trumpstinyhands profile

I just looked at that, but I can't see how what would stop side-loading on shocks. It's just aligning the rear wheel into the frame (which isn't a bad thing of course). It's doing nothing to align the frame itself.

It's a grey area but based on other areas I'd say the likes of the trails on Cheema Lands are legal in that the landowner is aware of the trails and allows people to use and maintain them (currently). I don't know who owns the other lands though. Some background to this can be given by Lee Lau on this old thread (posting under MTB Trails) below. Maybe not ideal publicizing them though at a time we are being told not to take risks, and some of those moves are waaaay more sketchy in real life than they look on a video. 

https://nsmb.com/forum/forum/the-shore-3/topic/west-vancouver-upper-lands-review-future-of-cypress-trails-merged-4743/?post=96578

It's weird because when you look at the article they come across as a great company (and I'm sure they are), but their marketing / on-line presence makes them seem 'super-bro'. A long list of athletes / ambassadors and not a single woman, and product names seemingly aimed at teenagers who might not be the ones spending well over $200 on a pair of pants. The clothing equivalent of a lifted F150 ;) In reality, everything about the company seems awesome so maybe lose the 'sausage-fest' image just a little? :D

Yes, Fork Cork was the one!

A while back a company was selling a pipe bung style......bung for the bottom of ones fork, and you could then stuff what you wanted (African Elephant, Ford F350 etc.....) inside the steerer. I'm blanking on who the company was though.

Maybe SRAM are quietly admitting that most people are terrible at keeping to scheduled service intervals and are playing a bit safe? I think Shimano should have clear bladders and reservoir caps so that riders can bleed their brakes before the fluid goes jet black and blocks the lever ;) 

I can't help think that the whole 'having less oil in the lowers to keep weight down' is a bit of an old wives / husbands / common-law partners tale. The correct amount in all RS 35mm forks is 10ml in each leg (maybe there's an exception) which weighs pretty well nothing. More likely to be a installation / QC error if that happens IMHO.

For 35mm seals, SRAM now say to use the DSG instead of Slickoleum, and around 3ml of 0-30 on top of the air spring piston. The reason being that while the DSG might not feel quite as good straight after the service, it will stay in place much better. The 0-30 will slowly migrate past the air piston which is why they only recommend 3ml. More, and if you don't keep up with scheduled lower leg services, you might end up will too much oil in the lower. This info was from a presentation at Crankworx :)

I wonder where the Bookwus picture near the steep skinny went? Probably on someone's wall!

Looks like something you'd wear when you have a broken ankle.

"This bit is a bit technical" LOL!!!!!11!!1

I think it took us the length of this video to walk down that bit.

I had a Diamond. I liked the small bump sensitivity but it always felt too linear. First time I noticed this was riding down Somewhere Over There and there as a bit of a harsh compression on the trail but I'd not noticed it much when I'd ridden the trail before. The DVO bottomed out with a huge 'crack' sound. I read up on adding oil but people had issues with it migrating into the lowers. One could also fabricate spacers from 32mm Rockshox spacers IIRC. When I sold the bike, the new owner send the fork away for a routine service and most of the fork had to be warrantied?! So maybe one or two of the bottom out scenarios wrecked it? I found the compression dials confusing but maybe that's just me. 

A good fork but maybe I got a bad one? It was too linear for my hack lines.

Posted by: Wab1234

The first bike of mine was a ‘92 Giant Iguana I got on a fire sale - literally, the Gibsons bike store burnt down. I basically change all the components out to XTR and got a Halston inverted fork. Remember those forks? 2.5” of elastomer goodness...noodily AF until I figured out a stiffer hub. The covers tore, and it wore out in no time.  The second bike I did right was a Brodie Expresso frame in an eggplant color and transferred everything over. 8-speed Sach grip shifting (which it replaced the SRAM version that it cracked and I twisted right off in a race), Avid ultimate brakes, Syncros seatpost and stem and a Judy fork with a coil conversion and damper tune. I race on it for a couple of years but eventually gave it away to an under-privileged youth. Truly, that was one bike that got away.

I have one of those forks! I wouldn't dare put it on a bike now though.

1987 Peugeot Ranger. 10 speed but in a bad way. Steel rims etc. Slack angles, long stays, riser bar. The funny thing with that though, even though it was a heap of shit and I spent a fortune on it just to make it a functional mountain bike, I was able to climb this one super steep rooty climb that on all my subsequent decent bikes (Specialized M2 Team Ed with Bontrager fork etc....) I could never manage due to the terrible weight distribution / body position of the 'NORBA' geometry bikes. If those bikes had never existed, we could have gone straight from Klunker to Full Enduro!

I had a rear one on my last bike. Mainly for the whole 'I don't want to crack my carbon rim so I'll stick this heavy strip of foam in my tire' scenario which is kind of daft. I recognized the benefit of bottom out resistance but my new bike has nice cheap aluminium rims again so I'm pleased to not run CC this time around. I can straighten out most dings with the soft jaws at work, build a wheel while drinking beer in an evening and will cost me minimum $ and have easy tire installs. I've just upped my tire pressures slightly again for rim protection. If you like to smash the shit out of your bike then there's no denying that they will help save your rims though.

I can never tell if Marshy is trolling at times in that video. For sure 100% bleed from the lever down for the first stage as the fluid gets so black in Shimano brakes that it can wreck the levers pushing all that crap into them. I'm not convinced that sucking the fluid out of the caliper is going to boil it though! It hasn't on the 100's (Hell maybe 1000's now...) of Shimano bleeds that I have done. It's always room temperature when it goes into the syringe ha ha..... Sucking the fluid through will also force any dirt that he mentioned into the syringe. Push the pistons out as far as possible and clean / lube with a q-tip. Expel as much air out of the lever before even starting the bleed process. No point drawing air through the system. We always do a second bleed from bottom to top as one bleed is never enough to get the fluid clean in a typical brake. 

His way obviously works for him as a race mechanic, but I'd be doing extra processes and doing a cleaner job on a brake that hasn't been bled for a year (which is most....). He didn't even properly clean the caliper. It doesn't matter how much you wipe it with a rag, one blast with a compressor and you'll see how much oil is left in the nooks and crannies of the caliper, especially if you dumped oil all over it....

^LOL. From the other side of the counter, I sometimes wonder what it'd be like to again work in a 'normal' shop. Banging out basic tune-ups on $150 Craigslist buys and doing flat repairs. It'd be so easy. But then there's the sales person who sells a commuter and tells you to install rack, fenders (that are the wrong size and style but you have to dremel the shit out of them anyway....), lights and a kickstand.......and the customer needs the bike in 15 minutes. Yeah no......

Bike shops around here have been terrible at raising shop rates until recently. I remember seeing one of the North Shore shops celebrating something like 20 years of being in business, and they posted up a photo of the shop when it opened. It had a sign up outside saying something like 'Tune Ups from $40'. They still start from that sort of price in some shops now!! If you pander to the 'groupon' type crowd then you'll ever earn enough to pay decent mechanics all year around. So it's hire someone on a Work Permit in April, for not much above minimum wage, then fire them in October. Repeat to fade every year...... Cheap customers with shit bikes that take hours to fix, being fixed by shit mechanics. 

Thankfully some shops are seeing the light and are raising prices, hiring decent mechanics, paying for their training and keeping them on over the 'quiet' period (quiet? I've still got around 30 overhauls to get done... :) ). If the OP on close to the North Shore, check out Wheel Thing (Jeff Bryson's shop). He trains loads of mechanics and runs a little service only shop at the same time.

Posted by: DemonMike

IMO the cost is similar to the early 90,s. I paid $400 for a set of Cook Bros cranks in 94 I think. Typical bike , which was a steel hardtail was $2500/$5000 easily. The biggest issues I see today. There is no contentedness. Companies have followed the IT companies format. New products every 6 to 9 mths. I,m entering my 3rd season on my current bike. Hoping to upgrade the frame sometime this year. Just no idea to what 29er frame. More travel is my desire. There are still companies trickling out their latest .

Yep, I paid around 350 UK pounds for a Bontrager rigid fork circa 1991!! I think my Merlin Ti bar was over 100 quid and I bent it with my bollocks on a BMX track after a few weeks ha ha.

No. I'd potentially be tempted to get one if I was building a trail that was 'out there', to speed up proceedings, but even then I'd probably get something completely different like an E-assist fat bike. I've got no interest in getting the same style bike but with a motor when I have 'sort of...' working legs. And the whole 'you can get more laps in', will be the death of many trails.

I wish I could pack a nice big flask of tea and some delightful scones. What's a gun?