Sarcasm is evidently lost on some people...

It's the bike which Lewis Buchanan won pretty much everything on this year so has his team issue green kit. The same bike was also used in our Hope Preview on the front page and the recent Empire multi bike test/comparison.

Yes, very. Unfortunately at £400 an end there aren't many who have or will get the chance to try them but their performance was astounding. I'll maybe reload the original article to my blog at some point so it can be read again.

Yes, they did make it past prototype stage as those pictured are production items but they were more special order than a continuous full production run.

It's a timing transponder and yes you're right, it breaks the beams at the start, splits, and finish to provide live timing. They're coded against each riders number so that live splits can be given.

Whilst I haven't needed to try it, I'm pretty sure that the rivets on the M4 rotor wouldn't clear the pads on the V2. As an indication, the 185mm M4 rotor uses the same aluminium carrier as the 205mm V2 disc. The non floating ones would probably 'work' as in you'd get away with it but tbh the performance would certainly not be at it's optimum. Best just sticking with the intended rotors. On the flipside, V2 rotors could be used on the M4's without a problem as there is suficient surface area for the pads without any clearance issues to the rivets or the pads running off the edge of the disc.

I just spoke to the man behind the lens and he is 99.9% sure without looking at the exif data that it's the 200mm lens. Hope that helps.

I use disco slippers as I find these to be more consistent in entry and release than the Vans/Dx style shoes. That's all personal preference as I know some riders like me just can't get on with DX's whilst others can't get on with the xc style slippers. So, bearing that in mind, I don't find that there's much difference. Infact, I wound most of the screws in. However, when wound out I would say that there was marginally more grip than when running the aggressive plates found on the older pedals. You may be finding them slippery if you're using the dx style shoes as there are fewer edges on the sole to dig into the various cut outs of the pedal compared to the lugged xc type shoes. Hope that helps.

They're the brass cleats which attach to your shoes.

Couldn't say really how many rides but they've been on the bike since late January, been raced virtually every weekend between April and now, ridden every weekend there wasn't a race, hammered at Fort William for something like ten days, raced for a week in Europe at the Mega, and done a significant amount of XC to boot. Hence the slightly used look they now wear!

In the timed runs, the bikes were all running the same forks, DHX5 shocks and High Roller tyres. This is explained in the first or second part of the article as one of the baseline consistencies that we'd agreed upon to ensure that the test was as fair as possible. This was the first day that the bikes had come together and as a result the tyres were still on from whenever they were used last. And, as the testing was obviously snowed out and we were just doing stuff for the camera's, we elected not to change tyres as there seemed little point.

Their look is certainly a bit industrial. Their calipers on the other hand are a work of art although the lever has a lot of very neat features that are only just being seen on a lot of the mainstream brakes. All that aside, they are the most powerful, consistent and controllable brakes I've used and that is from a pretty wide ranging spectrum. We had these on test back in 2005 and the only thing that put me off actually getting a pair was the £400 per end price tag.

The question though is where the line in the sand is drawn. At what point does it become too light? There are a significant number of failures on the Trek although to their credit they have so far been superb on warranty. The problem with ultra thin walls and large diameter tubing is that whilst strong from intended forces, the sort of damage and knocks that frames can get hit with over the course of the season can be less well dealt with (as can be seen in the above photo!).

Everyone's different, some guys prefer flats and some clips. Why do I personally ride clips? Well, first of all it's worth pointing out that I also use flats on some tracks so I'm not hard and fast either way but I do prefer riding clips for the feel with them. Racing is about being fastest to the bottom of the hill and, if you're confident with them, clips offer stronger pedalling and a different way of moving with the bike. Neither flats nor clips are bad, they're just different. A lot of riders suffer from a lack of confidence with clips as they're stuck to the bike but if you're able to get over that feeling then they're definitely a very good option.

He did...and went over the top of the next corner because he couldn't see!

Slow down and be prepared to stop.

The colour comes off those pads quite easily when you wash them as they're a multi layered graphic which doesn't seem to always properly adhere to the base white.

Yeah, I binned it on the Friday. Had matching marks on the other arm too. And then a couple of minutes after this I brained myself in the woods. It wasn't a good weekend.

Hope Tech M4's

At Fort William (or any fast track) it makes a big difference to the amount of mud you get on the tear-offs. It only really needs to be half that width though to have an impact.

That was just a few minutes before they cancelled the race on safety grounds.

That's only a few yards into his race run...and it was a pretty dry weekend too for once!

Cheers Oli, we've got the sequence there of this and the other crash that's in the album but just haven't yet had time to piece them together. We will do at some point though!

Our album: http://cloverleaf.pinkbike.com/album/KillTheBill09/

It's been like that all year - my ankle's wrecked.

Apparantly he saved it...although quite how I have no idea as that looks like a killer bar shag!

Cheers, just updated it.

Yeah, they're the Chargers.

It's a timing transponder.