The folding bike question

dylanwinter

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I have been travelling with the old vicars bike for most of this summer - but it is a full size three speed built for a big bloke - a delight to ride but a right pain moving it in and out of the cabin - hauling it ashore up a ladder is a massive job.

I know that I should buy a Brompton but they go for mad money and spending more on a push bike than a car is step too far for the financial controller here at KTL

there are quite a few on ebay for around the £200 mark - Dahon and Giant mostly

I am six foot and 14 stone

I want a rack stout enough to carry 12 litres of petrol

- now I don't need advice from any 11 stoners under 5 foot 10 as what suits you will break under my weight


I am really happy to ride 20 miles on the vicars bike and wondered if there was a folder that is as good

or am I after the moon on a stick

D
 

laika

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At 1m89-ish I've been looking for something a bit more serious than these little wheeled jobs and was rather interested in the montagues which Richard Shead raves about. Sadly I can't find anywhere to give me a test ride, the importers have failed to respond to 3 emails sent to all the email addresses I could find for them, and the manufacturers ignored my request to ask the importers to contact me. The importers ("2x2") are on the exhibitor list for the Southampton Boat Show (they were there last year) but good though the product looks for taller people in need of a folding bike, if sales folk ignore you when you mail them to say "I'm interested in your product: where can I try it?" it doesn't bode well for after sales service....
 

charles_reed

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I have been travelling with the old vicars bike for most of this summer - but it is a full size three speed built for a big bloke - a delight to ride but a right pain moving it in and out of the cabin - hauling it ashore up a ladder is a massive job.

I know that I should buy a Brompton but they go for mad money and spending more on a push bike than a car is step too far for the financial controller here at KTL

there are quite a few on ebay for around the £200 mark - Dahon and Giant mostly

I am six foot and 14 stone

I want a rack stout enough to carry 12 litres of petrol

- now I don't need advice from any 11 stoners under 5 foot 10 as what suits you will break under my weight


I am really happy to ride 20 miles on the vicars bike and wondered if there was a folder that is as good

or am I after the moon on a stick

D

Folding bikes (and I've had three) are an invention of the devil - I gave away the last in Argeles Port with utter relief.
Since 2002 I have carried a Trek 2400 which I bought second-hand in Cartagena for €600. Being carbon fibre/epoxy and aluminum it's about 1/3 the weight of any folding bike you can buy. By taking out the wheels It can be put into the same size bag as a rubber dinghy. It has a 7-speed Shimano, rear cassette a twin forward gear and I have a rear carrier rated for 25kg and two pannier bags on that.
It doesn't rust and, the three times it's leapt into the water, it has floated. The wheels are full-size 800mm rims in Shimano hubs, though I have shod them with 23mm tyres.
I'm 1.81m tall, weigh 95-100kg and carry 22litres of diesel on the back carrier.
 

Iain C

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Dylan,

I'm also a smidge under 6' and 14 stone. I'm also a pretty keen cyclist, and in fact my shed is full of nice bikey machinery. Let's see we have an old but restored Claud Butler tourer, for erm, touring, that never ever gets ridden. I have a carbon/alu composite Giant road bike for all road rides, the odd sportive etc. I've got two On-One Inbred hardtail mountain bikes (modern British design, steel rather than ally for a supple ride, sensible mud clearance, great geometry), one on a skinnies/rigid forks and singlespeed set up as a winter training bike that keeps me spinning and doesn't mind crashing into potholes at night, and the other with knobblies, Fox forks, all the Shimano SLX toys that is a fantastic all round off road bike. And lastly if it's a really big session at a Welsh/Scottish trail centre, time for the Trek full-suspension machine complete with 2.3 inch tyres, 120mm of suspension travel each end and a few carbon modifications. As you can tell, a bit of all the gear no idea, but a bike for any given situation. Compromise? Pah! No chance.

So I reluctantly added to the fleet (oops, did I mention the Mrs has a Trek roadie, a hardtail Spesh Rockhopper and a full-suss Giant Trance) with two 2nd hand Dahon folders for the boat. They needed a lot of work and didn't quite turn out to be the "bargain" I'd hoped for, especially when I opened one of the normally very reliable Sturmey Archer 3 speed hubs to find no gears and a lot of dry ferrous oxide! However with two complete rebuilds done, we took to the road.

One word...fantastic. I was genuinely gobsmacked at the capabilities of the things. Granted, there were a few upgrades in terms of saddles, brakes etc, but they ride incredibly well. I have removed the racks as they live down the quarterberth on the Sabre and don't quite fit with it in place, but I have no doubt they will carry the load you need. They are fast...ok not proper fast, but certainly scary fast with narrow bars and small wheels! Albeit this is due to overgearing, but a bigger rear sprocket is about £3 and easily swapped. They will also take a hell of a lot of abuse off road...anyone familiar with the Lymigton to Hurst coastal path will vouch that it's far from smooth, and whist I'd hesitate to tackle the 7stanes on a Dahon, you can hammer it down forest tracks and up and down kerbs all day...assuming you employ some very basic weight transfer techniques to your riding.

Only downside is for me it's a little short in reach...I'm seriously considering chopping the bars off the top of the riser and adding a stem and some cow horn bars if it doesn't affect the foldability. For SWMBO at 5'4", it's perfect.

Yes, I'd love a Brompton, and if I was a commuter I'd seriously think about one, but a Dahon is really good. Oh, and we can just squeeze me, her, and both bagged bikes into a 2.3m dinghy too.

One word of advice...personally I think the SA hub geared system on a boat is preferable to a derailleur. If properly lubed, the SA system is virtually bomb proof, and in my mind the derailleur is very exposed, especially if folded, in the bag, and being thrown about. I'm used to 27 gears on my mountain bike, but on the Dahon, 3 is plenty, and in the same way that there's a complete reverse-logic growth in singlespeed bikes, it's actually more fun too.
 
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Laurie

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I am 6 foot 4 inches and 16 stone with a 36inch inside leg. We have just bought 2 cheap folders from bicycles4U.com. They are a budget folder at about £110 complete with 6 speed derraillieur, lights, rack etc. The 20" wheeled model is JUST able to cope with my leg length...not brilliant, infact cheap, but we cycled a fair few miles with them. Couldn't justify several hundred pounds on a bike....
Would prefer hub gears too......
 

Poignard

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Mortification of the flesh?

I have been travelling with the old vicars bike for most of this summer

D

Conjures up an image of a sturdy Raleigh with sit-up-and-beg handlebars, chain guard, rod-operated brakes, steel mudguards, wicker basket on the front, Sturmey-Archer gears ... The kind of thing that only a true penitent would ride

You'll kill yourself lugging that around. ;)
 

FullCircle

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Conjures up an image of a sturdy Raleigh with sit-up-and-beg handlebars, chain guard, rod-operated brakes, steel mudguards, wicker basket on the front, Sturmey-Archer gears ... The kind of thing that only a true penitent would ride

You'll kill yourself lugging that around. ;)

I have one of those in the garage - A Raleigh Chiltern, complete with Pifco lights (converted to LED). I drew the line at wicker basket though, so I have throw overs for the rear rack. White wall tyres too. £60 virtually new and unmarked, a bargain.
 

Quandary

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WE carry two both with 20" wheels, lightness (11-12kgs.) and sturdiness were set against price when we bought them 2 years ago. Mine is an Oyama, made in Taiwan, nine gears (there are a lot of hills where we sail), my wife's is a Dawes with 7 gears n(rebadged Dahon, also from Taiwan) almost as light and looks a bit stiffer with neater looking welds in the alloy, it was second hand on Ebay but hardly ridden. Both cost us around £200 (Mine was 1/2 price because of a paint scratch). We have found that we actually enjoy riding them more than we expected, our range is about 20 miles depending on terrain so not big distances (Well that is actually as far as the dog can run, we could go further?). A carrier is useful, I was able to fetch a 7kg gas refill back from a distant filling station though I did buy a couple of extra bungees to secure it. It is worth taking account of the quality of components such as wheels, chainsets, gears, tyres, brakes etc. as some cheaper makes use rubbish.
They stay in bags (Outer Edge are good and cheap) in a cockpit locker and are not showing any signs of rusting yet.
Hub gears are popular now and less chance of touching an oily chain but I have heard of a lot of problems with Sturmey Archer sets when they try squeezing in more than four cogs. There is a folding bike specialist in London who banks your money when he has no stock, if the name comes to me I will reveal it.
 

2nd_apprentice

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Had a Dahon until it got nicked and found it very awkward to fold and stow. The ride was okay-ish, took a bit getting used to though. Unfortunately anything other than Clive Sinclair's "A-Bike" is going to pose a storage problem. Not that I'd seriously consider one! Never tried a Brompton but they're far too pricey for me really.
 

johnalison

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Depending on what kind of cycling you are going to do, having five gears can be of great benefit. We do a mixture of shopping trips and rough tracks and we need our 5 gears regularly. Our 10-yr-old DiBlasis are a bit old-fashioned now and I would prefer bikes with larger wheels but the gears have given very little trouble in spite of being regularly thrown into a locker or left out in the rain.
 

geem

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Got a pair of Bromptons. Had them since 2004. They are expensive but good quality. Don't be put off by the small wheels. We rode ours across Grasiosa in Canaries to prove they were capable even with their little wheels. There are no roads on Grasiosa just sand.
Ours were top of the range at £560 back in 2004 with 6 speed, racks, lights and Kevlar tyres. Look what they sell for on eBay. They hold their money so if you sell you will get a chunk back. You can't say that about some of the other folders about.
 

Quandary

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I have no experience of Bromptons, just too miserable to pay that sort of money, but they are British made and afaik still built or at least assembled in the UK. I have been told (by my son who is into road cycling and also enthusiastic about Bromptons) that there are a few stolen every day in London, he was reluctant to let his out of sight but still lost it. I suppose when something is high priced with a widely recognized high second hand value the thieves are more likely to target it. If you buy remotely from Ebay you take the risk that you are supporting this trade but if collecting you have more chance of establishing provenance.
So if you plan to use it around town perhaps something less desirable and a wee bit scruffy might be worth considering.
 

2nd_apprentice

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Unfortunately not. A scruffy old bike is just as likely to get stolen because it's much easier to sell. The only difference being it may attract a diffrent kind of thief. Had three bikes stolen myself, all locked away in yards, the marina and even from my garage. All of them worth less then 100 quid. Glad none of them cost me as much as a Brompton though.
 

AliM

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We have Montague Navigators. They were expensive but have proved to be worth every penny. We have cycled all over several Danish islands and in Germany and the Netherlands as well as over here. Our record day was an 80+km trip over the hills of Bornholm! They are proper road bikes which just happen to fold, rather than folding bikes. We bought them from Evans (one of the London branches) who sent us out for a long test ride, and then matched the cheapest on-line price (including various goodies).

The reason we bought them rather than Bromptons or the other brands was that we wanted bikes for long bike rides, not just to get to the local supermarket (although we use them for that too).
 

dunedin

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Definitely recommend getting a recent folding bike - but check the weight and mechanisms carefully.

We got one as an experiment this summer. Intentionally went low end price, but surprisingly found a good selection at Halfords all at £199 (would not buy a proper bike there, but the "proper" bike shop here didn't sell folders).

I got an end of range Raleigh Rapide - pretty sure it is a rebadged Dahon and very well engineered, light alloy frame and 6 speed gears. A bargain. Rides surprisingly well for casual pottering, and gentle "soft roading" and was easy enough getting ashore in she dinghy.
Never going to compare with a suspension frame mountain bike off road, or a carbon racer on road. But certainly one of the best £200 investments made recently. If I could locate a second for SHMBO I would definitely buy another.
 

laika

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We have Montague Navigators. They were expensive but have proved to be worth every penny. We have cycled all over several Danish islands and in Germany and the Netherlands as well as over here. Our record day was an 80+km trip over the hills of Bornholm! They are proper road bikes which just happen to fold, rather than folding bikes. We bought them from Evans (one of the London branches) who sent us out for a long test ride, and then matched the cheapest on-line price (including various goodies)

Evans haven't had any in in a London branch as long as I've been asking and want a £50 deposit before getting one in. What's the navigator like off pavement? Not looking for a true mountain bike, but would like something that can handle rough tracks
 

dylanwinter

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correct

Conjures up an image of a sturdy Raleigh with sit-up-and-beg handlebars, chain guard, rod-operated brakes, steel mudguards, wicker basket on the front, Sturmey-Archer gears ... The kind of thing that only a true penitent would ride

You'll kill yourself lugging that around. ;)

blacv,three speeds, basket on the front

cable brakes

love it to bits.... but sharing a cabin with it is not nice

D
 

Jamesuk

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Dont get a fold up bike, get a bike bag instead for 99 (find discounted one.) i got one for my mountain bike awesome.

I associate a fold up bike like I imagine a marriage to be like, you comprimise on everything and at the end of the day the rewards are generally disappointing. (Works both ways im sure)
 
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