From time to time an object will make contact with a brake disc and bend it. Often it is easy not to notice and just keep on riding, unaware of the damage.

A telltale sign of a bent disc is uneven pad wear and after a bit of riding with your mis - shaped disc, it will show up.

Here’s a shot of my rear pads after returning from our recent tour to Bright.

The extra wear on the right pad is due to a ‘woof’ or bend in a section of the disc, causing it to rub hard against the disc everytime it came round.

A quick visual on the plastic disc protector showed it had copped a flogging and it was sporting a couple of flesh wounds.

If you notice irregular pad wear, stand behind the bike on a stand and spin the back wheel. You’ll easily see if the disc is not straight. If it’s a reasonable bend then the caliper will move left or right when you spin the wheel as well. This is not hard to fix for minor bends.

Firstly spend a little time spinning the wheel and watching the disc, carefully analysing where you think the bend is and which direction it needs to be bent back.

Just grab a decent shifter, adjust it up snug on the disc and bend away. Start by using only a little force and check how it goes.

If you’re achieving nothing, use more force.

Check your results after each attempt with the shifter.

Avoid using blunt trauma with something like a big rubber mallet, as you will possibly break the hub where the disc mounts and then be up for big bucks.

With a little patient fine tuning, it should be possible to return the disc to it’s former true glory and save yourself a bundle on prematurely worn out brake pads.

As well, your brakes will work better, with a more consistent action.

Go check yours today.

Yackandandah to Bright was another new tour for us this year and it was a cracker. Good weather, good blokes and great tracks was a bonzer start. We had a great group of mostly new customers, who were all quite good riders, so the tour flowed really well.

Our new policy of ensuring customers not only run UHD tubes but also 16 psi tyre pressure has worked wonders with our flat tyre count and we had none at all again this trip, which improves the level of fun all round.

Some rain the week prior had dust levels low and traction high. We tested some of the famous loamy Yack Charity Bash tracks before swapping mountains via private propety and launching into rocks, then pine forest, then rocks, then more loam.

We finished off with some beaut flowing ridge tracks cruised into Bright right on time.

On arrival, we discovered Mark’s Gas Gas had destroyed a set of front wheel bearings. Compared to Honda units, they were truly flimsy and they completely fell apart, leaving the inner race stuck inside the hub. Luckily ex team Honda mechanic Buddha lives locally and he helped us to not only remove the busted bearing but also source a new item.

The customer service provided by Dean, the owner of Smiths Tyre and Battery Service at 34 Churchill Ave Bright, was incredible.

He drove from Myrtleford to Bright Sunday morning, picked up the bearing we needed and at 7.15 a.m personally delivered to our hotel!

Wayno fitted the new item and Mark was back in business.

The Alpine Hotel comes highly recommended for bikers. Good meals were complemented by a band that saw some of our crew bopping the night away with some very suspicious dance moves that should have been outlawed.

Day two involved trick views and another 100 k’s of ripper tracks back to Yack.

The track quality and variety on this tour is premium and we’ll definitely be running another one of these in 2010. If you want in, keep an eye on the website calendar and get in early.

Riders, it is now possible to leave comments on this Blog for each story. Click on the ‘comments’ or ‘no comments’ button at the bottom and submit your stuff. Note that I have to approve comments before they are published! Please try to keep them clean and sensible, even if you think I deserve ‘rude and senseless’.

To view the comments so far for each article, click on the ‘comments’ button at the bottom of the article.

Thanks to Lois from Website Concepts for my first comment.

I’ve had a few blokes pull the pin on this weekend’s adventure from Yack to Bright. Busted ribs, work commitments and family issues mean I have half a dozen or so spots available if anyone wants to come on what is shaping as a great ride.

Wayno and I have been putting some work into the tracks and reckon we have a great collection sorted that will keep everyone happy.

If anyone is keen, give me a call asap so I can arrange the catering.

Our partnership with the Department of Sustainability and Environment’s Trailbike Project bore fruit today, with forest officers accompanying us on a right hoot in the Stanley Forest.

The DSE are to be congratulated on their approach to trail riding. Without appearing to be sucking up, I reckon their approach is spot on.

Firstly, they’ve been educating people. They have been handing out brochures by the zillions wherever possible, at places like the Australian Motorcycle Expo where recipients may actually read the information.

They’ve spent considerable effort working with television show MXTV to get coaching tips out there on the telly.

They attend most major social rides, like the Blue/Red light, Yack Charity bash and others.

They’ve been investing in infrastructure that really helps us all, like the trailbike unloadoing areas.

That’s where we started this adventure. It’s positioned so that local residents don’t hear our noisy bikes. They even built us a dunny and have plans for a pergola type shelter and information on using the forest. Cool.

Recreational Registration is fine on all of our tours. Here, Mick proudly shows us all that his bike is registered, which is one of the first steps to being allowed to access our awesome forests.

Another important part is displaying respect for the environment and other bush users.

We had a very wide range of rider abilities on this trip. A couple of girls on 230cc four strokes at one end, A grade motocrossers at the other. What was great was that everyone managed to have a great time and the better riders were prepared to help the up and comers whenever needed.

And help was needed. I don’t believe in babying beginners, so we threw them in at the deep end and set a fairly challenging course around the Bruarong area, with a couple of hills, both up and down, that were challenging in anyone’s language.

However not all the riders had the same opinion at that stage…..

After lunch, I split the groups in two, taking one group back via an easier route and allowing some others to tackle more of the tougher terrain we’d seen in the morning. It worked well and both groups had plenty more fun.

At the end of the riding, Roger and Felicity did a bit of noise testing, in an advisory role.

Interestingly, the only bikes to fail were an XR600 belonging to a DSE bloke and my CRF250X! At it turns out, the ‘496′ label on my Pro Circuit means ‘4 stroke - 96 decibels’. The limit is however 94 and I’ll have to make up a new bung to quieten it down a little more.

All in all, it was a great day. We all had fun and learnt a little about riding and our environment. The more we get the message out the better for the future of our sport.