bikespace

I've always defended the TY80 as the best bike to start on. Over the past year or two my view has maybe changed. My lad had the TY80 for a few years, as may of us did. The trouble was, other lads on Beta 50's were flying up stuff where the TY80 would struggle for grip. Partly the wheel size, partly the tyres, partly the very basic suspension, and the weight may play a part too. I have no doubt that the TY80 can perform well with a good rider on it, but the same rider will probably perform better on a Beta 50. By the time the rider is getting strong enough to throw a TY80 around, he's big enough to throw a Beta 50 around, and probably a lot more successfully. It almost pains me to say it, but I think other than getting a young lad used to clutch and gears, there is no advantage to the TY80 these days (other than being half the price). The Beta 50 has just about filled the gap that has existed for years. There was no reliable replacement for the TY80 for ages, but now there is. I think what would benefit trials as a whole is if a manufacturer could produce something like the Beta 50 year after year with very little development costs and keep bringing the price down and down. These first time bikes need to be more affordable to drag people in to the sport.

Wow that's great - they make a browser for Mac's these days. Good to see you on here For those of us with inferior machines - here's a good start for AVG antivirus and antispyware (used to be caled Ewido) - Clicky here - they don't advertise the free version quite as well as they used to.

No - you're just about done - end of this year. Although you may well be able to ride in the Junior World Champs until you're about 36

I agree - he's a 14-year old lad who has never been on here before and probably has no idea how much time, effort and money goes into organising these events. I'm sure we've all come out with the odd bit of bravado in our time, so give him a break! Better to give him a quiet nudge in the right direction rather than tear the boy to pieces. That's not the way to welcome new members to the site, surely? I have to agree - I'm the first to tease someone if they're up for banter, but his comments didn't seem too scathing to me, and I don't like the bandwagon thing. Just to put me in the picture - where was the test day? With Back Cowm just up the road from Sandifords I'm surprised they bother going anywhere else (if it wasn't there). And how do you know he's 14 year old, and if he is, what's he doing on an Ariel 500???

Sounds good, didn't know it was on. Would like to have taken my old man up there, he was a good friend of Big Jim Snr back what must have been about when he started. Was it a museum bit - look back over the years, or a party sorta thing, or a bit of both? Well done Sandifords anyway - good to see someone making a decent living out of off road sport, it's not an easy business to thrive in.

Attended the funeral today. Although it's a crying shame it had to happen, it's fair to say the old bugger got a good send off. I don't know how many people were there, but the crematorium was full, seating and standing, and the crowd flowed out down the steps and outside. Stood in the pouring rain it sounded like a male voice choir had turned up, and I suppose it's very possible that they did. A tribute to the man. Peace Dai.

I've been to watch a few hare and hounds locally, and I reckon I could keep up with some of them on a TY80 especially as soon as there's a hill involved. Put a small turn on it, and I reckon we're talking Italjet mini bambino without coming last. Worth a try for a ride out, or are you after pedigree enduro?

In fact, here you go. Trangia is a good make.

Mine's a Sigg, but it's specifically a fuel bottle. Not sure if they are a different spec to the drinks bottles. Mine was a tenner from an army surplus store in Darlington. Would think army surplus is a good place to start. Or maybe ebay: Ebay

Not very nice to be the bearer of bad news, but for anyone who wasn't already aware, Dave Matthews passed away earlier this week in his sleep. Bit of a shocker for most of us - although I wasn't at the Welsh Championships last week, plenty of people had the usual banter with Dai, shaking hands with him the day before he passed away. For the last three years we've invited Dai and Jean Matthews to our annual award presentation as guests of honour. All year round they were a friendly face when our boys from the North and Mid-Wales venture to South Wales, and ever present at our own nationals up here and we loved to have them both with us at the end of the year. I class myself as about one third Welsh, but Dai Matthews was one of the blokes that sort of made you want to be more Welsh, an old coal miner with a brilliant sense of humour and bounds of energy. Deepest sympathy to Jean. I'm not sure if there is any official announcement knocking around somewhere, so apologies if this duplicates anything, but I thought that the ones who knew Dai would want to know so they get the opportunity to attend the funeral if they wish. The funeral will be at 3.30pm on Wednesday 29th Nov at Morriston Crematorium, Swansea. Flowers from family. It almost seems wrong not to put a smilie in here somewhere because whenever I was involved with Dai, there was always a laugh and a smile to be had. I'm sure if there's no trials scene in that great quarry in the sky, that Dai will be getting something going pretty soon. You made your mark down here Dai, you'll be sorely missed.

LOL Yeah - for God's sake if you're going to vote, hit the right button - NO. I've put this on a couple of other forums - enduro etc. Come on - lets get it circulated and give them something to think about.

I think it's not good to jump on a band wagon. They've foooked up (twice admittedly), got the wrong side of Andy, been banned, named/shamed. That works for me. No need to make it in to a lynch mob Maybe some day soon they'll see the error of their ways and offer a truce with a big fat sponsorship deal to smooth the waters

For me it's all on price. If they make it cheaper than all the rest, the bells and whistles are hardly likely to be used, it's just to cover the bare legal requirement.

Although I agree it does seem a little strange not to see some sort of report in there, it's always easy to blame everyone but yourself. Hands up if you sent a trials article in for the ACU magazine. If people want to make money out of trials they're going to have to work their butts off on the PR front as well as the riding.

Just replying to keep this topic at the top of the list - come on peeps - just a few seconds to vote. We use these lanes - the Manx 2 day trial relies on them. Get it done.

You can still have some pretty serious sections. As someone said above, there have been too many sections at some of the trials where even centre experts feel they need to ask for a 5. Most people don't mind a good hard secction scattered in the mix, but most clubman object to step after step which are 5h1t or bust - throw the bike away and try not to break any bones, 10 foot undercut splats with no run up etc etc. We would not plan to have our trial any easier than this year. We actually aimed slightly harder than some of the sections turned out, but it's about what we were after looking through the majority of the marks lost.

My Polo hit 108mph with 3 bikes on the trailer, but it was under exceptional circumstances. Chicken Tikka Garlic Chilli Massala with extra Chilli on the Saturday night - long early trip down to Merthyr for Welsh Championships on the Sunday morning. I had to overtake the rest of the convoy in a bit of a hurry. Trailer handled well though

There's also a round of the Welsh Championships run by the Clive Club. I think this is at Dolanog, near Welshpool. I've not got many more details but Graham Evans will be able to point people in the right direction if you're interested: 01686 625010 - Option1 - That'll get you through to David Jones Motorcycles and ask for Graham. I'll also see if I can get hold of some regs for on here, but I may not manage it in time as I'm working through the night. If you're in a Cheshire/North Wales club then you're almost a local

Its a difficult one, and may depend on the land you've got available. I know we can create a trial that caters for the majority of centre clubmen. We have done it fo rthe last two years, but that's partly because of the perfect streams we have. These are our thoughts on it: We have about three or four sections out of 40 which are designed to grab some marks of the top 5 riders. The others they need to concentrate or they can easily drop the odd few marks throughout the day. For the middle of the entry this creates 3 or 4 sections where they will need a real good ride to get less than a three (but we don't do ten foot splats), and some of them will inevitably five them. Most of the rest of the sections are cleanable with a good ride, but there will usually be some point where you could easily mess it up. On a good day I'm at best an average expert in our centre, and I go round on 40 or 50. For the lower part of the entry - who may be either lower experts, but more likely good inters or even very strong novices, they're likely to be looking at most sections as keeping the marks away from being 5's and aiming to dip below the three's. For fairly fit (or hardy) riders of this ability, they usually have a really good day out. We're open to ideas/suggestions/comments for improving it, but at the moment, we're fairly happy we've got the right level. I think we're just suffering from the fact that: 1. The event only started two years ago so has no historic prestige - we need to spread the word 2. We don't have a mass of local experts/inters to boost the entry One other problem - There have been some monster Novogars over the last few years especially a couple of years ago. I know that due to some of these some people hear Novogar and knock it off their list. I do mean the bit about the ideas/suggestions. I won't take it as criticism and we need to take all views in to account when trying to incorporate your views, but for those riders who've ridden ours, please feel free to comment.

Top 5 riders lost under 10 marks at ours this year (The Mid Wales Novogar in September), but still we can only manage around 60 entries, despite putting the regs about all over the place, over advertising on TC, plus the usual in TMX and a special mention. The standard was round about the same last year. We have no stupid steps which tend to separate the injured clubmen from the stars, just good solid stream sections for most of the day. We're blessed with some lovely trials land. ideal for a Novogar trial, but still we can't manage a decent entry - which i would like to see nearer the 100 mark. Although the name is Mid-Wales, we're 20 miles from the English border, and central for North/South traveling. Even though I realise a clubman B route may attract extra riders, I'd rather not go down that route. The main route will inevitably get harder and get out of reach for more riders, I think diluting the Novogar series. I can get round the Colmore without dying, maybe missing the odd section, same with the Wallace - If you have another course you wouldn't have to cater for the low to middle expert riders like me because we'd be expected to maybe drop to the lower route. I think the way to do it is to try to standardise the levels of the Novogar, in the way that the ACU tried to do it last year. It had some effect and i think this needs to continue. The riders at my sort of level are reluctant to travel a few hundred miles for a trial which may kill them. I'm not actually knocking your idea here as this is my outlook on it, but although i'd love to get some extra riders along I do think it could push the Novogar hard route to a 30-40 entry class for at least some of the trials, maybe especially the ones which don't have the mass of local experts. Having said all that, I'm up for persuading and definitely not totally against the 2nd route as it may turn out to be the only viable option.

Hopefully you're joking. Can you imagine what trouble this would cause - excluding people for stopping. Calling them cheats???? Christ - half the entry wouldn't be able to ride next time, because observers who are struggling to determine what a STOP is, will then have to determine whether a rider is cheating, or just crap. You can sorta see where the hairbrain ideas come from eh Hmmm....Good and bad points to all riders I suppose. Dave's a fine rider, but can bend the rules with the best of them and still does. From the moment he starts pushing through the queue to the moment he leaves the section Dave's looking for every advantage possible

I tape a box spanner on to mine, for that reason. Probably not the lightest solution, but stops the punctured lung. Hate that

Reckon I probably earned that from Kinell Cheers all - good to get the real info (for my "mate") I like the look of the new model. Understated for what's under the bonnet, and with the 2.5l engine - should be nippy. Only seen the black and the grey in the flesh - prefer the grey so far - got to see the blue, but I reckon I'll (errrrr my mate) will settle for the grey. Be a while yet - in fact well in to next year, but good to look early. Struggling to wait a bit.

I know a few of you boy racers have got scooby's on here, so thought I'd try and trawl your collective knowledge banks. If for instance a middle aged mate of mine were to come across a mid life crisis some time soon, and go out to buy a parallel import Scooby WRX would you have any guidance. Any disadvantages to these parallel imports. My middle aged mate tells me they are imported from Cyprus and sold by a fairly large dealership somewhere near me (who also provide service and backup). The three year warranty is apparently fully valid in UK. The trade in price after a couple of years seems to close in very quickly on the genuine UK vehicles. Any info for my poor old balding mate, who obviously isn't me

Yep - that about covers it Reading with my eyes shut again. Suppose it just needs observers educating. Maybe there should be some guidance as to the point at which you are outside the boundary, or maybe CofC's just need to make it clearer. Most of the times I've been caught out by a cheat route it's been a blatant bending of the line of the flags. On the subject of stopping, hopping etc....... I'm just wondering, is it the general concensus of opinion that non stop is the way it should be? I only ask because the twin shock class seems to be my youth era - fantic 240's, majesty's, et al. The only rules I remember from the 70's 80's were where you could roll backwards, flick the back end over, do whatever you wanted as long as your feet stayed on the pegs. If you put your foot down while stopped though it was a 5. I spent hours practicing in the driveway trying to turn in less than a bikes length. I must admit I don't feel strong enough to argue the point, but should there be a class where blokes around my age should be able to have a ride under the rules of the day for those twin shocks? No flames please - I'm not bothered enough Just asking.