Comment by SeanLuke
10 hours ago
I own what could possibly be the coolest folding bike ever made: the Bike Friday Tikit Hyperfold. It has a folding mechanism with an extremely high nerd quotient. It has a reputation as the fastest bike to fold and unfold, requiring no latches, safeties, or adjustment at all. But more importantly, unlike many other exotic folders (ahem Brompton) it largely uses standard parts. You can fit it with whatever drivetrain, brake system, handlebars, pedals, and seat you want. Though it has the same 349 wheel size as a Brompton, it rides much, much better. It was designed by in conjunction with Bike Friday by Rob English, a mechanical engineer who long was (maybe is?) the British speed record holder.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQscBxx7wLE
But Bike Friday no longer manufactures it: the frame design is so exotic and weird that they had a number of frame issues and failures they had to overcome in the field, and Bike Friday has a lifetime frame warranty. It was a very popular bike, but by the time they had worked out all the kinks the value of them continuing to sell the bike had probably gone negative. The Tikit was just too bleeding edge for its time.
The Tikit relies on a special part in order to be ridden: its hyperfold cable. This cable is no longer being manufactured for Bike Friday and cannot be obtained anywhere. When my cable gives out, and it'll happen sometime soon, my Tikit will probably wind up on the display wall of a bike store. And I'll be searching for something to replace it. But there is no folder even close to the Tikit in sheer engineering prowess, which depresses me to no end as a tech guy. Bike Friday itself replaced the model with the Pakit, a decidedly inferior bike. I'm not sure what to do.
Decathlon btwin one second has been praised for its design and easy unfolding; it’s relatively cheap and still being produced.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XX2VSaXmAoo
Praised by whom? The btwin folder is a low-rent and low quality version of a Dahon-style Chinese fold-in-half folder. That folding design is about 95% of the folding market, and has no clever design features whatsoever. It is simple to manufacture, has no patents, and is pretty bad in general riding use. It is neither fast to fold nor compact, and is very bad in customization, particularly with regard to the rider's reach. And it is really, really boring. Dahon and Tern have some okay bikes of this design, but the entire rest of the design category is dominated by bikes of quite poor quality, including the btwin.
Praised by most customers, probably. As an engineer I appreciate Bike Friday's attention to detail and I own a good few "artisan" devices myself, but the reality is that most people want a mass-produced bike that is "good enough" within their budget.
There's no doubt that your bike is higher quality than the Decathlon one, but the average customer doesn't appreciate how well engineered it is or how many patents (??) are involved.
I have consistently heard that the bikes by decathlon are very poor quality and fall apart easily. Is it a case of you get what you pay for?
This is what a lot of people want to be true, but in fact is not. I believe it can be mostly explained by the "IKEA effect": any given model is bought by so many people that the inevitable design defects are quickly found and remedied.
Some data points: I bought a Decathlon folding bike (Fold 500; new, ~450€) a few months ago. Using it many times a week (probably more than it's intended).
No issues so far. Internet reviews (https://www.decathlon.fr/r/velo-pliant-fold-500/343354/undef...) are quite positive as well.
I've had other Decathlon bikes when I was a kid/teen, I don't recall any issue either.
N=2, but my Decathlon bikes have well over 50000 km between them with no issues, beyond the usual wear and tear. Value wise, they are fantastic. They are road bikes, however, not the folding specifically.
Of course you get what you pay for. Note that this is not Decathlon’s cheapest folding bike.
i have (had) several cheap (under €500) single speed bikes and Decathlon is not the worst of them
For nerdiness there’s also the bike sat-r-day, a folding recumbent! http://cycle.atnak.com/SatRDay/index_e.html
The ICE Trice is a folding recumbent tadpole trike! https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d9/85/10/d98510f35c1aa63b8384...
It folds the rear wheel “triangle” (red in the picture) underneath to make it shorter to fit in a car trunk, and quick-releases the seat IIRC. Also has squishy rubber-lump suspension because the rear wheel pivots.
(ICE being Inspired Cycle Engineering in this context).
I've had a regular Tikit (there's a single knob to lock the steer tube in place, adds 10 seconds to the fold/unfold time) for over 15 years. Picked Bike Friday because I wanted a foldable to be able to take it onto public transit, and the Bromptons were pricier than I wanted. I did have a frame failure early on (repaired thanks to that lifetime warranty), but it's been reliable ever since. If your hyperfold cable does break, I hope at the least you'll be able to retrofit the regular locking knob onto it.
Sadly, they no longer make the knob stems.
Hi fellow tikit owner! When they did the early upgrade of the cable, I thought it was just some gauge of airplane wire, threaded through the front nut and clamped or welded in place (I don't rude mine very often, it's a very early model and has a lot of the weaknesses like chain offs, and it comes unfolded too easily when I roll it). But I haven't been able to bring myself to sell it, it's still such a nice little device.
I still think the strida folding bikes are the ones with the highest nerd quotient. Never ridden one myself, but been tempted a couple of times. In particular the low weight compared to any other folding bike is appealing. Unfortunately they are difficult to find for test rides and they look quirky enough that I'd want to do a test ride before buying
The strida is certainly the *dorkiest*, not nerdiest, looking design, but in terms of engineering, it's very bad. It is terrible, TERRIBLE to ride, with horrible mechanical trail. It is extremely unstable. It has no gearing options at all and has essentially no standard parts. It is very clearly the outcome of a designer rather than an engineer ("Let's start with the idea of a bike that folds like a ladder").
Unicycles probably have a higher nerd quotient. No folding needed!
> an extremely high nerd quotient
stealing this. you will be paid 0 in royalties/licensing