting it was a problem that Ford caused they're digging their heels in with replacing it this time despite it being in warranty, and them acknowledging it's a known issue. Weirdly, the seats on the Peugeot of Dreams weighed a tonne - the seat belt mechanisms in them much have been made of lead or something...

Some not-quite-estate but not-quite-saloon cars can be fairly spacious too. I don't really know what it'd classify as, but as an example my Rovers were surprisingly spacious despite not really being one silhouette or the other (not that I'm implying you should go for a Rover). I'm not sure what your living setup is like at the moment, but if you've got a little storage space you can always unbolt the rear seats to get your some more space for when you need it too. If you're only likely to occasionally need the extra seats hopefully the space gained vs. inconvenience of fitting the seats would be the worth the trade-off. It might help a smaller car like the A4 still be suitable for your needs. The boot pan of the Focus and 206 I had both ended up being relatively flat once the seats were out, so if you were wanting to sleep in them you'd have enough room lengthways that way without having to kink yourself where the seats would normally be.

Couple of things to be aware of with the Silex V2 - it's got a 25.4mm seat tube, so you'll need to get a suitably sized post for whichever type of setup you want. It'll have to be a BMX post, all the 'usual' ones for street bikes will be 27.2mm so won't fit. For some reason TMS don't supply the frame with tensioners despite saying they do. The dropouts have relatively little clearance around them (between the slot and the ends of the seat/chain stays) so you'd need to either get some Arcade tugs with longer bolts or go for something like the Trialtech tugs and grind down the main plate that fits around the axle to sit inside the dropouts. If you're getting it via TartyBikes, I think they've offered customers some longer bolts for Arcade tugs for that frame in the past so they should be able to help out.

I got similar pain when I first got into climbing and was over-doing it a bit. I found some places online that suggested a certain type of exercise using something along these lines: I made my own from a metal pole, a milk bottle and a shoe lace - basically, you just hold it in front of you, rotate it as it lowers the weight to the ground, then spin it the other way to bring it back up. It looks like nothing, but even with a relatively low weight it properly gives your wrists, forearms and elbows a workout. It helped a lot for me, and very quickly too - it's an easy thing to make, so I'd highly recommend giving it a go. I ripped those photos from here, btw - haven't read the blog yet but might give you an idea: http://www.blackdovenest.com/2010/01/tennis-elbow-instant-relief.html

I don't really get the bit about playing nicely with 32? I see what you're saying about the 32/48 combo though, I hadn't really thought of it that way before. In my head 36 to 48 should still work better though just as the hole drillings in the hub are going to be closer to where they'd need to be for a 48, and 36 still goes into 48 fine (i.e. you're essentially just removing 3 spokes from each 'group' of spokes - i.e. drive inboard/drive outboard/non-drive inboard/non-drive outboard - rather than the 4 for 32h). I would assume that would mean less inconsistency with spoke lengths required, but that's by the by. If you're going 32h then that's that, and it'll just be a case of it being a bit of a mindblag trying to work out what lengths to use anyway. Flipp's right about the longer nipples though

If it was 36h and divided into 48 nicely that'd be one thing, but with it being 32h that's going to be a bit of a shambles however you go about doing it in all honesty. Can't really think how you'd get around it without having to do a bit of trial and error action for the spoke lengths. You'll get a reasonable amount of lee-way with the nipples and spokes if you're happy to grind down any excess, but I don't know if that'll really be enough. Good luck!

+1 on Hermes being dogdick. Apparently tried delivering a parcel twice, but haven't. Hadn't realised quite how shit their website is for providing useful info... EDIT: Got it

A little bit longer shouldn't really affect the performance too much - they'll still be way shorter than you'd find on a full-size bike, and people use V-Brakes on those with no problems. You can route a V-Brake cable through the steerer, but they are a bit fiddlier to do. The cable has to wrap around the fork leg and the noodle will go into the caliper upside down, so you may find you need to tweak the angle of the noodle/buy a noodle with a different angle. It's just a case of trial and error working out the right cable length for it to work basically. If you buy a long cable and just trim it down bit by bit until you get a nice smooth curve leading to the noodle you should be fine. You'll need to get hold of one of these and hammer the existing star nut out: