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Today we have many MTB events each year and it may be difficult to imagine a time before they existed. In 1977, British Journalist Richard Grant, later of Richards bicycle book fame, happened across some hippies riding bicycles down mountains in California. He so enjoyed his experience of...

I photographed the decals using a long lens to minimise distortion and a tripod to eliminate camera shake. Each word was photographed separately with the camera positioned as square on as I could make it. Though this method eliminates a great deal of the distortion caused by the tube it does not...

Today I found some broken sections of the same type of Bluemels chromoplastic mudguards shown above, and set about to find out which of the solvents I have would be best to to repair them. Methylene Chloride melted the surface but evaporated too quickly. To use this you would need to keep...

Over the past forty years I have carried my my MTB up many hills that are too steep to ride up. And whilst carrying a bike up a hill takes more effort than walking up empty handed, it doesn't limit steepness of slope I can climb as long as my feet don't slip due to the additional weight. With...

A bicycle travelling along a smooth flat road at low speed is an incredibly efficient machine. As resistance increases with speed, rolling resistance or incline this efficiency drops sharply until eventually it can become more efficient to get off and walk. Why is walking up a steep hill easier...

The smallest elliptical inner EggRing I use is 23T with a major to minor axis ratio of 1:0.6

Yes 1.339kg with integral bottom bracket cartridge and left crank. Whilst a 23 tooth EggRing weighs very little.

My own experience of comparing extremely elliptical EggRings to round rings with the same number of teeth is the EggRings won't get you up a hill any quicker, but you will get further up a steep hill before you become exhausted. The theory is that you need to accelerate faster to get past the...

They were originally created at a university or technical college in Millan, are UCI approved and have been subject to numerous scientific trials. In certain conditions they have been shown to make a difference though this is not necessarily in terms of improved performance. In theory, they...

There are "self-energising" chainsets that use springs to store energy that is theoretically released inbetween pedal strokes but this is not one of them. This is intended to reduce the 'dead-spot' created when the pedal crank is pointing upwards towards the rider. It works by moving the upper...

After fourty years of riding in the Chiltern Hills you would think that I would know all the routes by now. However, the HS2 railway building site cuts through the middle of the landscape cutting off roads and rights of way. So being unable to rely on some traditional routes has forced me to...

There seems to be no universally adopted name for these homemade dirt-track bikes and 'Tracker Bike' is just one of the more popular names. In the 1940's/50s there creation may have been originally inspired by the popular sport of cycle speedway and later by teenagers copying the homemade...

Mountain bikes that were made before specialist MTB components became available are extremely rare. It's often impossible to tell if components are original or replacements and I don't think it really matters as long as they are age correct. You should be proud to own a bike from a time when...

Thanks for letting me know that your Stumpjumper frame and forks came from the Netherlands. Does this mean that the components aren't original to the bike, as many look to be age correct?

Hi Keith, You and any family members would be welcome. Saturday will be the easier of the two days and we should get some good views from the hills. It would be great if you could bring some good weather with you, though the rides will take place whatever the weather. There is always plenty of...

That's helpful, Thanks! I assume from your answer that it was an 84 model that you later bought second hand. Do you remember roughly when you acquired it? I am currently searching through old UK cycling magazines to see if there are any adverts or reviews.

According to Wikipedia, Specialized "introduced the first major production mountain bike in the world, the Stumpjumper, in 1981." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specialized_Stumpjumper My recollection from the early 1980s is that Stumpjumpers were like mythical beasts in Britain, you heard...

The 1984 Wendover Bash is senonymous with the start of mountain biking in the UK. It was the first MTB specific event to feature both downhill and cross-country racing. Together with its hillclimb and trials competition it set the multi-disciplinery format of early UK mtb events, including those...

Hi Dan, I have emailed you some scans of the 'Made By English' head badge and some photos the Metro Trekker logo used on my bike. Geoff Apps says that the little graphic image he used doesn't represent anything in particular. It's just a decorative natural form similar to those used by arts &...

Here are the spoke dimensions as used on the wheels in the above photos. The same spokes have been used to fit both the inside and outside of the flanges. The drawing shows a spoke as fitted on the inside of the of the drum brake side of the wheel. To make sure that the same spoke would also...