Mark W

Well, wasn't that other thread fun. Anyway, here are some updated pictures of the frame, now in the production stage: It'll theoretically come in at around the £460 mark. It's available from Tartybikes, Selectbikes and Bikedock. Geo is: - 1075mm and 1100mm wheelbase options - +60mm BB rise - 375mm chainstays - U6 aluminium construction Fairly standard, with the exception of the chainstays which are a bit shorter than usual. If anyone even thinks of the word "Ninja" I'll hit you. Woo, let's all discuss the bike. Note: THE BIKE. Mark

Yeah, joy joy joy... We aren't all going to get along, are we? It's the way it is. Just 'cos we all ride stupid bikes doesn't mean we're all gonna want to stick it in each other. If people can just put aside differences for one comp then why not, I guess, but expecting everyone to wanna love 'n' hug is a bit (to put it mildly...) unrealistic.

Neil Tunnicliffe is the only person I've heard has snapped them. Thought it was you who told me Ad? :) Anyhoo, yeah, confused the tats off me when I saw someone running an upside down Guess road-stem at the Deej ride, but they too assured me it was also moon-lighting as an Echo Control stem. Little sketchy, but they seem to hold bars in front of you I guess so who's fussin'...

I woke up. I cooked a perfect Hawaiian pizza. I did a little revision (the only stuff I'd done) for my A2 D&T paper. Rode into school on my BMX. f**king aced the exam, was really easy (fingers crossed I got a good result, anyway, but it just wasn't hard). Rode up to bike shop, got £45s-worth of products for £30. My new Demolition grips feel awesome. Rode up to ramp, rode for about an hour, did some fun stuff. Rode home, had some curry. Rode to work, which was a piece of piss. After work (10pm), rode up to the skateramp and rode on my own 'til it got too dark to ride any more. Learnt a new weird trick and almost got rock fakie. Rode up to Welsh Office, and did a new manual line, and almost got a 360 hop over a hipped flatbank thing. Then learnt another new manual line along a long walk-way thing. Then almost got manuals to 180s sorted. Rode home, had a nice pint of cold coke. Went online, checked my e-mails, looked at some ToothpasteForDinner.com cartoons. All in all, been pretty f**king idyllic really.

Seriously, that'd last for about... 2 days, maybe 3? People just wouldn't keep paying in month after month with the sort of volume of cash that is generated from banner sales, so it just wouldn't work. That wouldn't work, as we've already seen. I'm not having a go at James here, but James has put up - in that GU thread for example - "A little birdy told me you can get them from Selectbikes, but they've only got 5 in" or whatever. Basically, it'd just end up with that x10 if the advertisers themselves weren't allowed to say anything. It'd just end up being proper wank, which is why Danny and Tom are trying to sort out some new rules now. However, it's tricky, because as I said - people will always try and f**k them over. It's pretty ironic how people don't seem to realise that without T-F, they would go under. Tartybikes, Selectbikes and other similar companies wouldn't exist if it wasn't for T-F (or if they did, they wouldn't generate half the amount of business they do), yet there seems to be sketchiness involved from everyone in terms of undercutting the rules, which is basically shooting themselves in the foot. Ah well. Dan Ko is already pretty heavily clamped down on after his shady dealings with a) paying people to advertise for him, and b) getting loads of people to get Viz avatars then post in every thread even partially resembling a trials thread "Viz _____ are great. Get them from Dan Ko <insert Dan's e-mail address>." Also, Dan has tried to buy a banner but there isn't any banner space free any more (or something - I can't remember what exactly, although I'm pretty sure Danny told me that). Snuffing out smaller businesses that can't afford to buy banners would also be shit. Tom has already said that he could potentially get bigger companies to pay more for advertising banners, which in turn would rule out Tartybikes, Selectbikes and whoever else currently has a banner (I don't know 'cos NIS turns off banners, so I didn't know we had a P-X banner for 4 months...). That again would be counter-productive. Anyway, basically, this is all about how Tom and Danny want to run their forum, so there's no sense in us typing so much we piss blood without their input, so until anyone hear's more FROM THEM, I guess these threads are pretty redundant.

You're weeeeeeeell pretty. Better be healed by the time I get to your or no Mark-Lovin'™ for you.

Trials-Forum is still going because of the money coming in from banner advertisements. This means that without banner advertisements, Trials-Forum wouldn't be able to run. Therefore, it needs to be the case that there is incentive to buy a banner. If you can just post anything, there isn't any point in buying a banner, and therefore no money comes in. Bye bye T-F. Therefore, rules need to be drawn up so that there's still incentive, and it's still a level playing field for companies wanting to advertise. I don't think the rules are shit-hot at present, and there's a pretty hefty discussion about how to change them, but it's just tricky 'cos basically people are always going to try and f**k them about by getting friends to post, etc. So yeah, it'll be sorted soon, hopefully.

Cheers Ben :D Might be putting that all on hold anyway 'cos I'm tempted to go for a WTP Mono frame. Tried riding my brother's S&M Stricker when he was back and it just rode way nicer than my Foundation, as do most frames... The Foundation just sorta feels 'heavy' to ride, almost? It's pretty light full build, but it just rides heavy, which isn't so good... Was wanting a longer TT anyway, 'cos I'm 6'2" and a 20" TT feels a little short. Thanks again though :P

Why wait when you can date-rape?

It does seem like you're trying to imply Onza carbon bars have snapped, and I only know of one person having had that happen? There's such a thin layer of CF on there anyway it's not super weight-savey. Anyway, carbon fibre stems - got one for my mod in my bedroom now. Note: Bedroom - many cracks in the laquer from flex, which worried me too much, to be honest. It had metal bits for clamping areas, and then like a thinner metal bit with a carbonfibre sheath for the actual stem bit. Freaking light, to put it mildly...

Good luck with the crash replacement thing ^_^ Mine went like that after I'd cut the BB shell out of it to send to them. Made sure I took off the rear Magura first though, what with torn hoses being a b*****d and all... And as for "Onza quality" - find me any frame with a crack like that that won't break if forced like that...

Haha, denied.

Right, I'm looking to upgrade some bits, so I was just wondering if anyone had any ideas: Stem - I'm currently running the stem that came on my Federal. It's OK I guess, but can't hold the bars for shit. I'd like another stem that had a similar design (it's not front loading, and it gives a slight amount of rise one way (so it's not level?), which is cool 'cos I want a high front end. Any suggestions? Tyres - I ride ramp and street, and I'm looking for a new pair of tyres. I'm currently running V-Monsters, and they don't really do it for me. I'd like something a little thinner on each end (currently 2.10 and 1.95), just to make it a bit more lively. Again, any suggestions?

Sorry, yes, of course: - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 5 - 8 - - - - - - - 9 - - - and so on *really* tells you the dynamics, the length of each note, the key signature - well, it does, but only if you work out where the sharps/flats are and then work out which key it is, which is a lot harder than looking at the last sharp/flat of the key signature and going one note up from it/to the next flat back - (meaning you can know where to start to move your hand position to to easily get to the next key change/chord progression/melody line), and basically the majority of musical information that is needed to accurately play something. That's the whole point of sheet music. I went on a 2-day jazz tutorial/masterclass thing, and basically I'd never heard the music before, and I'd never played with any of the 20 other performers, yet the guy counted in "1,2,3,4" and we all played the same piece, in the same time and in the correct way ('cept people obviously f**ked up 'cos sight reading's a bitch). So no, tab isn't "The Way" or whatever. It's a good thing to start on, but learning some basic music theory is a super good idea. I found once I learned the shape of Major, Minor and Pentatonic scales I had a pretty good set of ideas for making up new songs, understanding other stuff that I'd been playing better, and just generally getting more knowledge about what "works" music-wise. You don't *have* to know theory to get far in music, but it does help a hell of a lot. If you know you're in, say, A major, you don't have to go through every note on the neck to try and find other stuff that doesn't clash because it isn't in the same key or whatever. It'll also obviously help you improvise/solo better, and you'll also get a sound understanding of chords so you don't do a Greenday and just play the same 3 power chords all the time... But yeah, for a start, tab isn't bad, but to say it's "all you need" is total BS... To quote Rockschool: "Play music better, play better music."

It's all about public perception though. For example, KoxxUK support Trials-Shack, people think "hmm, good. Koxx are supporting them/doing something to help trials, other than sell on stuff." (Even though that'd be their motive, but you get hwat I mean (Y)) Other companies, not naming any names (Y) , just rebadge parts, sell them on for more, and that's it. This kinda shady business tactic means that their public perception goes down, so people are less likely to buy their next copied product. So it would help in some ways, but I guess Koxx.fr weren't the people to talk to...

Manual dreams dominate. It's just like the coolest feeling... Someone I know fell off in a manual dream. Maybe it's like how apparently if you die in your dream, you die in real life :shifty: Maybe he'll never manual again! Know someone too (might be the same person?) who had a nose-manual dream. Weirdo. Probably bats for the other team.

Could just be so it's a tight fit for good stiff? :shifty: What you can do is try and look at the frame from behind, and see if they're equally spaced away from the seat-tube, as you look 'down' the frame. You can also dick around with bits of string and rulers to work out how far tweaked it is too. Check around the welds/tubing near the welds and look for stress marks. If, as I suppose it might have, done it's been spread 7.5mm-ish each side bringing it to 125mm, I'd have thought there'd have been some sign of damage? Could just've been the box being mangled in transit or something? Or just shit quality control...

Do I spy with my little eye some revised gusseting between seat-stay/tube? Looks a bit different, from memory?

Yeah, the drop-outs are splayed. Mods have 110mm wide rear hub spacing apart from faggot Montys that have 106mm. Stock hubs are 135mm wide, so that'd be the only other thing it *might* be, but at 125mm drop-outs it just sounds f**ked...

Aren't you Mr. "Can't use a frame once I've had one crack" though? :shifty: Or have I got mixed up?

Nah Kyle, my bad. I thought you were coming from a different view-point, sorry. Anyway, the use of Asian people in Spars is a different sort of thing, and it's larger places like Spar shops that are screwing over real family run corner shops. Once again, c'est la vie...

I'd wanna check the durability before jumping on the "next frame" bandwagon, really :-

No, he texted Matt so much that when I was away from my computer when Matt was here, Matt validated him.

I thought it was OK meself. Fading was over-done a bit, but meh, worked out in the end.

Eengoedidee.nl'ing it now...