joe_300

well you must not of saw many pros before because most of them use a weight one way or another.there are flywheel covers to that dont use a spacer that hide the weight. some of the guys may not look like it without a spacer with normal cover but they add weight to the crankshaft. keeps the weight centered and more balanced bike, especially on the rear wheel...

This explains it all

Instead of screwing around with these small volume adding cuts. why dont you just get one of these that will actually add volume? Made by Trun Racing in Italy. This is where all the top riders like raga, casales, ferrer, cabes get them.

Just to make a slight correction cause i see this all the time though its not really a big deal but there is no such thing as a centrifugal force. There is no force that pushes outwards. Its the centripetal force that actually pushes inward toward the center of rotation.

Yep i second that. Spot on. Reasons I don't ride a gasser. And the reason i feel that bike will not sell in the USA. I know several dealers that can't stand Snell. Dale on the other hand gives everything it takes to make a customer happy. If it wasn't for dale there wouldn't be so many gasgas riders. If anything Snell ran off more customers than he kept.

Dear Mr Joe 300, What I'm trying to accomplish is to have people realize that riding the expert and pro classes in the USA and to compete in the World Cup World Pro class in trials takes a ton of time to do which requires a lot of money. Its not as easy as the local beginner classes and senior classes that someone can win by riding only on the weekend or twice a month on a clapped out bike. Riding expert or pro requires a lot more time of practice and the better rider you become the more bike work is required. Bikes get destroyed riding these classes and not having a fresh bike every year at least is almost impossible to do. Believe this or not but when riding expert or pro if your not breaking parts ( money) or crashing then your not progressing, challenging yourself in certain ways or getting better which means your result will be not so good. The bike work alone is a part/full time job no matter what bike you ride. All brands require the same amount. You been riding for 20 years so I'm assuming you understand bike work is very time consuming. If not well, there is a lot more to it than chain lube, oil filter, tranny oil and replacing linkage once a year. Ill tell you what saying the Pros in Usa make a salary is the funniest thing i heard in awhile. If you think they make money your the real tool here not me. Considering i am pretty good friends with all the pros and practice with them more than most, they don't make money. They even all say that. If they break even they are happy and any positive is a good year. Basically they get free bikes, parts, entry fees and some but little travel expenses paid. Some get the check they received on the podium doubled. i don't call that a salary and to me a salary is enough to live on. Now Pat obvious makes a little more than that and gets more but still not a legit salary. Same for Cody, he wouldn't be riding this year if he didn't make enough money to make it worth it. I know how all the riders and trials community is. EVERYONE is friendly, its the best atmosphere of any event of any kind. I am not putting anyone down. Andrews parents are great people like everyone else at the trials events. Met his parents at Andrews first national. Actually helped him out with advice. Don't need to tell me about the trials community. If you read Trial Enduro News (Good work from Shan and the others) you will see Andrew spent from around christmas to end of January riding in Europe in the end of 2014 to beginning 2015(Just for practice). In August 16, 2014 he went over to begin his month riding the European championship round, last round of the world championship and also the Trial Des Nation. Oh yeah then last year before the USA nationals started in 2014 he spent a month in Europe again to ride the european championship in Italy not sure if that was in there but i do know that happened. yeah it was much more than a few days in Europe and for Spain as you said it was at least a few weeks considering thats where the world championship and tdn was... That wasn't my point how long he was there but since you wanted to say about that i made sure to point it out. my point was how he had the time which equals money to do this all this plus to ride with the best. Being in the top of classes does take a lot of money to compete. Aires as a business throwing money out to pay the pros is great. it is a good start but it needs to improve to more than pro class and hopefully it will in the future. I believe it will with some effort of course. The problem is if you looked at rider counts the past 10 years has been at a huge drop. The main reason i think this happened is of course the cost to go to nationals to ride an event to possibly get a trophy. There is no incentive for riders or families to put in an estimate of $500-$1000 on a good weekend(No travel issues or breaking bike up) plus a possible day or two off work for a trophy. Another problem is when the schedule for the nationals is not good for kids in school. Kids in college that pay thousands won't miss college for a trophy they need to pay hundreds for with cost to ride a national. Plus the ones in high school can be challenging at times. those are the future of the sport so probably should focus on them? Riding the national series is in no way cheap as that one guy says. Singing up alone is $160 for the weekend without a minder and with one is $240 a weekend of course if signed up early. Traveling to them all depending on location of course also if your using a motorhome/camper or hotel is easily $600 to be comfortable and yeah could be cheaper I'm sure but i think this is a reasonable estimate. Then if they are back to back weekends and traveling across the country, plan on missing probably 2 days before the first weekend, the following week then two days to get home off work. Thats only for two weekends of riding. this year we have 10 rounds or 5 weekends of nationals. So if this is cheap to you, well awesome your probably one who doesn't go to all the events but i don't see this being cheap for most. yes the east and west regional series helps this but to ride expert and pro, it takes money to do the whole series for the national championship. Aires does help with the TDN team but you need to remember, there are A TON of people that donate A LOT of money for the TDN team to travel and pay expenses. Aires wasn't always there to help so they got a van before Aires got them one. Its just easier they van is already lined up now. I think all the companies and people who donate to the TDN earn recognition not just Aires. Im not exactly sure about Bernie but i am told from one person (not sure if its true or not) but Bernie mainly stayed in a tent on his first trips to Europe to compete and had to borrow some clothes since being from SoCal he wasn't prepared for the weather. For Pat, most of his traveling was donated by awesome people in USA. Plus he had to come up with some to but lets just say he did have a comfortable budget but I'm sure it wasn't the greatest but he made it work and put in some wins at the world championship. Bryan also had a lot of donations plus he worked saving up his cash to fill in the rest of the expenses and he stayed at a lot of peoples places over there in-between events. Plus the FIM pays for a hotel for a few days, if a rider is more than like 3000 miles or something like this from home as explained to me. For the guy saying about the olympic athletes, in the USA over %60 of the Olympic athletes that represented USA in London 2012 were college students. Why so? Well because those athletes growing up that were good at there sport continued to do that sport but thought about the future so they went to college. With the NCAA and a ton of colleges, the athletes do not need to be #1 or even #101 to get a full ride through college. Thats why no one gives up in those olympic sports because its obviously the main goal is olympics but if those athletes got a full ride through college they would be more than happy I'm sure. With trials if your not #1-#5 and even saying #5 is iffy, then your not making any kind of money to be bragging about or retiring on anytime soon for all the time and effort that trials requires. As for me riding, I am in that expert national class level. I'm not that sandbagging support rider that needs to move up a class. I am not able to put in the time i need to win or have the result i would like to see in the expert class because i need to work pay bills like every other normal person. I do ride as much as i can (2-4 days a week depends). I am not able to always make it to the nationals but try to when i can to meet up seeing everyone. Trials has got me into a few injuries that require surgery so my effort is right there and many parts have been put in the grave yard so I'm just as passionate as anyone is. Oh yeah I'm a Wanta Be Forum rider to let me tell you. I follow the World, European, USA, British and X trial championships more closely than most. Not just red line either i prefer to follow blue line riders or the bottom half of red line.

I don't think you quite understand what i said. Yeah Pat had a rough time moving to pro his first year i understand that but did Pat spend months upon months in Europe to jump up to the front of pro? no he didn't. also back when Pat first started to ride pro there were many many more riders in the class which is why his fist year was tough on him. After that first year of Pat in pro that is when he stepped up his riding and became national champion. Yes Pat had his time in Europe but it was a lot of donations that got him over there to compete at the world championship, not to practice with the best in the world for months. Pat had many other things he did as well as improved his riding. Pat did ride many many hours to learn where he is now and same with all the pros for that matter. Now back to present, there are only 6 riders in the pro class. Lets take Alex for example since this is his first year riding pro as same for Andrew. Alex was just as skilled as Andrew was last year but Andrew was riding a 125 last year at the nationals so definitely give Andrew the edge. Now if Alex would of had the same opportunity as Andrew to spend all of that time riding with team SPEA and other Europeans, I would almost guarantee he would be just as good as where Andrew is today. I bet Bryan and Logan would be right up there to riding even better than they are now in the pro class if they had the chance to give up school and work to go ride trials full time. Basically what i am saying is money talks. Thats the reason trials will never be like motocross is because trials is a rich persons hobby. The europeans all know this to. Look at Alexander Ferrer. Why do you think he still rides? Its because his parents have the funds to have him ride not because sherco is paying him or anyone is paying him a decent salary. Only the top few in world pro get paid and even then i doubt they are making what the top motocross guys or any amount that is enough to retire when their prime is over. Why is Fuji still riding i wonder? Andrews dad is very wealthy and is putting ridiculous money into making Andrew as good as he is. That is great his dad is doing all of this for his child and any parent would if they could but it is in the long run hurting trials with people doing this. Look at it this way, your a young 15 year old kid or 16 same as Andrew, and you see he quit school goes to Europe does all this extra stuff that you can't do to get better. Are you going to want to even ride or compete or even try to compete against someone like that when you have to get a job at 16 or have to think about college and a career? No you won't and you will quit because why ride when there is nothing in the sport and there is this kid the same age as me that has a huge advantage. Or think of it as a parent who never rode or had a background in trials, so your kid wants to ride and is the same age as someone like this. Your an average person that wants to do best for your kid but see it is almost not worth it when there is no reason to ride when it is a money game. What keeps the money out of trials is when all the wealthy are just doing a money war basically and creates less riders which then makes companies not want to invest a sport with very little riders. When it all comes down to at the end of the trial is who is the best rider you will say which i understand. At lower levels it is much easier to compete with the people who have the newest bike and best equipment. But when you get up to the pro class and even expert in nationals or the world pro, it is all about who has the most money to throw at the sport to practice enough and get the best people to train you. Getting 4 new bikes a years and traveling to have the best in the world to train you is pretty tough to compete with when you have say one night a week and the weekends to practice on even one new bike a year. Thats why it takes money to ride trials in the top level.Money is time. The more money you have the more time you can spend. its a rich persons hobby and always will be. I love trials as much as anyone and am not trying to put it down but am trying to give a view of trials that many have never saw or thought of before.

alright so I'm not taking anything away from any of the pro riders in the USA. they are all awesome riders and very nice people. but... So you said your amazed on how Andrew Putt did which why are you amazed? The kid does online high school and rides over in Europe for a few months at a time. He has been out of school for a couple years now so has a lot more time to ride and practice than any other pro rider or any rider for that matter in the USA. I know Logan Bolopue, Bryan Roper, Alex Niederer and Cody Webb are all full time students while riding the pro class and some of them also have jobs to. Pat has a very busy schedule also with shows and other events he has committed to. Over the past winter Andrew spent like two months or something like that in Europe practicing with team SPEA with toni bou and pol tarres along with many other up and coming riders. Andrew has also spent weeks at Pascuet off-road having Jordi Pascuet teaching him to ride better. So to me yes Andrew is a good rider and a great kid, but he should have been EXPECTED to do this well in the pro class even at his young age. If anything I'm surprised he did not beat Roper and Webb both days. But hats off to the USA Pro riders they definitely do not get the recognition they deserve.