321–330 of 431 posts
I'm interested in folding bikes. This is a great device if you can afford the price tag $1300+ there is also the a bike. http://a-bike.co.uk/product-category/bikes/
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What am I missing. I looked at the Bromton and it’s ~$3,800 or roughly 1/12 of the Decathlon.
Build quality and longevity. After five years of daily use you will be able to resell your Brompton for 80% of its initial price, while I would guess you would be lucky to get more than $100 for your old Decathlon.
Resale value is important in the sense that you know you are risking at most X, which with Brompton sounds to be €600 — in case you dislike it or don't have a need for it anymore, or are in a need of cash, so the risk you are willing to take is still larger.
Ultimately, as with anything, if Bromptons are really of such a high quality, the best purchase is a used Brompton which you might be able to resell for the same price you got it at. If you really end up using it to the max, you can resell it early and get a new one specced to your liking.
For something you'll end up using daily, the most important thing is quality, and then you should look for the best price next.
so i bought a folding bike from decathlon about 1.5yr ago and never been happier since. its following model: https://www.decathlon.fr/p/velo-pliant-oxylane-120/_/R-p-120... they actually went up in price since then. swapped stock tires because they were rubbish and also bought better seatpost from upper model. removed all the unneccessary stuff like ringer or mudguards and this thing flies. im getting average speed a…
I used to like Decathlon but their quality has gotten worse and worse. The bike I bought there 3 years ago or so must be the single lowest quality product I've ever owned. Of course when it's new you don't notice at first until things start breaking. It wasn't the same model as yours so I hope you have better luck but I'll definitely NEVER ever buy a bicycle at Decathlon again. Utter garbage.
Thank you for having us here to discuss Kwiggle. I am the inventor and owner of Kwiggle and would like to give you some insights: We have been developing Kwiggle for 10 years and producing Kwiggle for almost 3 years. Every detail has been carefully designed to create a 10kg lightweight folding bike that can even be folded into hand luggage and still go as fast as a normal bike. We have selected materials and manufact…
Question: Why the trolley? Was it an afterthought, or was it not possible to make the bike wheel(s) perform that function when folded?
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We are swiftly destroying the planet because people don’t want to look goofy in a small car, and insist on an aircraft carrier-sized truck. And now the same attitudes go for bikes too?!
Why would a larger bicycle be less eco-friendly than a small, intricate bicycle with many bespoke components?
Honestly, you'd go flying over the handle bars upon hitting the tiniest twig. I've been riding Montague Bikes for years -- on the other end of the folding bike spectrum. Full-size wheels, rides so much smoother. Doesn't fold down as small but it goes in the trunk of a car or can be carried on the train and that's all I really need.
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Folding bikes are better at most of what bikes do; sitting around waiting to be ridden. There’s no good way to store a regular bicycle. All of them are compromises of convenience, security, floor space and weather protection.
Storing vehicles is a social problem not an individual one, given that by their nature people tend to use them to commute, go shopping etc.. (If you live in some crazy jurisdiction that has decided to allocate lots of public space to car storage and not bike storage, then you have a problem, but, uh, don't do that)
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What do you mean by efficient?
https://www.schwalbetires.com/tech_info/rolling_resistance : “Tires with a smaller diameter have a higher rolling resistance with the same inflation pressure, because tire deformation is proportionally greater. The tire is flattened more and is “less round”.”
Thank you for having us here to discuss Kwiggle. I am the inventor and owner of Kwiggle and would like to give you some insights: We have been developing Kwiggle for 10 years and producing Kwiggle for almost 3 years. Every detail has been carefully designed to create a 10kg lightweight folding bike that can even be folded into hand luggage and still go as fast as a normal bike. We have selected materials and manufact…
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The seat is attached to the front column, not to the bottom bracket like on most other bikes (folding or not). This seems to give them a better portability return for sacrificing wheel base than other designs. So that's what they did, apparently: the side views look like on the brink of a wheelie from even the slightest acceleration or incline, all while not getting the CoG all too far from stoppie tipovers. The adve…
Have a look here https://www.kwigglebike.com/en_US/faltrad-vs-rennrad-am-berg
"One thing became very clear, and every mountain biker will certainly be able to confirm this: when riding uphill on a racing bike, there is always the conflict between riding standing up, which puts more pressure on the pedals, but you have to keep lifting your weight onto the pedal, and riding sitting down"
This is simply not what riding uphill on a roadbike is, unless you are not used to that position at all. The switch between seated and standing is not done to push harder, it's done to get a bit of variation in position and muscle use. It's not a conflict, it's an opportunity.
Except for those particularly steep slopes where you need to move your center of mass forward to not literally tip over, where it's not an opportunity but the only one. That threshold is sits in the vicinity of 20% incline, depending on size and seating position. This is with a wheelbase about twice as long as the kwiggle, and with a considerably lower center of mass. The author even seems to emit that, in a way, with the suggested tweak "So if you ride the Kwiggle in the mountains, always place the saddle a bit more forward". Good luck descending afterwards if it happens to be a route where you might actually need to brake.
The difference in the climb the author was so enthusiastically describing is simply that he went up more than 10% slower on the kwiggle than on the roadbike (92 minutes instead of 81). If you have ever measured endurance efforts in that game, for example on an ergometer, you will know what a huge difference 10% means.
I mean, nice publicity stunt and it surely was a lot of fun given the weather, but if you want to do that more, get proper equipment.