Comment by SeanLuke | Hacker News Reader

Comment by SeanLuke | Hacker News Reader

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

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?

Of course you get what you pay for. Note that this is not Decathlon’s cheapest folding bike.

With decathlon you have to watch the numbers...

100 series = basic and cheaper 900 series = advanced and more costly

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.

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.

i have (had) several cheap (under €500) single speed bikes and Decathlon is not the worst of them

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.

Skill issue/maintenance issue.

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 several bikes. My decathlon foldy is great.

Having lived in Italy and used the btwin folder quite a lot, I can assure you there are lots of basic folders in its category and price range which are much better. I'd look into Dahon and Tern for a basic folding bike.

Folding bikes are complex and hard to make safely, and the folding mechanism is costly to engineer right. This means that the manufacturer of a cheap bike is either providing you with a dangerous folding mechanism, or is putting a lot of the cost of the bike into the folding mechanism, so there's not much money left for the rest of the parts. Either way, it means that cheap folding bikes are a bad choice, and the btwin folder is a good example of that.

As to patents: yes, there are patents.

The Decahlon folder folds faster than a Brompton. A friends of mine has both and he's trying to convince me on buying the cheap decathlon bike over a Brompton. The demonstration was convincing.

I'm a big fan of the fact that you can push a Brompton while folded. A feature that other folders miss.

You can push folders that lack the Brompton's rack-rollers design with a little practice. If you watch the Bike Friday video you'll see the guy do it, though it looks like that bike's folding seat post makes it a bit more difficult than on a cheaper folder. I push my folded Zizzo around no problemo.

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

Unicycles probably have a higher nerd quotient. No folding needed!

When I was at nerd school in the 80s. This was a super-popular intracampus (and occasionally extracampus) transportation option. I never managed to learn myself.

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").

There are Strida's with gears.

It's definitely weird to ride -- I would ride it on a commute of more than a few miles. It's less stable than a real bike, but not completely unstable. e.g. I can fall of curbs but can't jump up them.

Most body parts are specialty, not the brakes system, I believe.

It meets its design goals very well: - Internal brake cables and quick release mean it folds very fast and doesn't get tangled up. - It can be rolled around when folded so you don't have to lug it. - It stands tall and thin so only takes the space of a small standing passenger on transit.

That's not what stability is. A stable bike is one in which the steering is stable and easily controlled at various speeds. It's a function of steering geometry and mechanical trail. And the Strida is among the very most unstable folders on the market.

Answer honestly. Would you ride the Strida downhill at a 30 degree incline with a serious curve at the bottom without using the brakes, like you would a mountain bike? How about at over 15 miles an hour [like a racing bike]? A good folder should be able to do both easily.

I ride mine 2 miles a day, sometimes 3 based on a variable commute. Mine doesn't have gears or a spedometer so I can only say I am comfortable at the fastest speed I can pedal -- but it would feel unstable to go much faster, say, on a very steep hill.

I'm not trying to imply it feels like a weirdly shaped mountain bike. I'm saying it does its particular job very well. The seating position and narrow handlebars definitely preclude it doing anything other than getting you from the train station to work on urban streets.

I have a real bicycle, too for, well, actually riding a bicycle.

> an extremely high nerd quotient

stealing this. you will be paid 0 in royalties/licensing

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