Johan Bornman

Point taken. I'm now standing and no longer sitting on my brain.

Omnico is complicating the Easton wheel issue unnecessarilly. They seem to insist that bike shops send it back to Omnico for some hocus-pocus wheel treatment. At the end of the day, these wheels are no different from others. Some of them have funny spokes with threads at both ends. Even these are just standard spokes with threads at both ends. Nothing to them. Bike shops should stop believing the nonsence they're told about these wheels and repair them on the spot, as the customer waits. It is al crime having to send a wheel to some distant location for a simple spoke repair. The same goes for Omnico's lefty forks and Fox shocks. All of this should be a local, in-house repair. Omnico should think about investing in skills at the bike shops instead of frustrating customers with long waits.

The preload adjuster would also limit travel. Turn it all the way out in order to get maximum effective travel in your test. I am yet to come across a Fox, Rox or Manitou that can travel as much as is claimed.

Stroke length is not quite as you indicate. On a fork, we call it "travel" and on a shock, "stroke." I dunno why. However, your stroke is shorter than the damper body. It has to be, there is stuff inside there that will prevent full stroke. On your picture, I'll estimate stroke to only be 85% of what is indicated there. That would be the official stroke too, not just effective stroke.

32 spokes is good enough for anyone other than Os Durandt and Vleis Visagie, especially on 26" and road bike. Heavier okes should consider 36 spoke on 29ers but that won't happen. Decisions are made on a gram scale.

Be fair on the bike shop. If you support them regularly and you bought the frame from them, I would say a small fee for cables, consumables etc should be payable. There is always a physical and labour cost to building a bike over. If you didn't buy from them, don't expect them to oblige and do it all for free. Warrantees usually cover the parts and that is all. Most are even written that way. Often a warrantee replacement is expensive. E.g. I recently did one for a brake banjo that failed. The manufacturer supplied a new hose. There was shortening, bleeding and cleaning of a caliper involved which the customer had to foot. Fair's fair.

Did I mention that I hate them?

I HATE those Cane Creek snot grippers. They're so stickly if you walk past them they grab your pant or shirt and pull the bike over. I get them in the workshop all the time and they're a real pain, to the point where I put plastic bags over them. Hate hate hate.

First, check where the leak is. Try another pump or remove your wheel, put the fork end in a bucket of water and pump away. Look for the obvious leak. I suspect the pump or valve. O-rings usually only leak once they're disturbed.

Since yiou are in Cape Town, check the recent classifieds. There's a cheap-cheap set of Ergon barends for sale there. These go for about R600-00 retail. Best bar-end grip on the market. Really comfortable. Don't let the weight-weenies get to you.

OK, it seems as if you do need two different things altered: fitting a stiffer spring and making some sort of change to your rebound settings and/or porting. If you just add thicker oil, then your compression speed will also go down. Getting the right spring is always a problem since most of these are just sold as soft, medium and hard. You need to decide how much less sag in mm you want. Then remove the spring, measure the wire's section, the OD, the length and count the number of coils. Ask a specialist spring maker, such as Starco Spring Works in Booysens to make a new one for you. As for the porting, decide whether you can live with slower compression speeds too. This fork isn't sophisticated enough to give you all the options you want.

It repels dust you say? How?

Why don't you set the example and sign with your full name?

Let me guess what's poked - the bearing cup on the left side? This is an extremely poor design from Shimano and a regular failure. Write the wheel off as school fees and buy a standard wheel with standard spokes, hubs and rims.

I agree 100%

Ja! I clicked on the link and I laaik. Those Novatek's are nice. Also, they're so cheap that when your Powertap freewheel fails, you just buy a Novatek and sacrifice it's freewheel. Just one think. Shimano freewheels wont work on there, they're cup-and-cone and these are cartridge.

What makes a good hub? 1) Industry standards. If the hub uses standard or readily-available bearings, pawls and seals, then maintenance is not an issue. 2) Forging over CNC. If it is forged, it will be expensive. Forging allows for less material to be used with a better finish, than CNC work. It would be lighter and stronger. Strength is required in the thin centre part of the hub as well as on the flanges to prevent spoke-induced cracks. 3) Effective sealing. A good hub has a contact and non-contact seal on each side. The design of the non-contact (labyringth) seal is crucial to the hub's performance in the wet. 4) Bearing pre-load adjustments. Lots of manufacturers leave pre-load adjustment out of the hub in order to save costs. This costs you in the long run, payable in prematurely failed bearings. 5) Steel where steel is required, aluminium where aluminium is required. Superlight hubs are almost always rubbish. This includes Zipp with its simplistic axle and stupid light bearings. American Classic is slightly better in terms of axle design but the bearings are undersized for their application. Many other examples exist. Hubs need steel in order to work effectively. Axle ends need to be steel. The knurls on the jamb nuts need to be steel. Any parts where allen keys fit need to be steel. 6. They be configured in such a way that the wheelbuilder requires the minimum number of different spoke lenghs when building a pair of wheels. 7) They won't feature stupid foohfees like radial one side and crossed on the other. 8) They will have an inboard and outboard ball bearing supporting the freewheel. Mavic fails big-time. 9) The pawls will be simple to service and spares preferrably generic. 10) Seals will be standard industrial seals. 11) They will weigh what it takes them to include all the above features. Hope scores on some of these fronts but not all. Shimano steel axle hubs score on most of these fronts. Campag scores on each and every one except standard seals and bearings. The hub in questioned and pictured above looks a lot like a Novatec OEM product. Same as the Powertap hub that is also Novatec based. The picture and specs are not enough to make a thorough assessment but I suspect is is an OK hub. Problem is spares.Who supports it and where will you get new pawls and pawl springs?

I've never come across Aest hubs but is seems you have. Tell us a bit about them. Are the shells forged or CNC'd? What pawl system does it use? How many bearings and of what size in the hub? In the freehub? What pre-load system works between the axles and bearings? Are the seals lip or labyrinth or both? Their country of origin is irrelevant, engineering and manufacturing isn't.

Have a good look to see if it isn't the tyre that's out of round. If not, find a good bike shop. The downside of keeping your profile super secret is that we don't know where you are and can't make a recommendation. Maybe you're in Siberia?

Stiffer springs and thicker oil does two different things. The once cannot compensate for a setting on the other one's turf. Stiffer springs are installed when your weight doesn't produce the desired sag in the fork. Thicker oil is added when you want to reduce the speed at which the fork compresses and rebounds. These are two completely different issues. Rather tell us what outcome you want and we'll suggest the appropriate route in getting there.

In which cases?

I can help you with all the consumables as well as the various special tools. To do this regularly and without too much trouble you need. 1) Tapered 1/4" drive 10mm socket (and driver) 2) Curved pick 3) 1.5mm screwdriver style allen key. 4) O-rings 5) Crush washers 6) Wipers and oil seals 7) Oil 8) Grease 9) Vernier (every workshop must have a vernier callipers in anyway). 10) Seal inserter 11) Steel tyre lever.

Tapered steerer is another of those post-rationalised items on a bike. The primary reason for tapered steerer is to make manufacturing of frames easier. I'll give you an example. Modern bikes, through fashion and necessessity, have large diameter downtubes - much much fatter than 20 years ago. To join that downtube to an old-fashioned straight head tube, is very difficult. The downtube's front end would have to be tapered in a shape difficult to manufacture. It would also look silly - a thin head tube on a fat downtube. My old Cannondale CAAD4 suffers from that problem. You can actually see how they had to make the downtube narrow at the head end. With a tapered head tube, the joints are cleaner and the look more integrated. Especially with modern organically-shaped hydroformed and carbon frame parts. They didn't take the fat bit right through for legacy reasons. To make the top end fat as well, would require a new fork standard that would render all 1 1/8th forks completely incompatible (at least now, with an adapter they can be fitted to a tapered frame) and it would render all stems useless. For once they tried to advance the standard in a sensible way. Once they created all this, they decided to add "stiffer" to the marketing blurbs. Technically it may be stiffer, but current 1 1/8th forks are plenty stiff - most downhill bikes bomb down hills very successfully with 1 1/8th steerers.

johanatyellowsaddledotceeodotzeda

The numbers themselves are irrelevant. However, that gadget allows you to "tune" the resting position of the QR lever on the axle. Lets say you prefer to have your lever pointing forward but right now the correct position with the desired tightness is in the upright position, you would use that gadget to change it. Here's how. Undo the little screw (can't remember if it is hex or philips) that holds the little plate over that round thing with the numers. Now push the round ratchet ring thing out and turn it a few notches. Redo the locking plate screw and install the wheel and check where you axle now rests in the locked position. If you have my luck, it is now completely opposite to what you actually want and you can go back and change it to the other direction. The numbers are meaningless but I suppose if you work with these forks often (like assembling them in a factory), a certain number would be your sweet spot to be memorised. On the udder hand, maybe they're the lever's position in degrees. I don't have one handy to check.