Author Archives: David Henshaw

A to B 49 Blog, August 2005 – SRA, ABD, Merc

FIRST PUBLISHED April 2005
Strategic Rail Authority, Association of British Drivers, Merc folding bike

Good news from Bogworthy Junction! The much derided Strategic Rail Authority has finally been abolished, but not before dropping, as a parting bombshell, that services to Bogworthy will be downgraded in the new Greater Western Franchise. But at least we have seen the back of an organisation that was neither Rail-friendly nor Strategically-minded.The bad news is that most of the staff are expected to transfer to the Department for (Road) Transport and continue mishandling rail matters from there. Still, one assumes that the forces of the state know what is good for us.

Most trains these days have space for only two to four ‘cumbersome’ machines, and long-distance travellers are generally obliged to book ahead. Once upon a time, this was done by speaking to a humble, but knowledgeable, railway clerk, who would transfer the information to another similar bod in the bowels of railway HQ, who presumably signed a chit or stuck a Post-it note on a giant map of the network. However it was done, the system worked reasonably well until January 2005, when modernisation resulted in the new, and fearsomely powerful, National Reservation System, costing a staggering £80 million. Booking has since become a hit-and-miss affair, particularly when crossing network boundaries with a bicycle.

To provide just one example, the little train for Kyle of Lochalsh, which carries two bicycles, recently pulled in to Inverness, where no fewer than ten cyclists were waiting, reservations in hand. Eight of the ten weary cyclists travelling that day had already been crammed into six bicycle spaces on another train.

Merc Folding Bike

Regular cycle/rail commuters are buying folding bikes in droves, and who can blame them? But these days, folding bikes might not be all they appear to be either. The Chinese have developed some serviceable nuclear weapons, and shot all manner of dangerous things into space, but the finer points of folding bike technology continue to elude them. The latest arrival from the east is the Merc, a straight copy of the Brompton. This sounds great news for consumers, being made of aluminium and very pretty to look at, but the reality is something of a disappointment. As one understands it, aluminium is lighter than steel, but for reasons that only the boffins are able to explain, the aluminium Merc weighs a hefty 13.2kg, and is thus significantly heavier than the steel Brompton. The Mole took the opportunity to ride one of these faux-Bromptons at the CTC York Rally and found all sorts of oddities in the handling, brakes and folding. A bit of a dodgy purchase at £499 then, but is the company really allowed to sell such blatant copies? As with so much in and beyond the Euro-zone, the answer appears to be yes and no. Merc bikes have been seized and impounded on the European mainland, where copyright laws are interpreted in a relatively protectionist manner, but not in Britain, which adopts a more laissez-faire approach.

Surely the Merc is a straight copy, passed off as a Brompton, bringing only some rather heavy aluminium to the party? Even the Merc instructions are copied from the Brompton handbook. And if the frame is wobbly and the brakes dangerously weak, surely the bike must fall foul of British Standards too? It seems not, or at least Trading Standards has made no move to prevent the open sale of the machines.

The road lobby isn’t all it might appear either! Road interests are advanced by something called the Association of British Drivers, a hang ’em, flog ’em and run ‘em down operation, composed largely of middle-aged men of the kind that wear trilby hats and grip the wheel with chamois leather driving gloves. Believing in broad terms that motoring should be fast, cheap and convenient, the ABD lobbies hard against speed cameras, taxation and road pricing, as one might expect. But Mark McArthur-Christie, the ABD’s Road Safety spokesman appears, to have gone native! After riding a Dawes Galaxy to work and rather enjoying the experience, Mark ‘didn’t bother’ replacing his car when it was written off, and is now car-free. ‘If I absolutely need a car, I hire it’, says the ABD man. For National Bike Week in June, he went a step further, organising a car, bike and bus Oxford commuter challenge.

It’s an odd world: Strategic Authorities that offer no strategies, Bromptons that are not Bromptons and now car lobbyists without cars. While the bearded, sandal-wearing anti-road types arrive at demos by car, the bicycle in the bushes could well belong to the ABD man behind the bulldozers, or perhaps even the chairman of Shell (see previous issues), should he happen to be passing. In the era of Peak Oil, one would be well advised not to jump to any conclusions.

So where is personal transport heading? Celebrities are flocking to folding bikes as never before: in the old days, if you pulled up beside a vaguely familiar face on a Brompton it was almost certain to be Adam Hart-Davis or Simon Calder.These days, it might be all-purpose celeb Jerry Hall, former boxer Chris Eubank, Member for Bath Don Foster, or Tory something-or-other Bernard Jenkin MP. The latest convert is television presenter Kevin McCloud, who felt sufficiently strongly to order Bromptons for himself and two other directors of his production company.

Incidentally, Strida enthusiasts include film maker Spike Jones, Radio 4 presenter Libby Purves, racing champion Stirling Moss, and the Queen’s nephew Lord Linley.

At the more vulgar end of the transport scale, it seems Hummer owners are enthusiastically signing up for the new SYNus, which sounds like a nasal problem, but is actually an ‘urban command centre’. According to manufacturer Ford the SYNus is a ‘mobile techno sanctuary sculpted in urban armour and inspired by the popular B-cars of congested international hotspots’. In practice, this means it’s a security truck, complete with steel shutters that rise up to shield the windows, and deadlocks to disable the doors. Lock your keys inside and you might as well start saving up for another one. Lock your dog inside on a fine summer’s afternoon and the poor chap will be done to a crisp by the time they cut him out.

…such everyday accessories as bullet-proofing, a mini safe and infrared night-sight…

But as one rather suspected, the SYNus is a mere runabout. Meet the $225,000 Bad Boy Heavy Muscle Truck, a post-apocalyptic urban nightmare, based like the Hummer, on US military hardware, but in this case on the rather larger Medium Tactical Vehicle. The Bad Boy weighs six tons, stands ten feet tall and can be ordered with such everyday commuter accessories as bullet-proofing, a mini safe and infrared night-sight. The $750,000 ‘NBC’ version offers protection from ‘dirty’ nuclear bombs and biological agents. Fuel consumption is a little under 8mpg, which sounds rather good, all things considered. The Mole is waiting for the civilian version of the Chieftain tank.

Electric Bike Hybrid Transmission

The time-honoured bicycle drive system of pedal cranks, chain drive, and hub or derailleur gears has been in vogue for more than a century, and shows no sign of going away in the immediate future. But new thinking is starting to make an impact, and I am indebted to engineer Frank Moeller for his thoughts on the future of bicycle transmissions.

Inspiration

Frank’s inspiration came initially from a desire to produce a more efficient electric-assist bicycle. Electric bicycle motors can be more than 80% efficient, but a bicycle is a demanding environment, and motors generally work efficiently over a limited speed range.To keep the motor spinning close to this ideal speed, it needs to be near the pedals, as on the Panasonic drive system fitted to the Giant Twist.

This arrangement ties the motor speed to a comfortable pedal cadence, cleverly utilising the human engine to select a comfortable gear for both leg muscles and electric motor. Generally this works well, but the motor speed still varies a good deal, and with transmission losses, overall efficiency probably doesn’t exceed 60% in most cases. In other words, a typical power-assisted bicycle carries around a heavy, expensive battery, yet turns 40% of its capacity into worthless heat.That’s a better performance than most internal combustion engines, but on a bicycle – where weight is a serious issue – this poor performance is inexcusable.

Most electric vehicles throw power away on descents too.The motor could run as a generator, putting power back into the battery, but with most older designs, the noise and friction involved generally outweigh the potential benefit of recycling a little of the energy. How can matters be improved? it seems a number of avenues are worth exploring.

New Technology

Without going into too much technical detail, large ‘switched reluctance’ and ‘induction’ motors are already available, and they’re much more efficient than older types. Combine the best of these designs and there’s no reason why a new smaller ‘hybrid’ couldn’t be produced – light enough and efficient enough to fit inside a conventional bicycle hub, turning quietly and with little friction whenever the wheel turns. Such a motor would give assistance up hill and braking down hill. None of these new motor designs have yet been optimised for light electric vehicles, but engineers are working on the problems.

Today, motors and gears are usually so crude and noisy that the system necessarily spends much of it time disconnected.The new hybrid motor would be fitted inside the front hub, driven at speeds of 3,000rpm or more through a single-stage stepped epicyclic ear.This permanently engaged motor would run reasonably efficiently across a broad speed range and provide both assistance and braking.

It’s a neat idea, but Frank Moeller’s key conceptual breakthrough is to take this arrangement a step further and design a completely new bicycle drive system, based broadly on the transmission of the ‘hybrid’ petrol/electric Toyota Prius, but in this case combining and regulating human and electric power inputs.

Toyota Prius

The Prius has won many awards since its launch in 1997, and it’s easy to see why.This outwardly conventional car draws power from a small and relatively efficient petrol motor linked to the planetary gears of an epicyclic gearbox.

This is the same compact, efficient device used in hub gears, but in this case its purpose is to split the motor torque into two streams; one leaving through the sun gear to turn an electrical generator, and the rest going via the outer ring gear to the car’s wheels. On some designs the shaft to the wheels can pick up extra torque from an electric motor, but on others the motor is mounted at the other end of the vehicle to give four-wheel-drive.

This ‘Hybrid Synergy Drive’ might sound complicated, but it does away with the conventional clutch and gearbox, and performs most of the braking functions, because the clever ‘torque splitting’ arrangement functions as a continuously variable transmission. At low speed the petrol engine is turned off, and power is drawn from the batteries, via the electric motor. As the vehicle accelerates, the petrol engine is started, feeding power to the epicyclic. At first, the output shaft and wheels are turning slowly, so most of the power is diverted via the generator and converted to electrical power to feed the motor. This might be described as ‘first gear’. As speed rises, the ‘braking’ effect of the generator is progressively increased by electronic means, transferring more and more of the available torque directly to the wheels, with a smaller percentage being turned into electrical power by the generator. Above a certain road speed, the generator is given a high electrical resistance and the unit is effectively in ‘top gear’ As driver input and road conditions vary, the amount of power flowing from the generator to the motor is continuously adjusted, keeping the petrol engine turning at an optimum speed under almost all conditions.

Patent diagram

Bench test rig In both cases, input power is spilt into mechanical and electrical components, which are recombined in the output stage

For hard acceleration, extra power is supplied from the batteries, which will be recharged from the motor/generator when the going gets a little easier, or under braking. Back in low-speed stop-start urban driving conditions, the inefficient petrol engine is turned off, and the battery/electric motor combination takes over again. The torque split allows this clever transmission to make the best use of the very different characteristics of the electric motor and petrol engine, and it can be arranged to do the same with an electric motor and human ‘engine’. Ignoring the on-board battery for he time being, rider effort would be applied to the pedals as normal, and conveyed to the rear hub via a chain drive.

…the hub actually contains fewer parts than a typical five-speed hub…

In the hub, some of the human input would proceed direct to the wheel, with a proportion being diverted via a generator/motor electrical circuit, as on the Prius, but in this case the low pedal speed is geared up to give a high generator speed.When climbing a hill, the wheel would begin to slow, causing an increasing amount of torque to run via the generator.The electrical output from the generator would run just a few centimetres to an electric motor/generator, with the mechanical output being fed to the hub shell through a second epicyclic gearbox.

It might look complicated, but the hub actually contains fewer parts (and far fewer wearing parts) than a typical five-speed hub, and it’s fully automatic. And of course the system really lends itself to electric-assist, requiring just a battery and a few control circuits to turn the human-powered vehicle into a hybrid. As on the Prius, the battery would provide additional power for acceleration and hill-climbing, and absorb ‘waste’ power when coasting downhill. It would also be possible to recharge the batteries with pedal effort under favourable conditions.The major difference is that in stop-start town traffic, where the Prius petrol motor would be turned off, the primary input would be from the human ‘engine’ rather than the battery.

A New Era

A ‘torque split’ transmission would provide an HPV or assisted-HPV with a number of hitherto unattainable attributes. For the human ‘motor’, the hub gives a foolproof continuously variable transmission, with no gears to worry about.The hub could be set to provide either a constant input torque, constant pedal cadence, or a combination of the two, maintaining this optimum level under all conditions.The rider would simply point the bike in the right direction and start turning the pedals.Without the shock-loads imposed by frequent gear changes, maintenance would be reduced, and it might be possible to reduce the size and weight of components such as the crank and chain. And with the output motor able to function as a generator, recycling some of the power normally turned to heat by the brakes, the bicycle could be fitted with a small battery, or even a ‘super capacitor’ to store braking energy.This reduces the need for powerful brakes, reducing the size and weight of the braking system too.

Although bristling with technology, the hub would be simple, and easily fitted to a conventional bicycle.The one unit would replace the conventional gears, and reduce the weight and complexity of the transmission and brakes. On an electric bike, it would also replace the electric motor, wiring and control equipment.

Fact or Fantasy?

How close is this vision to fruition? In motor car terms, the engineering is quite simple, but scaling the technology down will present many challenges. Prius consumers were initially nervous about the reliability of the novel electrical components and especially the batteries, but Toyota had sufficient confidence to offer a 100,000-mile warranty on the hybrid drive, which has proved extremely reliable.The same rugged simplicity and fully enclosed transmission would suit a bicycle very well. Moeller is already working with business partners in Taiwan, with the intention of mass producing hub units for just a few hundred dollars, to be fitted to new bicycles or sold as after-market accessories.The future may arrive sooner than you think.

Our grateful thanks to Frank Moeller. For further information, Frank can be contacted at frank.moeller@ntlworld.com

A to B 49 – Aug 2005

Bobike Junior Child Seat

Most of our friends were agreed on one thing when Alexander arrived – we might previously have lived a car-free lifestyle as rootless ‘dinkies’, but all that was going to change. Sage nods all round.

First, there would be a nursery, followed by playschool (both made worse when we exercised our parental prerogative and chose out-of-town groups), then school, plus a long list of extracurricular activities and a ceaseless round of parties in distant villages. Some of them even began discussing car-share schemes.

The car never happened, and we’re glad of that because not having access to a car doesn’t half concentrate the mind when choosing transport options. Child trailers saw us through those infant years – pulled initially by one or the other of our Bromptons, but later behind the priceless Giant Lafree power-assisted bike, especially as the boy grew, and the volume of ‘stuff’ expanded (parents will understand).

For train-assisted journeys, we used a range of folding/collapsible solutions, graduating from a baby sling to a Burley Solo child trailer, a Brompton-mounted child seat, and most recently, the invaluable ITChair. For the school run – and optional for longer journeys – the mainstay has been Steve Parry’s tandem Brompton.

Older Children

With the boy now six-and-a-bit, and sprouting like a bean up a pole, the on-bike options are becoming more limited. But if someone tells you their child went solo at 31/2 and now pedals him/herself everywhere, they’re either living in the Outer Hebrides, lying, mad or (more likely) using a car for the tricky bits. Alexander often rides his own bike to school and to local parties, but when he’s tired, or the weather’s dubious, or we’re riding a long way, it still makes sense to travel en tandem: For years, we’ve used a rack-mounted child seat on the Ezee Sprint electric bike, but the rack was starting to sag. Clearly, we needed something sturdier.

Years ago, before the invention of the bulbous people-mover, bicycle seats for older children were quite common, but they’re much rarer these days. Any number of manufacturers produce rack or frame-mounted seats, but very few of these are suited to children of five and above.

Folded down, the Junior is unobtrusive, but the harness straps must be secured with care

The bag bracket will carry a pair of small panniers either side of the seat, or a lightly- loaded rucksack when folded down

In Holland and Germany, as we so often point out, it’s another world, and child- carriers abound. One of the very few to have found its way to Britain is the Bobike Junior, a rear-mounted seat designed for children from four to nine years old (or five to ten, depending which brochure you’re reading). If you have a podgy 91/2-year-old, we should qualify that upper age limit, because in the small print, the gross weight limit, including luggage, is 32kg, or five stone in what Francois Mitterrand would call Anglo-Saxon measures. For reasons that will be explained, we wouldn’t recommend exceeding this limit.

Fittingly, in this ‘vision of the future’ issue, the Bobike Junior is a clever multi-purpose device.

When little Hans is elsewhere, the seatback folds flat, which not only does wonders for the drag coefficient, but produces a wide rack suitable for carrying all manner of awkward things home from B&Q. The seatback also incorporates a steel frame that can be folded down behind the seat to create a longer load platform, or some vestigial luggage capacity when the seat is occupied.

…The Junior weighs 4.8kg, even before you’ve mustered the podgy ten-year-old…

Fitting

We fitted the Junior to the long-suffering Ezee Sprint, the various fixtures and fittings coping reasonably well with the slightly unusual geometry of the bike, so it should fit most conventional diamond frames. A few tips here: the frame tubes have to be clean and grease-free (that includes spots of road tar), and the bolt threads should be lightly greased. Tighten the fixing bolts, ride a few miles with the seat under load, and re-tighten everything, because the clamps are fitted with plastic bushes that take up a bit of slack as they were ‘run-in’.

Highlighted in black, the support structure is clearly well in front of the child’s weight

Usefully, Junior shares a quick-release system with its smaller cousin the Maxi. This means that children of various sizes can be accommodated on different bikes as and when required. The seat is secured by engaging the nose in a connector bolted to the seat tube and plonking two struts into a pair of brackets secured to the chainstays. This produces a triangulated structure, but unlike a conventional rack, which generally puts a pair of struts under the load, the supporting legs of the Junior are positioned well forward of the seat.When the child sits down, the seat base bends down and back, putting far more strain on the assembly than is really necessary. Fortunately, the mountings and bolts are the types used to secure truck bumpers, but we never really worked out why it had been made this way. Another slightly odd feature is that the manufacturer assumes you’ll be keeping the luggage rack in place under the seat, which seems like a lot of unnecessary weight (a kilogram in our case) when you’ve just bought an expensive child carrier and rack combined.The Junior weighs 4.8kg, even before you’ve mustered that podgy ten-year-old, so you’ll probably want to remove the rack, as we did at first.

The odd geometry, plus the rather woolly plastic joint bushes, make the thing feel a bit insecure. From the sharp end, we’re told this is great news, or as Alexander puts it cheerfully, ‘a seat with suspension’. He’s right up to a point – the Junior does a good job of cushioning road shocks, albeit by the slightly downmarket expedient of bowing and flexing.

Is it safe? Yes, but bear in mind that a child hanging off the side making rude noises at his friends will cause a lot more strain than a heavier child reading a book. Alexander weighs 22kg, which is well within the 32kg limit, but his weight makes the Junior drop by 4mm, plus another 3mm or so on the bumps. So for us, the chair needs to be at least 10mm clear of the mudguard or rack to avoid noisy contact on bumps. A heavier child and/or luggage will need greater clearance unless the seat was deliberately allowed to rest on the rack. In the end, we refitted the rack and allowed it to do just that.

Another area that causes us a slight concern was the lack of leg protection. We’re used to a child seat with molded plastic sides that make it impossible for the child to put a foot anywhere near the wheel. This omission on the Junior was puzzling until we read the instruction leaflet; ‘Fit Bobike foot protection plates if your bicycle is not fitted with dress guards’. Dress guards are rare in the UK, but we’d strongly advise fitting one or the other.

Similarly, the safety harness is a bit wimpy, and rather poorly mounted on the top of the seatback, which will – in any event – fold forward under stress. The front mounting is better, but the buckle may prove a temptation for small inquisitive fingers. The belt also has a tendency to fall off the shoulders, something that can be improved by crossing it over behind the child’s back. With no sides to the chair (again, this is something we’re used to) we’d really want to see a better safety harness. After a fun-packed day chasing granny’s sheep, Alexander usually falls asleep within ten minutes, and a sleepy child will sag forwards, backward or – most unnervingly – sideways. Check out fernco clamp rochester.

Conclusion

We were prompted to look at the Bobike Junior because we were worried about the integrity of a cycle rack for carrying larger children, but we’re not convinced this folding seat does a better or safer job. In some areas, such as the footpegs, it’s massively engineered, but in others, it doesn’t seem man enough for the task. Of course, we have one large child – for larger families juggling awkward logistical problems with several smaller ones, it could be useful, especially if you already have a Bobike Maxi.

The A to B child seat of the future would fit on a standard rack

This design clearly isn’t perfect, but where do child seats go from here? Most ‘sensible’ bicycles have a rack and removing the rack rather narrows your carrying options. So we’d suggest a moulded plastic bucket seat that clamps to the rack, but with extra stays to spread the weight of a child into the frame best English language schools in san diego. We’d also suggest a two-position reclining seatback, both for sleeping children and awkward luggage, but not necessarily folding flat, provided the seat can be fitted and removed in a minute or two. The harness has to be really good – preferably the five-point type.

Heavy and expensive, surely? Not in our experience. We’ve solved the six-year-old problem by putting some extra struts on a basic child seat – the final structure weighing less than 1.8kg. Even if a reclining mechanism doubled the weight, it would still be lighter than the Junior.

Specification

Bobike Junior Child Seat £85 (plus £15 for the MTB kit used on our bike) .Weight 4.8kg (101/2lb) Manufacturer Dremefa BV web www.bobobline.nl mail info@dremefa.nl UK Distributor Amba Marketing tel 01392 840030 mail sales@amba-marketing.com web Amba Marketing

Legal Obligation for Hedge Debris

Hedge cutting in Hardwick Lane © Michael Trolove

“How can a person encourage or force a landowner to meet their legal obligation to clear up hedge debris from public roads?” Robin Sheppard, Cowbridge, South Glamorgan”

The legal obligation on landowners to clear up hedges can be found in section 154 of the Highways Act 1980. As an aside, all references below to hedges also apply in relation to trees and shrubs. Where a hedge overhangs a highway or any other road to which the public has access to so as to: ‘endanger or obstruct the passage of vehicles or pedestrians’, or ‘obstruct or interfere with the view of drivers of vehicles or the light from a public lamp’, or ‘overhangs a highway so as to endanger or obstruct the passage of horse riders’, the local council may, by notice either to the owner of the hedge or to the occupier of the land on which it is growing, require him to within 14 days from the date of service of the notice to cut it so as to remove the cause of the danger, obstruction or interference.

A person aggrieved by any such requirement may appeal to a Magistrates court. Subject to any appeal, if a person on whom a notice is served fails to comply with it within the specified period the council may carry out the work required by the notice and recover the expenses reasonably incurred in so doing from the person in default.

If an ordinary member of the public wishes to make a complaint to the council in order to enforce the obligations of the landowner under the Highways Act 1980, then that person simply needs to call the council to register the complaint.The council will then send a Street Enforcement Officer who will serve the notice on the landowner.

Where the landowner fails to clear up hedge debris from a public road, an aggrieved person may be able to bring a claim for public nuisance. A nuisance can generally be defined as an act or omission which endangers the life, health or property of the public. The nuisance must materially affect a class of people who come within the sphere of the nuisance. It is not necessary to prove that every member of the class has been injured or affected. It is only a civil wrong and actionable as such when a private individual has suffered particular damage over and above the general inconvenience and injury suffered by the public. For example, a punctured tyre caused by the debris.

These days environmental legislation has made this remedy probably less useful than it once was. It does remain useful however where the injured party requires compensatory damages or where the public agency is not prepared to take action. However, enforcement of duties under legislative provisions is for the most part the concern of local authorities and other public agencies. In which case, if a landowner has neglected his duties and failed to clear up debris from his hedge, the first port of call should be the local council who will send round a Street Enforcement Officer who will serve notice on the landowner.

Your legal enquiries are answered by Russell Jones & Walker, Solicitors – the best national firm servicing the needs of individual people, with branches throughout the UK.

A to B 49 – Aug 2005

A to B 48 – Safer Public Transport!

Riding a bicycle is getting easier and more reliable.With puncture-resistant tyres (page 24), drum brakes (page 22), a cargo trailer (page 32), and power-assist (page 27), almost anyone could transfer their family shopping from car to bike.Yet the number doing it in the UK can be counted in thousands (maybe hundreds) rather than millions. Why? We’re partly to blame, because we’re obviously failing to get the message across to ordinary people. But if you were to demonstrate this sort of technology outside your local supermarket, people would wave their hands at the sea of cars and blame ‘road safety’.They’d be right, of course. Bicycles may be easier to use and more reliable than ever before, but the perception is that roads have become dangerous places.Will this trend be reversed? Absolutely no idea, but we’re trying to plant the seeds of a revolution, and once a revolution begins, it’s often unstoppable. If a single TV chef can change attitudes to the way children eat, surely the same can be done for the way we get our food home, or the kids to school?

A to B 48 Contents

Schwalbe Marathon Plus Tyres

Puncture proof? Well, not exactly. As Schwalbe carefully points out, ‘…like everything in the world – this tyre isn’t indestructible. But against the typical tyre killers that everyday cyclists encounter, like pieces of broken glass, flints and small thorns, it’s the best protection we could devise…’

The secret is in the ‘SmartGuard’ layer under the tread. Unlike kevlar and other high-tech reinforcement bands that resist tyre penetration, SmartGuard is a thick layer of soft rubber that lets them in, then smothers ‘em. Some nasties just bounce straight out, while others begin to penetrate, but are defeated by the sheer depth of rubber. To reach the inner tube, a sharp pointy thing needs to be rigid and 6 – 8mm long, which is enough to see off all but the most humungous thorns, nails and glass shards.

…the Marathon Plus feels like an ordinary, if slightly frumpy tyre…

The downside is a tyre weighing 740g on our 406mm samples (more than a kilogram for some bigger tyres).That’s about 350g heavier than a typical 406mm tyre, and a massive 500g heavier than the lightweight Primos we were replacing. In other words, you could be looking at a weight penalty of up to a kilogram for the pair. With a thick layer of rubber around the tyre, you might expect rolling resistance to be high too, but it’s actually remarkably good. We’ve tried all kinds of ‘puncture-proof’ technology over the years, and most added enough rolling resistance to feel lethargic and slow on the road. But the Marathon Plus feels like an ordinary, if slightly frumpy tyre, and the figures confirm this. Roll-down speed on our test hill was between 14mph and 15mph, which is broadly typical for a 20-inch tyre. In fact, our best figures were right up with the narrow, high-pressure tread- free jobs. Having said that, the Marathon Plus seems to be affected by temperature more than most, and the figures vary a great deal. Most of our tests were carried out at 15C but at 10C, the tyres are 1mph slower, which suggests there could be a real penalty to Grey pay on frosty mornings. blobs are actual We’ll have to wait a few results at around 15C. The months to find out, but in black blobs are at lower temperatures most circumstances, most people would be unaware of the difference.

Puncture-proof?

When we first saw the technology on display at a bike show, Schwalbe was encouraging punters to stick pins in the tyres. So in an A to B first, we put down a row of five drawing pins, accelerated towards them, and ran straight over the lot. All the pins stuck in the front tyre and stayed there, but when we prised them out, the air stayed put. It’s difficult to be scientific with tyres, which are notoriously fickle in the way they fail, but for the time being, we’re thoroughly convinced – no ordinary tyre could have done that.

Grey blobs are actual results at around 15C. The black blobs are at lower temperatures.

Conclusion

…Have we accidentally created the most reliable bicycle in the world?

We’ll keep using the Marathon Plus to see how things progress, but on a short acquaintance, we’re impressed. A near one kilogram weight penalty would not suit a bike that gets carried regularly, but if punctures are your biggest fear, these tyres will give some peace of mind, although at £23.99 each, they’re quite a pricey option.The Marathon Plus is available in all the common sizes, down to 47-406mm (20-inch). Schwalbe is planning to release a 349mm (16-inch) version soon, bringing this sort of puncture technology to compact folding bikes too. Performance gets a bit trickier to predict in the small sizes, but if the 20-inch tyre is anything to go by, performance should not be greatly affected.

Incidentally, we tested the tyres on our ancient Heinzmann- assisted Cresswell (now Pashley) Fold-It, currently giving granny-with-train (don’t ask) some gentle assistance to the shops. Have we accidentally created the most reliable bicycle in the world? Simple rugged steel frame, drum brakes (rear only on our example), puncture-resistant tyres and a bullet-proof SRAM 7-speed hub. The only weak points we can see are the cranks and chain, and if they break, the bike still has a front-mounted Heinzmann motor to get you home… If all else fails, it will fold small enough for the train.

Schwalbe Marathon Plus £23.99 each from good cycle shops. Manufacturer Ralf Bohle GmbH web www.schwalbe.com. UK distributor Bohle UK tel 01743 874496 mail info@bohle.co.uk

A to B 48 – June 2005

Dahon Roo EL

ORIGINAL ARTICLE FROM JUNE 2005. The Roo EL went out of production some years ago. Dahon has since tried other variants based on different power systems and bikes, but none has been very successful

Folding electric bicycles are not everyone’s cup of tea, but where other crystal balls reveal recumbent bicycles, or perhaps four-wheel-drives, according to taste, our future scenario includes neatly folded electric bikes, speeding to the hilly suburbs on fast silent electric trains (this isn’t the UK, obviously), and hordes of smiling commuters whining gently home. A light, power-assisted folding bike would certainly widen the appeal of alternative transport.

…is the Sparc good enough to snatch the development lead?

The problem is that the current machines are either big and heavy or small and feeble. If they’re heavy (believe us, we’ve been there) they will never get folded, and if they’re too weak, you might just as well ride a conventional bicycle.There are numerous heavyweights around, but only two serious lightweight contenders: the Panasonic WiLL tested in A to B 46, and the Dahon Roo EL tested in A to B 29. At 17.3kg, the Panasonic was marginally the lightest, and marginally the cheapest (if that isn’t a contradiction with something costing £1,200).At the time, it offered the greatest range: a paltry 10.8 miles. The Roo managed only 9.9 miles then, but its Sparc motor has been upgraded and improved for 2005 – is it good enough to snatch the development lead?

On the Road

Back in April 2002, we tried the original Roo EL, fitted with the then new, and terribly clever SRAM Sparc hub, providing five conventional gears and electric-assist, in one relatively compact package. It looked very shiny and high-tech, but our excitement was tempered by the sad little lead-acid battery and twin motors that sounded to be (and indeed were) borrowed from electric drill technology.

Top assisted speed was 14mph in theory, but the weak motors meant pathetic hill-climbing and assistance that more or less dissolved above 10mph, giving a lethargic average speed of 10.8mph. Range, from the tiddly battery, was just ten miles. In other words, you really were better off with a conventional Dahon and the near-thousand pound surplus in the bank, earning lovely interest.

Superficially, little has changed on the 2005 model, but the battery has been upgraded to NiMH (already yesterday’s technology in China) and the motors and electronics have been revised to give a bit more poke – in other words, the very changes we suggested three years ago.

First to the battery.This is the same physical size, sitting unobtrusively on the front of the rack like its predecessor, but it’s a little lighter at 2.8kg, against 3kg for last season’s model.That ought to make the machine a couple of hundred grams lighter, but extra equipment means the package now weighs 200g more than before, at 18.1kg.

…those with weak legs and/or mountains to climb should look elsewhere…

The good news (there had to be some) is that this slightly heavier EL goes faster, and much, much further.The new battery has a capacity of 134Wh, some 60% more than its predecessor, but the new technology and improved gearing have helped to double the range to 20 miles.

Under power, the Sparc produces a gentle whine that’s odd enough to attract some attention, but it’s quieter than before.The system works by sensing pedal movement, and squirting a bit of assistance into the hub until either (a) you stop pedalling, or (b) road speed exceeds 14mph.The disadvantage is that the pedals need to turn a bit before the motor cuts in, but thereafter, you’re very much in control.You have to keep turning the pedals, but you don’t have to do any work, because the machine is sensing pedal movement, not your power output. Peak power is up from 120 watts to 170, and the Sparc now maintains that output over a broader range of speed. At a walking pace, it still feels a bit weak, but above 10mph the turbo cuts in and it gets quite chirpy, before fading away from 13mph, and cutting abruptly at 14mph.That might sound a bit disappointing, but in practice, this very limited degree of assistance has been carefully targeted. Provided the hills aren’t too steep, the Roo nips along well, the motors waiting in reserve until speed drops below 14mph, then cutting in to give gentle, steady assistance. Unfortunately, the motors are linked to wheel speed rather than pedal speed, so when you reach a proper hill and begin to change down through the gears, they run slower and less efficiently.The steeper the hill, the worse the effect.

Hills of about 10% are dispatched easily enough, and we chugged gently up a gradient of 17%, thanks in part to the Roo’s low 32″ bottom gear. But those with weak legs and/or mountains to climb should really look elsewhere. If you don’t put any effort in at all, the little motors do a manful job on the flat, but the poor low speed performance limits the maximum gradient to about 5% (1 in 20).

There’s an Eco setting too. Back in 2002, we dismissed this as a complete waste of space, but it actually feels as if it’s doing something now, offering 170 watts at low speed, the power falling gently to cut out at 10mph.

Weight versus range.The 2005 Roo EL is the first folding electric bike to become firmly viable. Nothing comes close for now, but weight of 13kg and a 20 mile range are already practicable.

The Sparc battery fits neatly in front of the rack. It is easy to remove, or can be charged through a plug underneath

The fuel gauge is a 3-LED array on the handlebars, which rather depressingly loses one light at 2.8 miles, two at 7 miles, and the whole lot at 11.8 miles. But there’s actually another eight miles in reserve, because the Roo EL presses on to about 17 miles, then increasingly slowly to a final range of 20 miles at an average of 12.3mph. Not exactly a thrill a minute, but most people could lift the EL off a train or out of a car boot, unfold it and ride 20 miles into the hills at a good pace. OK, that average speed is nearly 1mph slower than the Giant Lafree, but the Roo EL is the first bike to narrowly beat the Giant’s 6.8Watt/hour per mile fuel economy record, taking the honours with 6.7Wh per mile.That’s around 1,500mpg, so you needn’t be too concerned that the Roo EL is guzzling up the world’s energy resources.

None of this sounds very exciting, but it’s a breakthrough of sorts. Dahon, incidentally, claims a range of 31 miles, which is achievable, but only with very limited use of the power-assist.

By our reckoning, the claimed 3 hour 40 minute charge time is a bit optimistic. Our battery took 4 hours 20 minutes to reach an 85% charge, before topping up at a lower rate for another couple of hours, and a trickle charge thereafter.With this gentle, three- stage charge, and a motor that’s relatively kind, we would expect the battery to have a good long life.

…At 18.1kg, it shouldn’t give you a hernia, provided you don’t carry it too far…

If you run the battery down, or just feel like doing all the work, pedal gearing is slightly higher – a more practical 32″ to 81″.This small change makes a big difference in terms of rideability, and that’s the magic of a bike like this – the electric bits add no friction and very little extra weight, so it can be pedalled just like any other 20- inch Dahon. The sporty- looking Schwalbe Marathon 15 Slicks proved slightly disappointing in terms of rolling resistance, achieving only 13.7mph on our test hill.Yes, that’s right, they’re slower than Schwalbe’s chunky puncture-proof jobs on page 24). Quite why, we have no idea.

Sparc power output (solid line) compared to the previous model (dotted lines). Although still quite weak, the unit is much more practical.

Folding

This is essentially a standard Dahon folding bike.The handlebars drop down, and the frame folds midway along, sandwiching the bars between the two frame halves. Like most 20-inch Dahons, the Roo come with a little magnet and plate to hold the folded bike together, but in our experience, it’s only possible to get the plates to touch by leaving the handlebars up. On the EL, the width problem is compounded by the large Sparc control switch, which fouls the frame. Dahon claims folded dimensions of 81cm long, which we’d agree with, 56cm tall, which can only be done by removing the seat pillar, and 28cm in width, which is a ridiculous claim, or at least, we’d like to see how they do it, because we can’t.These dimensions would give a folded volume of 127 litres or 4.5cu ft, which just isn’t attainable.

Folding is easy. Note that the frame halves do not come together well – a common Dahon weakness

More realistically, we made a package of 80cm in length, 65.5cm in height and no less than 40cm wide: 210 litres, or 7.5cu ft. That’s still the most compact folding electric bike we’ve seen, and smaller than average in non-assisted folding bike terms.The Roo EL is heavier than a conventional bike, but at 18.1kg (40lb) it shouldn’t give you a hernia, provided you don’t carry it too far.

Equipment

Well, of course, you get those five quality German hub gears.The SRAM hub has a rather slow and ponderous change compared to its Sturmey Archer rival, but it’s quiet, reliable and never seems to miss a gear.

Elsewhere, the Roo is well-equipped.The powerful V-brakes are worked by low- friction Jagwire cables, there’s a solid-looking alloy centre stand,Tranz X suspension seat post, a decent rack, mudguards, and a neat smoked-plastic chainguard.The Roo also comes with an unbranded, but effective LED rear light, but oddly, no light at the front.

Height adjustment is reasonable, the saddle going up to 104cm (previously 102cm), and the handlebars adjustable from 95-110cm.When we tried the bike in 2002, the bars were of the briefly fashionable non-adjustable kind, but Dahon has presumably been swayed by customer reaction and put the telescopic bit back in.We’d say that height- adjustable bars just aren’t worth the weight and complication.

Conclusion

At £1199, the Dahon Roo EL is expensive – hardly surprising when the components start life in Germany and China, then travelled via Taiwan to the UK, where a distributor adds a margin, and a UK agent adds another. In the States, you can pick one up for the equivalent of £700, and in the UK and Europe they are sometimes discounted to £1,000 or less, so it’s worth shopping around.

Price aside, the Roo EL has developed into a great little bike. And as the chart on page 18 demonstrates, it has moved overnight from the bottom of the league table to the top. It’s the second lightest machine on the market and – now that the Brompton/Zap has been withdrawn – it offers the best range too.

Specification – Dahon Roo EL

Dahon Roo EL £1,199. Weight bike 15.3kg battery 2.8kg total 18.1kg (40lb) . Gears SRAM Sparc Gear ratios 32″ 40″ 51″ 66″ 81″ . Battery NiMH . Capacity 134Wh . Range 20 miles85% charge 4hrs 20 mins . Spare battery £125 . Running costs 7.8p/mile . Fuel consumption battery only 6.7Wh/mile battery & charger 10.9Wh/mile . UK distributor Fisher Outdoor Leisure tel 0208 805 3088 mail sales@fisheroutdoor.co.uk

Thanks to Electric Bikes Direct for loan of the test bike: www.electricbikesdirect.co.uk

A to B 48 – Jun 2005

A to B 48 Blog, June 2005 – Central Trains, Brompton

FIRST PUBLISHED June 2005
2005 Brompton Launch, Central Trains, Brigitte Bardot & Solex

Catching a train in older, simpler days, one generally purchased – then referred to – a ‘timetable’, before travelling to the station and waiting for something to happen. With today’s technology, the process is altogether easier!

The Mole provides as an example a recent harrowing journey from Bilbrook station on the Central Trains network. Like all wise travellers, the Mole checks on the internet 24 hours in advance, gaining an essential picture of the latest running information. Check One proceeds smoothly enough, revealing that – barring staff defects, locomotive on strike, or the wrong kind of snow – a train is booked to arrive at 10.23am on the appointed day. Journeying to the station in good time, one makes the second essential check, confirming on the old-fashioned paper timetable that Check One had yielded reliable information. All goes well; the 10.23 does exist.

Check Three causes some disquiet amongst regular travellers: the automated voice on the push-button machine-thing claims that the next train will arrive at 11.23, but we have yet to see the 10.23. Check Four involves hasty use of a mobile phone, and a call to the central rail enquiry number. These days, one’s call is generally routed to a pleasant young lady in foreign parts, who is generally obliged to communicate back to the UK to find where the train has gone, and indeed, what country it is in. But on this occasion the apparatus responds with a friendly West Midlands accent. ‘Is the 10.23 running today?’ ‘It’s on its way sir, and running on time!’ Fantastic news; the automated thing must be malfunctioning.

At 10.22, the 10.23 appears from Codsall, causing much relieved shuffling on the platform… then proceeds to run straight through the station.

After enduring 40 sweaty minutes on an overcrowded bus, followed by two missed connections and a late arrival at Bogworthy Junction, one eventually gleans the truth from the Central Trains press office. It seems Central has recently inherited some trains that are too long for certain platforms. Unable to say in advance when or where these trains might be rostered – and banned from stopping them at short platforms by the Health & Safety Executive – the drivers are instructed to run through without stopping. Railway companies are allowed to follow the logical course and welcome customers through the guard’s door, but only if arrangements have been made in advance with the Health & Safety Executive, signed in triplicate, and so on and so forth.

Thus, where we might have trooped past the guard in perfect safety, a dozen of us are obliged to run up the road, leap on a bus and run into another station at the other end. Even ignoring the possibility of some poor old soul suffering a heart attack, or being murdered by an angry spouse, this must surely be a more dangerous scenario? One suspects this is all part of the modern trend towards what is colloquially known as ‘arse covering’, rather as small boys once padded their trousers before visiting the headmaster. On railway property, one’s every move is scrutinised for risk, and the best way to reduce that risk is to keep passengers well away from trains. How one deals with risk outside the station is one’s own affair. Speaking of risk, bicycle launches are a bit thin on the ground these days, primarily because we don’t have an industry any more, so the Mole was greatly thrilled to make the trip from Bogworthy to Paddington for the 2005 Brompton launch at the London Transport Museum.

Brompton’s Will Butler-Adams getting very excited about something, or perhaps recounting a fishing trip

atob48-jane-henshaw-caroline-moore-brompton

Alexander & Jane Henshaw discuss shoulder bags with Caroline Moore

atob48-mike-burrows-richard-ballantine-brompton

Mike Burrows (L) and Richard Ballantine (R): ‘Nasty stuff to machine, titanium’.

The venue proved to be an extremely jolly choice, as the exhibits – mostly large and red – made an entertaining backdrop, although one wonders how they get the red wine stains out of Routemaster buses. Brompton has revamped its model range with a positive cornucopia of options (up to 70 billion permutations according to some wag at the launch) where previously five were considered more than adequate. For the innocent punter looking for something economical to ride to work, the main change is that red or green paint, previously thrown in gratis, now costs an extra sixty quid. For eighty quid you can have a bicycle without any paint at all, which doesn’t sound like progress, but will no doubt attract eager buyers.

The real thrust, of course, isn’t in humble green bicycles for bird- watching types, but a brash new range, rebranded with sharp logos and the sort of pastel shades normally reserved for night clubs and similar establishments.The new bikes – be-jewelled with titanium thrunk- washers and other priceless technology – will be aimed at young people, which in bicycling terms means one’s children or even grandchildren – a brave move indeed.

This sort of thing is essential to prevent bicycling from dying out altogether. As Darwin might have observed, if folding bicycles are purchased only by those beyond child-bearing age, the folding bike gene is as doomed as – for example – the MG/Rover gene.

The Brompton launch was characterised more by the people who were not there, than by those who were. The general election hadn’t helped: diminutive transport minister Charlotte Atkins MP had been booked to deliver a few carefully chosen pro-bicycle words, but pulled out, presumably warned off by the spin-meisters that the Government had pulled the financial plug on Britain’s last volume car-maker.

Another no-show was keen Brompton rider and chairman of Shell, Lord Oxburgh. One assumes the top man at one of the world’s biggest oil companies thought better of endorsing a folding bicycle as it was announced that most of the world’s oil reserves had been turned into CO2.

So for a number of political and economic reasons, the launch was populated by the usual suspects.The entire A to B team made an appearance, with Jane Henshaw sporting an off-the shoulder Brompton tyre bag, and young Alexander spending eight hours hopping on and off the exhibits, before being retrieved with minutes to spare for the last train home. Peter Eland of Velovision was very much in evidence too, but the rest of the cycling media seems to have stayed away – odd, given that this was a major launch by a British company building bicycles in the UK. Whether or not Brompton is now the largest British cycle manufacturer (as opposed to distributor) is a matter for debate.

Andrew Ritchie addressing the man (and woman) on the Chingford omnibus

Andrew Ritchie of Brompton announced that his company certainly was the biggest, if one excluded the concern ‘that builds a few specialist machines’, thus neatly writing off Pashley Cycles in a few well-chosen words.

Pashley had failed to attend the festivities, as indeed had Doctor Moulton, who might at least have sent his nephew Shaun, generally kept in reserve for less prestigious events. Indeed, amongst Brompton’s folding bike competitors, only Mark Bickerton of Dahon and Grahame Herbert, designer of the Airframe, made an appearance. Engineers were well represented, with the legendary Mike Burrows taking a keen interest in the new titanium frame parts. ‘Why haven’t they made it entirely of titanium?’ asks Mike in a rhetorical sort of way. ‘Because they haven’t found a way to engineer the hinge in titanium, that’s why!’ ‘Nasty stuff to machine, titanium.’ Well, there’s a challenge. A week or so later, Giant launched its 2005 bikes at a hotel complex just off the M6 toll motorway which sounded less convenient for those arriving by bicycle.

Building on the success of the elegant Lafree, Giant has expanded its electric range.The Lafree sees all sorts of changes for 2005, principally that it will be called something different, which sounds an odd way to build on marketing success. Confident at last that electric bikes have become respectable, Giant has dropped the Lafree ‘brand’, rebadging the electric machines as Giants. A seemingly insignificant piece of badge-engineering, but indicative of a tidal shift in attitudes.

Brigitte Bardot and Solex

Speaking of badges, it seems the Solex cyclemotor has made another comeback, this time in it’s homeland of France, after abortive manufacture in all sorts of places.These friction-drive devices enabled the impecunious to create a motorcycle out of a bicycle, before the likes of the Lafree and budget Chinese scooters made such things redundant.

For legal reasons, the new machines are called ‘Black ‘n Roll’, and in an odd reversal, 65% of the content is shipped from China, where such machines are now banned (hence the glut of electric bicycles), and despite the limited local content, the new Solex is officially Fabrique en France. Diligent research has unearthed photographs of Solex er, models, young and old.Whether today’s model has been instructed to strike a similar pose to Ms Bardot is unclear, but an entire thesis could be written on the subtle differences between the two images. Sadly, one has neither the time nor the inclination, other than to add that the 2005 model has been upgraded to full Euro- standards with electronic ignition, a catalytic converter and whisper-quiet exhaust. The engine, on the other hand, looks much the same.

Ezee Sprint 7-Speed

Superficially similar to early bikes, the 7- speed has lower, flatter handlebars, more rugged electronics, improved lights and stand, and a rack bungee

Back in June 2003 we tried – and were quite impressed by – an electric bike from China, called the Ezee Forza.The prototype was a bit rough round the edges, but it was reasonably light, smooth, quiet, long-legged and fast. It wasn’t very pretty, and a few things fell off, but we loved it.The Ezee magic was a combination of a lightish and rideable bicycle providing assistance up to 18 or even 19mph – fast enough to overhaul the more sedate kind of moped. Not everyone’s cup of tea, but a completely new sensation for those used to bicycles, or indeed mopeds. On the Ezee you rode fast, and you put in plenty of effort, because pedalling + assistance gave stomping performance.

Unfortunately, 19mph is illegal in Europe, and as most of the sales have been in Europe, the production bike (known as the Sprint) has been detuned. Or at least, we’re told it has, but if our test bike is representative, it remains a speedy beast. Put it this way, it won’t quite see off a moped, but at 15mph there’s a bit in reserve, if you get our drift squire? We’ll say no more.

Whatever the top speed might be, the basic 3-speed Sprint has been joined by a top- end model incorporating a few detail design changes: principally a Nexus 7-speed hub. Has this mature version lost the Ezee magic?

Sprint 7

…power is on the left handlebar and the gear changer on the right… Dead easy…

Apart from the new hub gears, the changes are minor, but useful nonetheless.The centre stand is smaller and lighter, and plastic mudguards save a bit more weight and clear up a few rattles. In both our previous tests we criticised the dynamo lights, but the new machine has a better front lamp and a Sanyo bottle dynamo, which seem to do the business. Elsewhere, the bike has mudflaps front and rear and a better Cateye speedometer (without average speed, unfortunately, and more difficult to see on the new swept-back handlebars).We’re not sure about the revised Kenda tyres, which are knobbly all over, where the old kind were smooth in the middle – essential for low rolling resistance. Like its predecessor, the new Ezee comes with a cheap but effective track pump, plus a range of fittings (including the kind that pumps up footballs, but no Presta adaptor) and a substantial cable lock – nice touches.

Ezee Sprint Electric Bike Nexus 7-speed hub

The Nexus 7-speed hub is reliable and easy to use. Note the roller brake on the left side

Ezee Sprint 7-speed electric bike headlight

The latest headlight really works, thanks partly to the Sanyo dynamo. Suspension forks, V-brakes and slightly knobbly tyres make up the package

The key changes (for the UK, at least) are removal of the pedal- movement sensor, making the Sprint a nice simple twistgrip- controlled E-bike, which it should have been all along.The power control is on the left handlebar and the 3- or 7-speed changer on the right, according to model. Dead easy.The new bikes also have a more sensitive battery meter, which flicks back and forth rather worryingly as you ride. In practice, the gauge can reveal quite a bit about the battery condition, but it takes some getting used to. In broad terms, you’ll be in the yellow zone after 15 miles, and the red zone after 20. It’s also a useful economy aid, flashing from green to yellow, or yellow to red when the battery is under strain. Backing off the throttle can make quite a difference to range, without seriously affecting overall speed.

Until now, the Sprint came with three gears of 46″, 62″ and 85″, ratios that would be a bit high on a non-assisted bike, but are more or less ideal on a powered one.The new gears span the range 39″ to 96″ in much closer steps.We’ve usually got some sort of grumble with gear ratios, but in this case, they’re absolutely spot on. Hill climbing depends on your weight and how much energy you put in, but we found that 1st gear helped the bike vault up hills of around 17% (1:6), 4th saw it safely up gradients of 12% (1:8), and 7th topped out at 20-something miles per hour, enabling you to spin down the other side too. This sort of bicycle will never stomp up hills like the crank-driven Giant Lafree, but the 7- speed Sprint easily restarts on a 12.5% (1:8) gradient, which should be plenty for most people. If you tow a trailer and/or live in Cornwall or bits of Cumbria, you might benefit from a larger rear sprocket and lower gears, but for everyone else, it’s perfect.

At 15.9mph on our hilly test route, average speed is a shade lower than the 16.1mph we recorded with the 3-speed, but in challenging country it still counts amongst the most blistering performances we’ve seen. Range is 27 miles – more or less identical to the figure we achieved in August 2004, allowing for some gusty headwinds.That’s not quite in the Powabyke class, but the Sprint weighs only 29.4kg, making it altogether more manageable and rideable. Charging is quick and efficient; the little fan-cooled charger achieving a 90% charge in 31/2 hours, although you’d be wise to allow a bit more in practice.

…in challenging country it’s still one of the most blistering performances we’ve seen…

Incidentally, several people (including the importer) have had problems getting the same range as us. Stop-start city traffic will have a deleterious effect, as will heavy- handed use of the throttle, but pedal effort is important too.These bikes do not work well if treated like motorcycles – for best results think of the motor as an aid to pedalling, not a replacement.

It just so happens that Alexander’s headmaster Mr Thomas accepted a challenge to cycle to work while we were testing the Sprint. His daily 23-mile round trip is normally a car journey, and although it’s quite do-able by conventional bike, we suggested going electric for the week, which Mr Thomas was keen to try... As we might have guessed, the dinner-plate saddle did not meet with head- masterly approval, and we replaced it with a standard bike saddle. Even then, the stem was at the top of its range (Mr Thomas is six foot plus - all headmasters are tall, it’s in the genes). Otherwise, the week went without incident, the journey taking 43 to 45 minutes, against 55 minutes on a conventional racing bike. The Sprint battery successfully tackled the daily mileage, charging each night. Would our local headmaster buy one? Well, probably not, but Mrs Thomas thought an electric bike might get her back on two wheels, and the vicar was quite interested...

Our only real criticism of the 2005 Sprint is that awful dinner- plate saddle, which does nothing to enhance pedalling efficiency. Somebody, somewhere must love it, but for anyone used to a conventional bicycle saddle, it’s truly horrid.We should also point out that front tyre removal is tricky, because part of the wiring loom has to come off too.The Kenda tyres are tough and relatively puncture-free, but if you’re nervous about this, a Schwalbe Marathon Plus would make a good investment! We’ve only had to mend two punctures in two years on our own Sprint, and neither required tyre removal.Thank goodness.

Conclusion

We are always disappointed to hear comments of the, ‘that’ll suit me in twenty years’, or ‘isn’t it cheating?’ variety.We’re not quite ready for pensions, and we’re not unfit, but living without a car, in a very car-biased world, we find plenty of uses for our Ezee Sprint. A powerful, long-range electric-assist bike makes light work of towing a trailer full of shopping, or venturing out on the cross-country haul to granny’s house. For this sort of work, the 7-speed Sprint is one of the best options around – a fantastic hill-leveller and practical child carrier.

The 7-speed costs £895.There’s a surprising amount of rubbish around at this price, of which the less said the better.The only real competition comes from the Giant Lafree, which is a little more expensive (£1,099 in 4- speed, suspension trim), but with a definite edge in terms of weight, quality and reliability.

We’re impressed that Ezee appears to have taken on board most of our original criticisms and refined the bike with some care, whilst keeping enough oomph for those who want it.The Sprint is still quite heavy against the class-leading Lafree, but a lighter, longer-range Li-ion battery pack is on its way, and this should be retrofitable to existing bikes. As for reliability, these are early days, but the Sprint looks to us like a de-bugged machine.

Specification

Ezee Sprint £895. Weight Bicycle 23.8kg Battery 5.6kg Total 29.4kg (65lb) . Gears Nexus 7-spd hub . Ratios 39″ – 96″ . Batteries NiMH . Capacity 324Wh . Max range 27 milesFull charge 31/2 hours . Fuel consumption battery only 12Wh/mile battery & charger 17Wh/mile Running costs 6.7p/mile . Manufacturer Shanghai Ezee Kinetic web www.ezeebike.com UK distributor 50Cycles web www.50cycles.com tel 01223 844 166 mail tim@50cycles.com

Brompton Hub Brake

These days (touch wood) the best folding bikes are pretty reliable, clocking up a similar mileage between failures to a conventional bicycle, but wheel rims and spokes can still cause problems on hard-used small-wheelers.We’re not sure why the spokes suffer, but most of the problems with rims are caused by the brakes. A 16-inch rim has little more than half the braking area of a big wheel, so it can overheat on long descents, and will wear out at least twice as fast.Worn rims can be dangerous, but even if they don’t disintegrate, rebuilding a wheel can be a time-consuming and/or expensive process.

Internal drum brakes are an obvious solution, and they’re fairly easy to fit to most folders if you have the time and the inclination. But you won’t get one on the Brompton, which has a slender 72mm front ‘drop-out’ width.Various attempts have been made to slice drum brakes down to size over the years, but there were always technical problems.The answer came – as it so often does – with a bit of lateral thinking.The Australian-made Greenspeed recumbent trike uses Sturmey Archer drums, and Greenspeed remanufactures the hubs to reduce the 100mm width.When the company took on the sideline of distributing the Brompton last year, it occurred to proprietor Ian Sims that with a little more machining, the Sturmey brake might be squeezed onto the Brompton.

Bred on the antipodean HPV racing circuits, the Greenspeed/Sturmey hub is substantially stronger than a normal Brompton wheel, with oversize 12mm ball-bearings (normal Sturmey bearings are 10mm) and 36 instead of 28 spokes.The result is a rigid, maintenance-free front wheel and consistent braking in all weather conditions.

Fitting & Removal

Very easy.The hub brake comes with a long torque reaction arm that slots into a clamp placed around the fork. It’s then just a case of refitting the cable. Brompton cable runs are precisely measured and the cables can get in a tangle if misrouted or misaligned. It’s essential that the front brake cable runs in front of the other two and down through the cable gatherer brazed to the right side of the frame. If it doesn’t, something will get trapped when the bike is folded. By pure chance, the standard outer cable is about the right length for the Sturmey hub, but a longer inner cable will be needed.

Drum brakes are generally a heavy option, but this narrow hub isn’t too bad, giving a total wheel weight of 1,120g. Subtract the weight of the old wheel and caliper brake, and the net gain is only 385g, or just under a pound, which is quite acceptable for a stronger and more reliable wheel.

With the flange removed, the off-side spokes anchor directly into the drum

Removing the wheel is particularly easy – the axle nuts come off as usual, the cable slips off and the torque arm slides out.The operation is cleaner too, because the rim isn’t caked in the usual slippery mixture of oil and aluminium powder, and there’s no caliper to trap mud and debris. Another advantage of doing away with the caliper is that the tyre can be inflated before you refit it – useful if you’re struggling to repair a puncture.

On the road, the first impression is of near silence compared to a caliper or V-brake. The drum is powerful, but progressive. A gentle squeeze on the lever gives a strong stop of 0.3G – 0.4G, but grab the lever in panic and brake force rarely exceeds 0.56G. In practice, this means that a drum brake is less likely to send you flying over the handlebars than a fiercer and less forgiving V-brake.The drum will also be unaffected by water, oil or mud. In extreme conditions it gets warm, but there’s no risk to the tyre, and it soon cools down. The rear caliper brake is still grinding away at the rim, of course, but we found we tended to make more use of the front drum, so rear brake life should be slightly extended too. When you come to fold the bike, the cleaner front wheel is very welcome.

Two small provisos: if you ride through a deep flood, the drum brake could be out of action for some time, and ours had a slight judder, possibly a side-effect of the adaptation.

Conclusion

The Greenspeed hub seems good value for money, and in terms of servicing, it should prove to be fit-and-forget technology. If your Brompton has a tendency to eat rims, spokes or bearings, a drum brake upgrade will pay for itself fairly quickly, even ignoring the hassle of breakdowns and the danger of exploding rims. It also looks jolly nice, should aesthetics influence you in any way.

Brompton front drum conversion

Price £80 (hub only), or £120 (entire kit), plus £10 to £15 postage outside Australia. Greenspeed Recumbent Trikes tel +61 3 9758 5088 mail ian@greenspeed.com.au

UK Distributor: Westcountry Recumbents

A to B 48 – June 2005

Commuting

After buying two Bromptons I found myself with rather a lot of bikes, and was able to compare their performance on my regular commute on the Atlantic coast of France. I live in Hennebont and commute through the town of Lorient to my office on an industrial estate ten kilometres to the west. My conclusions aren’t rigorously scientific, but I have corrected for differences in cycle computers and only included simple rides on the same route, without detours for shopping etc. I have also excluded exceptional weather conditions (strong winds, ice, etc) and night rides (some bikes have dynamos and some battery lights).

Most of my data comes from this daily commuting round trip of 42.6km (27 miles), mainly on rural roads. Because Lorient is on a river estuary and there are not many bridges over the river Scorff, there are few routes to choose from.The total climb for the round trip is about 500 metres (1,600 feet) with one steep hill, so single-speed bikes are not a good option. After 3,391 kilometres, I can report that the speed variation between the fastest and slowest bikes is only 3.7mph.

On this commute, I usually cycle both ways during the summer, but I tend to use the Brompton plus the train in winter to avoid a long ride in the dark.When cycling, I allow about an hour each way. By comparison, the train plus Brompton takes five minutes to the station, five minutes waiting, 17 minutes on the train and ten minutes riding to work, making 37 minutes in total. As the evening train doesn’t stop at Gestel, my nearest station, I have to ride to Lorient, increasing the journey to about 47 minutes. It is possible to get to work by bus, but that takes 90 minutes each way.When I get a lift by car, the trip takes about 30 minutes on back roads – the quickest car route is on the motorway, but this is risky because there are frequent jams.The best ‘commute’ of all is working from home using my ADSL router to transmit documents over the net!

Research

Martin's experience will be familiar to commuters worldwide. The motorway is fast, but can be unreliable, train/bike comes second, but needs careful planning, bike is slower but more predictable, the bus is slowest of all.

From my research, the four factors that most affect bike speed are riding position, gear type (hub or derailleur), wheel size and tyre type. Apart from the huge difference between road-going Martin’s experience will be familiar to commuters worldwide.The motorway is fast, but can be unreliable, train/bike comes second, but needs careful slicks and off-road planning, bike is slower but more predictable, the bus is slowest of all knobblies (bikes 3 and 10 are the same!) I have not investigated the difference between different brands of tyre, but this is probably significant.Wind resistance is important too.The two fastest bikes had aerodynamic drop handlebars, and one of these was the Moulton, which proved 2.5km/hr slower with ordinary straight bars. Wheel size is less important, but small wheels would seem to be slightly less efficient. Comparing bikes in positions 1 and 2, the Moulton is a little slower, but it is also heavier, has fewer gears and a smaller top gear sprocket (11-tooth). Another interesting pair are the Roadster in position 4 and the SP Brompton in position 8. Both share the same hub gear, but the Brompton is noticeably slower. Hub gears seem to be slightly less efficient, although bikes ranked 3 and 4 achieved very similar results, with few differences, except for the gears. On the other hand, the two Moultons (one with 7-speed derailleur and the other with 7-speed Nexus hub) performed very differently.The Nexus was very inefficient when new, so after a few hundred kilometres I took it apart and greased it, but it’s still noticeably less efficient than the oil-lubricated Sturmey S5-2.

…I use one of the Bromptons when there’s a likelihood of other transport being involved…

Best Commuter?

Which bike gets the most use? Neither of the fastest two.Though the derailleur- geared Moulton is fast and comfortable, it is only suitable for good roads and fine weather, or the derailleur will pick up muck too quickly. I tend to choose one of the Bromptons when there is a likelihood of other transport being involved, and the roadster gets a lot of use because it can carry a lot of shopping and the wide tyres enable me to explore paths and tracks. But the bike I used most in 2004 was the Moulton with the Nexus 7-speed hub – it also has a rear roller brake and hub dynamo that work in all weathers, and I appreciate the comfort from the suspension.

Editor’s Note: If, like Martin, you are expecting to commute daily, don’t be scared off by small wheels. They really do make very little difference, and a smaller, lighter folding bike can be a more flexible solution. Even on this long ride, the Moulton is only three minutes slower than the conventional lightweight racing bike. On a shorter more urban commute, the tables could be reversed.Tyre type and quality are more influential than tyre diameter. So don’t choose an MTB! The gear system is important too, and Martin’s figures seem to confirm that the Nexus 7-speed hub is relatively inefficient, the Sturmey Archer 5-speed less so, and the Brompton/SRAM 3

A to B 48 – June 2005

Ergon MR-1 Race Grips

Fitted to a Brompton. Note the scuffing on the top edge of this (left) grip - it can touch the ground when the bike is folded

The problem with adapting bicycles is that almost everything you do adds weight. A few seemingly practical extras can make a folding bike almost unliftable, so it pays to be a bit selective. Replace your old handlebar grips with Ergo Race grips, and the penalty will be in the region of 200g. Not much? Not on its own perhaps, but this is a slippery slope. Are they worth the weight and expense?

The grips incorporate flat plates that spread the load over the meatier parts of the palm.The grips come in ladies and gents sizes, and two styles, with or without miniature bar-ends.The basic palm-support jobs (FP-1 or MP-1) cost £20, but with the bar-ends (FR-1 or MR-1), you’re looking at a slightly scarier £28.95, plus the 200g weight penalty.

Fitting should be straightforward enough on a conventional bike, but the importers have had enquiries from Brompton owners, so we chose this more difficult option and converted a Brompton.This means quite a lot of cutting and shaping to the plastic and foam of the grips, the final position being quite critical to prevent the left-hand grip hitting the ground when the bike is folded.There are two adjustments – the angle of the palm support and the angle of the bar-ends, which come with a sort of micrometer scale for the really nerdy.

Once fitted and adjusted, the grips seem to work well, spreading the load in a more comfortable way, and giving a number of alternative riding positions. For touring, the comfort level was universally praised – even after some hours in the saddle.The manufacturers claim the improved riding position will alleviate all manner of ailments, which is possible, but we’ll stick with comfortable hands and wrists for now. If handlebar grips give you odd aches and pains, this may well be a solution. If you can live without bar- ends, the cheaper, lighter FP-1 or MP-1 should work just as well.

Ergon MR-1 Grips

Price £28.95 . Weight 130g each . Distributor Fine-adc mail: info@fine-adc.com

A to B 48 – June 2005

Raleigh Mule Trailer

Weekly shopping usually consists of small mixed items, and if you travel by bike these can usually be packed into a rucksack or panniers. Larger items can be more awkward to transport – I think the largest item I have carried strapped to the top of my pannier carrier was a king-size duvet. It was big, but light, so it didn’t effect the handling too much. Heavier items like bags of compost, cement, plaster, barrels of beer (needed after all that digging and cementing), televisions, beehives, and broken microwaves can’t be safely strapped to the rack… Or at least, not all at once.

Recently, I needed to transport a 25kg bag of plaster and strapped it to the front carrier of my Brompton, and although it affected the handling, I got home safely by putting my weight well back. It showed the amazing versatility of the Brompton, but this method wasn’t ideal.

When I saw the Raleigh Mule trailer in an Argos catalogue, the load-carrying bug bit me. I could see myself cruising down the road with my fully-laden rig, swapping ‘smokey bear’ tales on the CB radio. I couldn’t wait, and at only £89.99 I thought I’d give it a try. I might never need to ask a car-owning friend for a lift again!

A local bike shop kindly agreed to sell the trailer for £85.When it arrived, I was surprised how quickly it went together and I was soon off down the road to pick up a load from the local supermarket.The Mule has a 40kg weight limit, but with no means of weighing your shopping it’s easy to inadvertently exceed the limit.When I got home, I found I had been hauling 45kg, but the trailer suffered no ill-effects, proving that limit can be exceeded for short periods.The trailer itself weighs 11kg, but it’s very cheap. Lighter trailers (some weigh less than 6kg) can cost between £100 and £400.

Problems soon became evident when I tried carrying smaller loads.The Argos catalogue describes it as a ‘hard case’, but that should really read ‘hard base’.The base is plywood, but the sides are made of a thin fabric.With no means of securing the load, it can slide around and push the fabric into the wheels.This is not good.

…I solved the problem with some scraps of reflective material…

Customising

The tow-hitch is a crude but effective clamp. Power-assistance is not essential, but it helps!

I made some small slots in the base of the trailer for straps, which help to secure larger loads. For loose small items, I simply add a box.To keep the fabric away form the wheels, I added some thin plywood side panels, velcro’d to the steel frame for quick removal, but plastic mesh bases from baker’s trays might do for this – there are all sorts of options.

The Mule makes quite a compact package.

The hitch is a simple but effective clamp, which secures to the nearside chainstay on the bicycle. It’s plastic-covered and doesn’t seem to harm the paintwork.The trailer is mostly black, with a bright yellow cover. I was concerned about how well it would show up after dark, and solved the problem with some scraps of reflective material from my sewing box. With LED light attachments sewn into the cover, side reflectors from an old Sam Brown belt and Nimrod reflective mudflaps sewn onto the rear, it looked more finished, and I would be happy to tow it after dark.While I was at it, I sewed a large pocket on the inside to hold a spare 16-inch inner tube. I have seen cyclists without lights pulling unlit trailers, so clearly everyone is not as law-abiding as myself.Years of cycle commuting have made me cautious.

Stopping and restarting on hills can be awkward with a loaded trailer, so you need to make sure you are ready in the lowest gear.There is no parking brake, so the trailer can run away down a steep slope and drag the bicycle with it. Most trailers have this drawback, but you can always park against a lamp-post or choose somewhere flat. For someone prepared to undertake a bit of customising, the Raleigh Mule is a good buy. It’s strong, rolls well, and it folds away for storage when out of use. Not a bad buy for £85.

Raleigh Mule cargo trailer £89.99 . Distributor Raleigh Parts & Accessories tel 01623 688383 web www.raleighbikes.com

A to B 48 – June 2005

Letter from America.

Getting from A to B is a serious business for Americans. Look at the success of Driving Miss Daisy. To be a True American, there are certain beliefs that one must accept. Here are some of the big ones:

Four wheels are always superior to two
Gas power is always superior to any other power source
Not pedalling is always superior to pedalling
all two-wheeled vehicles, except powerful motorcycles, are toys and should never be considered as anything else

Fortunately, not all Americans accept all of these beliefs. Anthony Panzica doesn’t, and thousands of Americans are better off because of it.

Mr. Panzica, 39, lives in Long Beach California, about ten miles south of Los Angeles. For three years now he has been driving impaired drivers (mostly drunks) home in order to keep them from harming people on the roads of Southern California. He and his cell phone prowl the bar areas of the Beach Communities, and when he finds or is referred to a problem driver, he goes into action.

…Some 16,000 Americans are killed in drunk-driving crashes each year…

The Panzica attitude is simple and direct.When somebody can’t stand or walk, they can hardly drive a vehicle. Now they’re putting me and my friends and family at risk, and I’m not gonna have that’. Some of his ‘clients’ are worried bar patrons, and some are bartenders worried about legal liability from bar patrons. All who come to his attention are offered a free chauffeur to get them home safely, and if they refuse, they are threatened with police intervention.Very few refuse.

This effort started as a personal crusade, but now Mr. Panzica has recruited volunteers and has formed a Scooter Patrol. He says, ‘We tried to come up with a solution to how you get the guy’s car home with him.We talked about a tow truck or a skateboard or maybe folding bicycles. And we finally hit on scooters that fold up.’ The Scooter Patrol’s vehicle of choice is the Go-ped ESR750 electric fold-up scooter. The scooters carry the volunteers around the bar areas, and then return them to the front line after the drunk driver has been safely delivered home.

The Scooter Patrol and its Go-peds are serious matters along the Southern California Beach areas. For example, Seal Beach has 21 drinking establishments within one mile and is the Times Square of local alcohol consumption. Since 2003, volunteers have delivered more than 2,500 impaired drivers home safely.

They know how small their efforts really are, however. Some 16,000 Americans are killed in drunk-driving crashes each year, and the number of wounded is easily five times greater. Folding electric scooters will never solve America’s drunk-driving problems, but they are better than nothing and they at least take a few dangerous drivers off the roads for one night.

Mr. Panzica and his volunteers do not charge for their services, but they accept tips, which help defray the cost of the Go-peds. Local police and businesses encourage these patrols. Drunk drivers are bad for business, especially alcohol-related business.

The Scooter Patrol volunteers with their Go-peds and distinctive uniforms are highly respected in the Beach Communities, but some see the Patrols as shielding drunk drivers from California’s ‘Driving Under the Influence’ laws. Anthony Panzica himself admits to being a reformed drunk driver, and his change of behaviour came after he ran into the full fury of California’s DUI laws. It has been calculated that a first-time conviction without any injuries or property damages will cost the driver at least $12,000, when fines, attorney fees, court costs and insurance adjustments are added up. If there are injuries or property damages, the costs can go much higher.

For this situation, drivers can bless – or curse – groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving which constantly agitate for ever-greater penalties. MADD and its millions of allies are not much impressed with anything that offers protection to drunk drivers. According to some, it would be better for volunteers to act as scouts for the police and to direct them to likely candidates for DUI arrests. Attorneys who specialise in these cases report that 96% of all drivers who get a first-time conviction never get another. The courts deliver a much stronger message than any Scooter Patrol ever will.

Scooter Patrol members prefer to build trust with local drinkers.They post adverts in the bars and ensure that local bartenders have the phone numbers to summon volunteers when they are needed.The volunteers prefer the non-threatening approach, although they will call in the cops as a last resort. No doubt the local police forces have their own watchers, and they quietly use the DUI laws in their own way. It all helps with a problem that really has no complete solution.

Author’s Note: Readers might wish to visit Ken Kifer’s website, one of the most interesting and unusual bicycling sites in the USA. Recently, Ken Kifer was killed… by a drunk driver.

A to B 48 – June 2005

A to B 47 – Brompton Launches New Bikes!

We’re a little late this time, but we know you will forgive us. Brompton has introduced a whole range of new bikes and by waiting a week or two, we’ve been able to bring you exclusive tests of the lightweight S2L-X and fully-equipped P6R-XDL, plus reviews of the all-new Mezzo i4 and the not-quite-so-new Hase Pino recumbent. With all this excitement, we’ve had to cut just about everything else, so there’s plenty to look forward to in issue 48, including puncture-proof tyres, drum brakes and all the usual tests.

We were hoping to make some sort of comment on the forthcoming election, but with the political parties becoming more and more similar, and less and less palatable, we thought better of it. None of the mainstream parties plans to do anything sensible about transport. Nothing new there then…

A to B 47 Contents

Brompton Wide-Ratio Gears

Long-term readers may recall that the bankruptcy of hub gear manufacturer Sturmey Archer in the summer of 2000 left Brompton short of a suitable 5-speed hub. Other bike manufacturers migrated to the similar SRAM 5-speed, but the Brompton frame is unusually narrow, and it was not until May 2002 that the company came up with its own solution – the 6-speed (more correctly 2×3-speed) SRAM/Brompton derailleur/hub gear.

The new system took advantage of the Brompton chain tensioner. On a basic 3- speed hub-geared variant, the tensioner only moves when the bike is folded, but by fitting tensioner wheels designed to ‘float’ from side to side, it was possible to fit two sprockets side by side, doubling the number of gears. It all sounds a bit Heath Robinson, but engineered with Brompton’s usual attention to detail, the 6-speed soon established itself as a neat and efficient conversion.

The company decided to fit 13- and 15-tooth sprockets.The very similar sizes helped to give a slick gear change and resulted in evenly-spaced ratios.The bad news was a rather disappointing overall gear range of 215%, which was not much more than the 187% of the basic 3-speed. At 86″, top gear was the same, but first was reduced from 46″ to 40″. Just to recap, lower gears (measured in terms of the effective wheel size), give better low-speed hill-climbing, and high gears allow you to ride faster on the flat.

Fortunately, when the chain tensioner assembly was re-engineered for the 6-speed, the opportunity was taken to leave space for bigger sprockets, enabling the company to introduce the new 2-speed variant. Home tinkerers soon discovered that a sprocket as big as 18-tooth could be squeezed in, and paired with a 12-tooth sprocket, this stretched the gear range to 282%; better than most 7-speed hub gears.

…this stretched the gear range to 282%; better than most 7-speeds…

We tried a Steve Parry 12/18-tooth conversion in August 2002 and used it successfully for a couple of years until the 12-tooth sprocket shattered. As we had been warned, this was the weakness – the 12-tooth is so slim that it eventually cracks. A 13-tooth sprocket is stronger, but it reduces the gear range, and gives two pairs of ratios that are almost identical, resulting in a rather disappointing 4-speed.

Now, thanks to Highpath Engineering, the wide-ratio Brompton is back, and the new conversion seems to work very well.The basis is a combined 12/18-tooth sprocket assembly, the two components being tig-welded together, then re-hardened to give a reasonable working life.

Complicated Things

The first decision for those contemplating a gear upgrade is to calculate the sort of gears they want. Using Brompton’s 50- tooth chainring and the new Highpath sprocket set (£39.50), the standard gears of 40″, 46″, 55″, 63″, 75″ and 86″ become 33″, 46″, 50″, 62″, 68″ and 93″ – in other words, the high gears are higher and the low gears lower. Note that the fairly even spaces of the original have been lost, but as with the Sturmey Archer 8-speed (see A to B 40), we now have broad gaps at the extremities and narrower spaces between the middle gears, which can be useful.

If you’re looking for lower gears, you’ll need to fit a smaller 44-tooth chainring as well as the sprockets.This produces ratios of 29″, 40″, 44″, 55″, 60″ and 82″.Top is now lower than standard, but first is almost as low as a Speed Drive conversion! A new 44-tooth chainring costs £23.40, but if you’re planning to order a new bike, the option adds only £9.

For those without a 6-speed bike, a post-April 2001 3-speed (with the SRAM hub) can be upgraded to 6-speed spec for £78.40, but this would be a lot more expensive on an older Sturmey-geared machine.

A word of warning about chains, chainrings and widgets: for years Bromptons came with 1/8″ chain and 1/8″ chainrings (some are a little narrower), but since the arrival of the 6-speed the situation has become more complicated. Retro-fit 6-speed kits and a few early production bikes were supplied with 1/8″ chain, but all other 6-speeds will have narrower 3/32″ chain.The standard 50-tooth, and smaller 44-tooth, chainrings have been produced in both chain sizes, although Brompton expects to standardise on the narrower 3/32″ soon.The wide-ratio kit will work with an 1/8″ chain, but we’d strongly recommend 3/32″. A 1/8″ chain will run on either chainring, but a 3/32″ chain will only fit a 3/32″! Before doing anything, it’s a good idea to try a new piece of 3/32″ chain on your chainring and see what happens – if it fits, great, if not, you’ll need a narrow version.

If in doubt, renew anything that moves, because the new sprockets ask a lot more of the changer mechanism. It’s good practice to use Brompton chain, because the nominally 3/32″ chain pin length can vary, and not all work happily in the Brompton derailleur. If your eyes are glazing, simply trot down to a hub gear expert, such as Bicycle Workshop of West London (tel: 020 7229 4850) who will solve all the technical bits.

Fitting

A 5mm drill soon gets the bearing spinning again

The inside face of the rear frame tube must be ground back to clear the 18-tooth sprocket.

Note how filthy the tubes can get...

Changing the sprockets is easy, but if working on an older bike, you’ll need to check that the system is working properly first. Remove the rear wheel and chain, and flick the gear changer back and forth whilst observing the ‘chain pusher plate’ at the rear end. If the operation seems sticky or unreliable, release the cable assembly and try moving the pusher plate by hand – any tightness or roughness will have to be sorted before you go any further. On early ball-bearing units, in particular, the bearing will almost certainly need to be thoroughly cleaned or replaced.

With the spring clip popped off the hub, and the old sprockets removed, the new sprocket assembly will slide into place after refitting the original dust shield and the new shims. At this point things get a bit more difficult, because it’s necessary to remove a few millimetres from one of the rear frame tubes to clear the teeth of the larger sprocket.We did this by gently squeezing the tube and grinding away the last millimetre or so.

…Fitting the sprockets gives the Brompton… a gear range similar to a typical hybrid…

With the dodgy bit out of the way, all should now be plain sailing.With the rear wheel in place, feed in a new 98-link (100-link for a 50-tooth chainring) x 3/32″ chain and connect it up. As the new 18-tooth sprocket fits slightly outboard compared to the standard 15-tooth one, the chain pusher plate will need adjusting. Disconnect the cable assembly from the pusher plate, and move the plate by hand as far as it will go, checking that the plate either gently touches, or just clears the chain at each extreme. If it needs adjustment, turn the relevant stop screw until you’re satisfied that the pusher plate is just going far enough to change gear smoothly.

Finally, reconnect the cable assembly, turn the bike upside down (or get someone to lift the rear frame) and try changing up and down through the gears.The 2-speed changer gives twice as much cable movement as is required to change gear, so it should work well enough, even when slightly out of adjustment. If one or other of the gears is failing to engage properly, remove the trigger cover and move the outer cable to another of the four location slots until both gears engage smoothly and cleanly.

In Use

The most noticeable thing is the very different characteristics of the two sprockets: the 18-tooth feeling silky-smooth and the smaller 12-tooth relatively ‘coggy’.The change quality is a little lumpier than standard too, but it should remain crisp and fast – obviously new components will cope better than well worn examples.

In normal riding, we tend to stay in the top range, using the top two gears. As a steep hill approaches, the change from middle gear/top range to top gear/low range is one of the closer ones, but it sets the bike up for more serious climbing. Over the top, and it’s back into the high range and up to top gear. Being slightly lower than standard, top does tend to run out of steam on the descents, but for most people this will be a small price to pay for the much lower gears.

A really steep hill will defeat the bike, even with a 29-inch bottom gear, primarily because the front wheel begins to lift as you pedal – in any event, walking may now be quicker. In all other circumstances, this is more or less a go anywhere Brompton.

Conclusion

Fitting the 12/18-tooth sprocket block takes a few hours, but it’s a cheap, light and effective solution, giving the Brompton a gear range similar to that on a typical hybrid. Efficiency is better than a 7- or 8-speed hub, and although the double changers may seem confusing, the system is no more complicated to use than a 3×7 derailleur.

How long will it last? As our prototype has done only a few hundred miles, it’s hard to judge.The 18-tooth sprocket should last forever, but the 12-tooth will have a relatively short life, and of course, when it eventually fails, you’ll have to throw the whole assembly away.We would expect to see 2,000 miles at the very least, and 3,000 miles or more with care. Given the relatively low purchase cost, that sounds quite acceptable against the alternatives, and would equate to many years of leisure use.

Brompton 12/18-tooth block £39.50 plus postage of £3 (UK), £7 (Europe) or £15 (worldwide) . Manufacturer Highpath Engineering tel/fax 01570 470035 mailadmin@highpath.net

A to B 47 – April 2005

Brompton P6R-XDL

Crikey. This is all beginning to sound a bit like the comedy sketch (one of several) where the innocent man goes into the shop and asks for a record player, and is mercilessly ribbed by the spotty youths behind the counter. Ask for a folding bicycle these days, and you’ll be laughed back onto the pavement: ‘With or without the titanium crown-fork assembly, sir?’ ‘Hub, dynamo or battery lights?’ ‘Pentaclip or traditional clamp?’ P-type bars?’ With or without Stelvios?’ And so on through the gear options, ad infinitum.

The high riding position is slightly more upright than the classic Brompton.

For those with plenty of money, the easy answer is to opt for the P6R- XDL. Assuming you’ve had the foresight to jot the code number on the back of an envelope, and you have a cool £1,225 in your pocket, you can walk out of the shop with just about every option and cut out the tiresome discussion.

We’re being flippant, of course, but no doubt some people will buy this top of the range model because it’s the most expensive option and thus (hopefully) the best that money can buy. But is it? That depends what you want. The P6R-XDL is aimed at cycle tourists and professional folding bike users: the Sustrans Rangers, map-makers and surveyors for whom a folding bike is a work station rather than a means of getting from A to B.

T6 to P6

The core of the machine is the current T6: rear rack, six gears, dynamo lights, and front luggage. Under the skin the bike is very different, but the most striking difference is the odd rectangular handlebar assembly.This looks ludicrous at first glance – the sort of geeky accessory fitted by earnest types searching for an extra 0.1mph on the Great North Road. But please do put your prejudices away for long enough to try it, because the P-type handlebar works really well.

Like drop-handlebars of old, the bars give you two very different riding positions: high for traffic, and low for fast riding in open country. At 104cm from the ground, the top riding position is ideal for city use, with the brake and gear levers immediately to hand. Once out of town, the idea is that you move your hands down to the lower position, where the bars are shaped like the turned-down bars favoured by scorcher cads at the turn of the 20th Century. At 89cm or so, these lower bars reduce your frontal area, giving a comfortable and wind- cheating position.

Unless the roads are seriously empty, you shouldn’t relax too much in this position because the gears, and more importantly, the brakes, are now a long way from your fingertips.Whether sleepy P-type riders will start ploughing into stationary buses remains to be seen. After a while on the ‘drops’ you tend to forget and reach for the brake, then realise your mistake and change position. This process takes a few heart- stopping milliseconds. Otherwise, the system works well, the two primary positions and myriad alternatives giving relief from aches and pains as well as headwinds.

Interestingly, the difference in frontal area seems to make quite a difference to the roll-down speed. Riding in the low position and attempting to create a good wind- cheating shape, we recorded a speed of 15.9mph – a whisker faster than the slightly more upright S2L-X. Holding the bars in the top position, rolling speed drops back to 14.7mph; a huge difference.The differential would probably be of little consequence in town, but at higher speed, the new bars will have quite a big effect.

…high for traffic, and low for fasty riding in open country…

The other major design feature of the P6R-XDL is the same titanium kit used on the lightweight bikes. In this case, the chunky rack and other accessories rule out a headlining weight, but at 12.1kg, the bike is still a little lighter than its predecessor.

On the road, the machine rides broadly like a traditional Brompton.The only downside for those expecting to scale the Himalayas is the narrow gear range of the Brompton 6-speed, which remains unchanged.There are a number of upgrades around, of course, from cheap and cheerful Highpath sprockets to a pricey but capable Mountain Drive, but it seems odd that Brompton has not engineered a solution of its own.This bike does deserve more gears, or at least, a wider range.

…professionals will choose their own spec from the long list of options…

Interestingly, this top-end model comes with Brompton’s own cheaper ‘Green Flash’ kevlar tyres rather than the Schwalbe Marathons fitted to the cheaper P6R-PLUS. If you keep in touch with Professor Pivot’s musings, you will know that we’re not overly-keen on any of the kevlar-reinforced options, but this tyre is at least cheap and pretty light.

Which brings us to illumination. If you’ve had enough of seized dynamos, broken wiring looms and faulty bulbs, the lighting package on this bike should help to get your night-life sorted.The rear lamp is the familiar stand-light version of the Basta LED used by Brompton for several years, while the front is a Basta Ellipsoid halogen.This pair are powered by the new narrow version of the SON hub dynamo, designed specifically for small- wheelers.This delightful thing is controlled by an equally small (and rather inaccessible) switch on the back of the front light.

Brompton P6R-XDL Folding Bike Aero Dynamics

Surprisingly, the difference in frontal area is barely 1%, but the lower position makes a more streamlined shape, while the upper position is more comfortable!

With the switch off, the rolling resistance of the dynamo is almost unnoticeable.Turn it on, and the lights work well, right down to a walking pace. Rolling resistance increases, but in terms of roll-down speed, the difference is barely noticeable.We can’t claim that the wires won’t break or connectors drop off, but the basic hardware is very good indeed and should work effortlessly and quietly for years.

Other Accessories

With Brompton’s mix-&-match policy, published spec gives no more than a guide. If you don’t want the SON hub dynamo, you can choose a lighter bottle dynamo, or battery lights, or all three, or nothing. Similarly with luggage: the P6R-XDL will accept any of Bromptons range of four front quick- release bags, although there is a one small proviso with this handlebar pattern: if you fit the front battery light, it will be obscured by all but the new lower S-bag.

For the rear rack, Brompton and Radical have come up with a neat bag which – in marked contrast to the S-bag, which has a tardis- like interior – looks huge, but holds only 17 litres (slighter more than the old Pannier bag, but rather less than the Touring bag). That said, it more or less doubles the bike’s carrying capacity, so it will have its uses.

Conclusion

One thousand two hundred and twenty five quid sounds a lot of money. All right, it is a lot of money, but in this case it buys an awful lot of technology. For that sort of amount you could have a Birdy Black, which weighs about the same with a similar accessory pack, provides a bigger gear range, but folds into a much larger package. Otherwise, we’re well into Moulton/Bike Friday territory; machines that can’t compare folding-wise, but offer legendary performance. In this company, the real strength of the P6R-XDL is that it combines the folding ability of the Brompton with reasonable weight and decent equipment. The feedback we’ve had is that professional users wouldn’t go for the P-type bars (‘not really that keen’) or the lightweight components (‘didn’t notice it’). But in this market, reliability is paramount, so users will happily pay big money for such extras as SON hub dynamos, hub brakes (not yet an option) and puncture-resistant tyres. It seems the professionals will choose their own spec from the long list of options. Our prediction is that they won’t go for the P6R-XDL, but for cycle tourists, reduced weight and alternative riding positions are more important.

Specification – Brompton P6R-XDL

Brompton P6R-XDL £1,225 . Weight 12.1kg (27lb) . Gears Brompton/SRAM 6-spd Ratios 40″, 46″, 55″, 63″, 75″ and 86″ . Folded Dimensions W29cm L58cm H58.5cm Folded Volume 98.4 litres (3.48 cu ft) . Manufacturer Brompton Bicycle tel 020 8232 8484

A to B 47 – April 2005

Letters – A to B 47

7th March 2005.The first standard gauge train for many months returns to Blaenau Ffestiniog. PHOTO: Richard Hayward

A Rheilen at Blaenau

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to respond to your article on North Wales, and specifically to clear up any misconceptions about connections between the Conwy Valley and Ffestiniog railways.

Clearly you had to act on the advice you were given that connections could not be guaranteed.This being a Sunday in late October when there is a bus rather than train on the Conwy Valley service, the massive road works between Betws-y-Coed and Blaenau Ffestiniog were making timekeeping very unreliable. Happily the road works have ended (after two years!) and connections are reliable again.

May I assure your readers that there are excellent relations between Arriva Trains Wales, the Conwy Valley Rail Initiative (community rail partnership for the line) and the Ffestiniog Railway. It has been official policy to maintain connections with two key services at Blaenau Ffestiniog around mid- day and mid-afternoon on every day of the week including winter Sundays when buses run in lieu of trains.There has been no substitution of trains by buses; winter Sunday services have been provided by bus for about ten years with a grant from Conwy and Gwynedd councils; prior to that there were no Sunday services on the line.

I will end with three pieces of good news; first, the Conwy Valley line reopened following flood damage on 7th March; second, we are close to concluding plans for a complete timetable revamp from December 2005 which will see much improved connections with main line trains at Llandudno Junction and with the Ffestiniog Railway; and third, this summer will see longer trains with an ability to carry more bikes!
John Davies
Acting Community Rail Officer
Conwy Valley Rail Initiative

Readers may recall (A to B 46, page 40) that we were unable to travel via the Conwy Valley railway line because substituted buses failed to connect with Ffestiniog trains.We look forward to trying the new trains and are delighted to hear about the new timetable. (Eds)

Daylight Robbery

It’s good to see The Mole at work again on the rail ‘network’ (A to B 46). Up here (South Manchester/North Cheshire) Virgin continues to make things difficult for local trains (they get in the way of the intercity money trains when Virgin are running late).

The First Class open return to London (180 miles) is £288, with Standard (cattle class) at £187. And if you board without a ticket – even after waiting twenty minutes or more at the ticket office – train staff will refuse to sell you a cheaper Saver ticket.This new policy covers all Virgin stations.Will the company now decrease the number of ticket windows even further? I normally find less than half the ticket desks open during the rush hour. At bigger Virgin stations there are automated machines, but the queues get longer…

Changing the subject completely, the Sturmey Archer hub is now slipping on my 1999 Brompton 5-speed, after around 5,000 miles. Brompton says it has no 5-speed hubs, and can only suggest upgrading to a SRAM hub and new rear frame. My local dealer, Bicycle Doctor, is unsure how cost effective that would be on a five-year-old bike. Have you any thoughts? Surely I can’t be the only person with a spent hub? Incidentally, the new Brompton web site gives no email or phone contact details, forcing you to write to them.
Dale Langham
Wilmslow, Cheshire

Virgin’s fare policy, particularly on the unreliable Manchester corridor, is shocking and unacceptable. In 1992, before these rotters got their grubby hands on the West Coast line, an Open Return cost £84 (£114 at today’s prices) and a Super Saver Return £30 (£41 today). After taking inflation into account, the walk-on leisure fare has since risen by 43% and the Open Return by 86%. Strangely, the government subsidy on this formerly profitable route has also risen sharply. No wonder British transport policy is in such disarray.

The answer to upgrading an elderly 5-speed Brompton is to fit new Sunrace Sturmey internals.This relatively straightforward operation is covered in A to B 39. Brompton’s phone number is widely available, but really should be on the web too: 020 8232 8484. (Eds)

Transport Sell-out

I was saddened to read of the demise of yet another of Jim McGurn’s ventures. Perhaps Jim should consider returning to publishing, as his most successful venture was New Cyclist magazine. But like you, I tend to agree that the money Jim’s bidding for could be better spent – after all, Sustrans is the only big lottery-funded project to exceed its promises. The doings at Bogworthy Junction sound like those at Pontefract Monkhill (Pontefract has three stations serving two/three lines). Monkhill has a wheelchair-unfriendly footbridge, so disabled travellers arriving at Platform 2 must either travel on to Knottingley, or on terminating services, wait until the train has crossed to another platform to start back.

The signs suggest the line to Wakefield was ‘built’ using European funding, but the stations were actually opened on a freight line, disused by passenger trains since the Beeching era.The line really needs three more new stations, one serving a suburb of Pontefract, and one each for New Sharlston and Crofton. Most important, it needs reconnecting to Wakefield Westgate to connect with long-distance trains. Our anti-rail government has ensured that most services now terminate at Wakefield Kirkgate.We know what to expect – in a year or two, the services will be terminated because they’re ‘uneconomic!’ It takes 40 minutes to travel into central Wakefield by road, whereas our old service did it in 20 minutes.
Bill Houlder
Pontefract

Note the disturbing pattern.The Wakefield-Pontefract line was reopened in 1992 (by a Tory government, ironically), to provide an hourly service to Wakefield Westgate, with connections for Leeds and London. Local services like this are being deliberately run-down. (Eds)

In Jim’s Defence

In the spirit of helping you maintain your high journalistic standards, the item in The Mole, A to B 46, omits to mention Jim McGurn’s present firm: Company of Cyclists. Having been going for several years, putting serious grant money to good use, this certainly isn’t in the failure pattern. And these words are from an ‘innocent backer’ (of his earlier enterprise). The remainder of A to B 46 is, as ever, informative, humorous and incisively cynical.
Paul Stobbs
Newcastle

Not Labour

Thanks for my regular magazine. I enjoy reading about the woes at Bogworthy Junction and their causes. I am so fed up with Labour’s poor record on public transport, climate change and the environment in general that I set up www.craplabour.org.uk. It looks rather similar to www.labour.org.uk/home
Clive Mowforth
Dursley, Gloucestershire

More Conversions Please

If you were inclined to enlarge A to B, how about a detailed profile of a bike (or two) per issue that is actually ‘in service’? By this, I mean someone is riding it, and significantly, has modified it or improved it to suit his or her needs.Your source might be a rider/reader/individual or a retailer/mechanic who has had a hand in setting up such a machine. I’d like to read about the creativity and diversity of what is in use out there. This could be an old or brand new bike. Less a ‘road test’ than a sharing of ideas, parts sources and home-made solutions. How has Pia set up her bike to commute year round in Stockholm? How has Chris made his Brompton lighter and faster for a longer commute than most people would find appropriate? What do hardcore London messengers ride, what do they wear out, change and improve?
David Campbell
Danbury, Connecticut, USA

Staying near Westport CT a few years back, we heard distant sounds of trains tootling through the forest. Eventually curiosity got the better of us and we caught one just to see where it went. Nice enough town, Danbury, but the museum was shut.Yes, conversions are great subject matter. Do let us know about your favourite bike. Just one rule: it has to be in daily use. Not an expensive, impractical ride-in-the-park job. (Eds)

Big Foot

My feet are size 10: not massive, but my heels occasionally catch on the castors at the rear of my Brompton. I have inverted these cone-shaped parking wheels which reduces the number of ‘hits’, but I still suffer problems. Before trying some sort of Heath Robinson fix to my 1999 T5 I thought ‘there’s an elegant solution out there!’. I read that wheels from in- line skates can be used. Is this really the best solution?
Mike Lomas
Attleborough, Norfolk

Two hardy perennial Brompton complaints involve the unlocked rear frame dropping down when the bike is lifted, and the rear rollers catching one’s ankles. Our advice with either problem is to persist. Most people do get used to the loose frame, and it makes manoeuvring the bike much easier.The little roller wheels only seem to affect certain people; mainly men with larger feet, for obvious reasons. If you can’t acclimatise, Steve Parry produces extra-thin wheels (tel: 01934 516158). Apparently, Brompton’s new taller rollers (see page 14) are not narrower enough. (Eds)

More Touring Please!

One of the things I’ve longed to see more of in A to B are examples of people touring at home or abroad with folding cycles.The article in A to B 45 about the Yorkshire Dales, and the two brilliant items in A to B 46 have been sorely lacking in the past!

Please encourage readers to send in their experiences/adventures/advice. I love my Brompton, but its use is not for commuting in my case, as the distances are too great. I want to take it abroad and would find inspiration from reading about other experiences.
Graham Richards
Tadcaster

Ranges & Inches

With regard to comments by Professor Pivot (A to B 46), we have had a Marathon Plus 26- inch tyre on the back wheel of our Nihola trike for about a year. Unlike the 20-inch moped tyres on the front, it has not punctured in that period. Any additional drag is not noticeable, although it probably would be on a bike.

As for lower gears, lowering the range might give a large percentage reduction, but it also reduces the range in inches considerably, leaving closer ratios. For example, with a 3- speed hub, 43″/57″/76″ might become 30″/40″/53″.The effect that a modest reduction to first gear can have on top gear was not readily apparent from the article.
Clive Parsons
Worcester

Prof Pivot replies:Very true. In Clive’s example the gears are reduced by 30%, giving a reasonably low first, but dragging top gear down from a practical 76″ to a leg-spinning 53″.There is, in any event, a law of rapidly diminishing returns with very low gears, for all sorts of reasons, but primarily because walking becomes an easier option! Apologies for not making this clear, although in all the examples, I did fix top gear in the practical 80-inch region. I also hope to complete testing a pair of Marathon Plus puncture-resistant tyres before the next issue.

Wonderfuel Lafree

When I was a kid – and I’m now 83 – I was a very keen cyclist. I explored the Warwickshire and Northamptonshire countryside and enjoyed a simple, non-challenging companionship with the Feldon Wheelers. At the age of 14 I cycled all round western England, staying at Youth Hostels or sleeping rough.

Much has happened to the world and me since those happy, distant days. Nearly two years ago, after angioplasty, I began to find long walks a bit beyond my capacity and my thoughts turned to those youthful days in the saddle. My enquiries led me to a guy who very kindly loaned me his Giant Lafree for an afternoon, and I tried it on the hills that define the historic town where I live. I was amazed.

Going up one steep hill to the top of the Downs, I overtook a young chap on a lightweight racing bike, fully kitted out in all the gear. Out of sheer embarrassment and compassion for his feelings, I dropped back and we exchanged biking stories until our ways parted at the top of the hill.That clinched it and I ordered my own bike.

That summer I explored the lanes under the Downs and took to the tops themselves. The only challenge proved to be stiles and the sometimes very steep gullies. My bike and I are now happy companions when the sun shines and we can take off on the tracks and lanes.
Julian Tayler
Lewes, East Sussex

Should anyone doubt the magic capabilities of electric bikes, Julian’s letter should set them straight. The Lafree is also a superb tool for those considering leaping into the car-free (or car-lite) world. Incidentally,Transport Secretary Alistair Darling has apparently said he doesn’t cycle because it’s ‘hard work’. Maybe Giant could get him out of his limousine? (Eds)

One Final Tour

A serious illness has virtually stopped my cycling activities, but I really, really would love to have one final go at touring Italy once again. I am therefore looking into ‘power assistance’ for my touring bike. However, the article in A to B 43 ‘Kettlewell by bus’, using a lightweight folding bike and rucksack was fascinating, and this, with some form of power assistance, seems to me to be the solution to my requirements.

Electric power is out of the question due to its weight and limited range, so I have been looking into a ‘Mitsubishi Encore’ engine, as supplied by Dimension Edge in America. (42cc, small in size, 7lbs in weight, can be fitted onto a folding bike and has a range of 250 miles per gallon).What I need to know are the legal requirements/restrictions, for power assistance to pedal bicycles in Italy or indeed Europe? (I do know that in the U.K. I must have road tax, insurance, MOT test, as with a moped, but this does not apply to engines under 50cc in America) Can you please advise, or direct me to somewhere I can find out?
Anthony Cox
Houghton-le-Spring,Tyne & Wear

In Britain, even minimalist internal combustion machines are classed as mopeds, but the rules are different elsewhere.Try ‘Buzzing’, the magazine of the Autocycle & Cyclemotor club: editor, Andrew Roddham, tel 01733 204713, email aroddham@hotmail.com

Incidentally, battery/electric bicycles recharged from a small onboard generator may be legal, and a few machines are already out there (see A to B 46, page 13). Such a machine could run for long periods in blessed silence, recharging while you’re having a coffee. An even more civilised alternative would be a methanol fuel cell, running silently for days on a few litres of methanol. Unfortunately, apart from military and aerospace cells, nothing seems to be available yet. (Eds)

Cost/Benefit Analysis

The Department of Transport now requires local authorities to take into account the loss of VAT and fuel duty revenue when assessing the value for money of congestion-busting measures such as bus lanes.Why not apply that sort of formula to cycling? According to the All Party Parliamentary Cycling Group: ‘Estimates of the benefits-cost ratio [of cycling] range from 3:1 up to 14:1… for every £1 invested in cycling we get back £3 back in savings’.
Colin Hersom of Oxford
(thanks also to Paul Denyer and numerous others)

The Final Word

Delicious, idiosyncratic, fallible, mostly impartial, eagerly awaited . Entertaining & informative Stimulating stuff . Like the style . Splendid stuff! Absolutely fabulous! Love your views on eco-friendly transport .The best A5 magazine on two wheels . A thoroughly enjoyable read and great value . Still the best choice for unbiased information on cycling and travel news The most fascinating of all the cycle magazines I receive regularly . Nothing brightens up a drab February morning like A to B . I look forward to every issue and read it cover to cover! A damn fine publication – informative, witty, left-wing and literate . I always appreciate the front cover picture . A to B was recommended to me at a dinner party by someone who doesn’t have a folding bike, but enjoyed the magazine! I can see why . Positive attitude to car-free living . I especially like the pedal-assist reviews and design innovations Well worth it – just a bit less on electrics and more on other bike-related transport . Please produce an annual league table of bikes . I would like more ‘touring with folders’ articles More on campaigns for better cycle provision . I’d like to see more on electric scooters Don’t stray too far from cycling; we get politics 24×7 .Don’t be so hard on ‘cumbersomes’ (I hate the word); let’s be happy about all two – or three – wheeled travel . A good read, although I’m not that excited about the contents!The greatest ‘little’ read around I like quirky anti-car magazines . Stay controversial . You can’t please all of the people all of the time, just some of the people some of the time…

The 2005 Brompton

Something has been up at Brompton for months. Little snippets of information have leaked out, but the dead giveaway was the report that a group of Russians had been spotted in the Brentford factory discussing strange grey metal objects. They obviously weren’t selling vodka, said our contact. The metal could only be titanium, and the Russians just had to be negotiating to supply it. It turns out that the rumours were largely true – Brompton has made arrangements for the fabrication and supply of a number of titanium parts from both Russia and China (you can’t be too careful these days). Initially, these parts will be fitted to a range of new expensive models, but the technology should gradually trickle down, bringing a new era of lighter, more durable folding bikes.

Brompton describes its 2005 model changes as ‘greater than anything we’ve done since the Brompton was first introduced 17 years ago. We can’t argue with that. For well over a decade the Brompton has set the standard in terms of foldability and compact folded size. But, as we’ve often said, the classic Brompton is relatively heavy, and although it’s a rigid and practical machine, for some people the odd handlebars and low-slung frame present something of an image problem.

We’ve made suggestions over the years to broaden the appeal, as have many others, and the company has at last responded with a Big Bang upgrade to be rolled out from May this year. We’ll try and keep things simple, but this being Brompton, the options are legion and the technical wizardry complex. As a measure of just how complicated the picture has become, the range of five bikes has been extended to ten, and there are numerous other options, special options, and under- the-counter options for very special customers.

The good news for traditionally-minded folk is that the old C, L and T-types remain on the books, and at similar prices.The C type becomes the C3E at £380, the L3 becomes the M3L at £480, and the T6, M6R-PLUS (yes, R for rack) at £635.The C still comes in red, but in true Henry Ford style, the M3L and M6R will be available only in black with silver forks and rear frame. If you really want a 6-speed L, or a 3-speed R – or any colour other than black – you can have it, but you will have to pay for a special build machine.

…the old C, L and T-types remain on the books at similar prices…

Beyond this basic range, things get a bit complicated, because the company has gone for choice, choice, and more choice.

Superlight Bikes

The lightweight bikes feature a range of new bits, principally titanium (seat pillar, front forks, rear frame assembly, mudguard stays and folding pedal bolt) in various combinations, a simple 2-speed derailleur (as seen on the current 6-speed), lightweight saddle, and lower, flat handlebars on a slightly taller stem.

The basic lightweight bike is the S2L at £560.This has the new handlebars and 2- speed gear system , but none of the pricey bits. A good option if you are looking for a simple, reliable and slightly lighter about town machine. The commuter version is the S6L-PLUS (£735), with six gears, new slightly lower front luggage (we’ll come back to this) and battery lights – an updated L6, if you like. The standard colour for these bikes is all-over black, unless you are minded to pay £25 or more for one of the colour options.

Current Brompton range on the left, new range on the right. Most current models remain in production at slightly lower prices after inflation, but any colour other than black/silver now costs extra. The new titanium-based machines take the Brompton into a whole new price zone.

Lightest and sexiest of the lightweight bikes are the superlight machines – M2L-X and S2L-X, available in a choice of three pastel matt finishes (blue, green or pink) to compliment the natural titanium scattered liberally about the machines.The M2L-X is basically a two-speed version of the old L-type, but with most of the titanium bits on board to reduce weight. At £873, this sounds a practical solution for those who need a significantly lighter bike at reasonable cost. Lightest of all (unless you special order a single speed) is the S2L-X, with the straight bars, all the titanium kit, Vitesse saddle and Schwalbe Stelvio tyres. At £965, this bike comes in just under the psychological £1,000 barrier and weighs a head-lining 9.7kg. That’s a kilogram heavier than the Dahon Helios SL we tried last year, but the Brompton has mudguards and a front luggage block, so it’s better suited to regular commuting, should one be so inclined.

The titanium rear frame, seen here on the P6R-XDL, is significantly lighter.

Brompton has decided that the flat-handlebar S-type machines should only be fitted with the S-Bag, a new lower but deeper front bag made by Radical. We’ve tried the conventional bags on the S-type, and provided they’re not over-filled (a problem on any variant), there’s little risk of the bag fouling the bars. On the other hand, the S-bag is just as spacious as the standard Pannier; both holding 16 litres of water, measured by the Archimedes principle (bin- liner in bag, bag in bath, boy fills bag with water and records result in Handy Tablet notebook).

High-spec P-type

For some users, of course, quality equipment and touring capabilities are more important than weight.To this end, Brompton has developed an extraordinary new handlebar, giving a choice of seating positions – upright, as on the old bikes, or dropped.The bars are similar to the Bike Friday H-bars, but in a vertical plane.This is the ‘P-type’, and there are several options, all in black/silver as standard.

…For some users, touring capabilities are more important than weight…

Brompton's own brake design is being launched on the 'P' and 'S' type bikes, but will probably become universal. Note the reach adjuster.

Cheapest is the P3L, exactly the same as the M3L, but with the new handlebars for an extra £35. Next up is the P6R-PLUS, at £807. This bike comes loaded with the sorts of accessories a serious user might specify – six gears, Schwalbe Marathon tyres, dynamo lighting, better saddle, plus the titanium seat pillar and folding pedal axle to keep the weight under control. Disappointingly, the gear range is no wider than the current bike, although this variant is clearly aimed at cycle tourists and others.We’d guess that many owners would want to upgrade to either the Mountain Drive gear system or wide ratio sprockets (see page 27).

Top of the range, and most expensive by a fair margin, is the P6R-XDL, at £1,225.This comes with a full complement of bits, including a neat and effective SON hub- dynamo and all the titanium, bringing the weight back down to a respectable, but not very exciting, 12.1kg. All the same, it’s technically in the superlight category, so the XDL is available only in the three special colours, unless, of course, you specify something else.

Other Changes

Brompton Folding Bike Hermanns Battery Light

The Hermanns battery light option - quite powerful and weighing only 100g

Got all that? The first figure (C, M, P or S) depicts the model type (generally identifiable by the handlebars); the second (2, 3 or 6) the number of gears; and third is the version – E for Economy, L for Lightweight (ie no rack), and R for Rack. But the ten ‘standard’ models are just the tip of the option iceberg, because just about any parts can be specified on just about any bike, and there are a number of other choices.

As we’ve seen, most of the standard bikes now have a black mainframe, although any of last year’s colours can be specified for a surcharge.This sounds a bit unfair, but prices have generally risen by less than inflation, which softens the blow.

Aqua Blue has been dropped and replaced by the post-apocalyptic Raw Lacquer, which like the Lloyd the Building, puts all its structural innards on display. This is a more expensive option, mainly because the parts will be hand-picked to show off the neatest brazes… The exposed tubes might well compliment the natural titanium on the pricier models, but then they might not. Do let us know.

…the exposed tubes might well compliment the natural titanium…

An option requested by some regular users is taller, thinner ‘rollerblade’ rear rollers. Brompton has responded with rubber-tyred, ball bearing ‘Eazy-wheels’. A pair of these slightly taller wheels can be fitted to any bike, but the company says they work best as a set of four on the R-type. Apparently they are not narrow enough to please those whose ankles hit the standard rollers.

Lighting has seen a lot of development.The Basta rear LED is unchanged, but the former rather feeble battery front light has been replaced with a 3-LED Herrman unit. This is similar to the Jos Star Tube, but more rugged and with greater light output, says Brompton. Weight, complete with 3 x AAA batteries, is a minimalist 80g, plus 20g for the mounting bracket. The light has a quick-release, so you’re supposed to stick it in your pocket when folding the bike, but an alternative game plan is to swing the bracket around on the bars, leaving the light in place.

LED front lights are not strictly legal as a primary lighting source in the UK, but the wheels of official favour appear to be grinding in the right direction, so they soon will be. The Herrman produces an unusually tightly focussed beam – smaller and less bright than the bigger and heavier Cateye EL500, but twice as powerful as ‘first generation’ lights, such as the Cateye EL200. It’s adequate as a sole light source on all but the most demanding country roads, but must be carefully aimed to put the narrow beam in the right place, and (very common this) the reflector throws back stray light, which can be annoying in dark conditions.

Those with a preference for dynamos can choose between the current AXA HR bottle dynamo, or the newly developed narrow SON hub unit. Not cheap, but the ultimate for those who want simple, reliable and effective lighting.

…the developments seem to have put the bike back at the cutting edge…

The Easy-wheel rollers make the folded package easier to roll, but despite appearances, are no narrower.

Gear options remain the same, but any bike can be specified with the new 2-speed (or a basic 1-speed variant), and the larger 54- tooth chainring from the two speed can be specified on hub- geared bikes, giving an 8% higher gear option. Elsewhere, the handlebar clip has finally (and, we hope, permanently) been strengthened with a spring steel hairpin affair, to be fitted to all models – not before time. The Vitesse Eazy-wheel rollers make fi’zi:k saddle (standard the folded package easier to on the pricier roll, but despite appearances, are no narrower models), certainly looks sporty, and feels comfortable. If you think it’s any old fi’zi:k, think again, because this being Brompton, the saddle rails have been extensively re-engineered. Brompton has also developed the Pentaclip micro-adjust saddle clamp, initially for the optional saddles, but no doubt this will become universal at a later stage.

Retrofitting

Good news for those who want to upgrade an older Brompton, is that many of the parts will be available separately, and most new parts will fit most older Bromptons. The titanium seat pillar, Pentaclip clamp and Vitesse saddle are a straight swap, taking only a few minutes and saving 380g at a stroke.The relocated and strengthened saddle rails help to produce the smallest possible folded size, but add some weight, so you can knock another 80g off fairly easily with a less exacting design.The Pentaclip is excellent for anyone fitting a railed saddle to a Brompton, or indeed any bike with a 22.2mm seat pillar.Weighing only 90g, this little masterpiece of engineering gives hassle-free adjustment.

The Pentaclip doesn't sound very exciting, but it is a great advance - no Brompton should be without one

Current owners might also consider fitting the titanium folding pedal axle (saving 26g), or mudguard stays (unspecified weight saving, but instant one-upmanship). Changing either the rear frame, front forks or handlebar stem is probably more trouble than it’s worth, but these can all be done at a price. More realistically, the new battery front light is a useful option, as are the Eazy-wheel rollers and the new lower S-Bag.

Conclusion

These are obviously enormous changes, and Pentaclip doesn’t sound it’s hard to judge just how successful the very exciting, but it is a great different models will be. Our money is on the P6R-PLUS. advance – no Brompton should At £807, this seems to offer most of the equipment be without one serious users have been asking for, although we’d probably specify the SON dynamo to complete a tough and reasonably light package. At the lighter end of the spectrum, the M2L-X comes with most of the weight-reducing elements fitted to the more expensive bikes, but at £873, it’s a little cheaper, and it looks more conventional – important to some people.

We’ve heard rumours that Dahon’s 16- and 20-inch extra lightweight bikes have been selling slowly, which we can’t confirm because the company has gone strangely quiet. If it’s true, how will the heavier, but more practical Brompton lightweights fare? We have no idea, but the next few months will no doubt reveal a great deal.

Whatever the winners and losers, the developments at Brompton certainly seem to have put the bike back at the technological cutting edge, after many years of sensible, if rather uninspired development. Congratulations to Andrew Ritchie, chief engineer William Butler-Adams, and marketing manager Edward Donald on a remarkable achievement.

The new Brompton range will be available from May. Brochures and full details from Brompton Bicycle
tel 020 8232 8484

A to B 47 – Apr 2005

Hase Pino

We always do our best to concentrate on the practical aspects of cycling. Can you ride it to work (and carry it into the building)? Can you take the children to school on it (or in it)? Can you take it on holiday? Does it fit in a car, train, bus or plane? As a consequence, we tend to come back again and again to the same solutions, because certain bikes, trailers and other bits and pieces are so damn practical. It also means we ignore all manner of wacky and wonderful things – many of them recumbents. As a general rule, if it won’t fit in our bike shed, it’s unlikely to fit in yours, so we leave it to the more – how shall we put it – esoteric publications. You know the ones.

…It barely fits in the shed, it weighs 25.4kg and it’s complicated, but it’s dead cool…

But once in a while, we like to do something a bit silly, and that’s why we requested a Hase Pino in child-carrier form.Yes, it barely fits in the shed, it weighs 25.4kg (56lb) and it’s complicated, but in school gate terms, it’s seriously dead cool. If we’d turned up with a bright red Ferrari, we wouldn’t have generated a greater buzz of excitement outside Castle Cary primary.Well, not much anyway.

Butcher’s Bike

The Pino is laid out rather like a traditional ‘butcher’s bike’ – a big 26-inch wheel at the back and a small 20-inch one under the load platform at the front. But in this case the load is a recumbent adult, or with the right adaptor, a child.

Quite why anyone would choose to travel like this is a bit of a head scratcher.There certainly are a few key advantages over an upright tandem or trailer bike. Firstly, you can keep an eye on the child, which makes these machines popular for carrying disabled children. Secondly, the laid-back passenger probably helps to smooth the flow of air round the machine (but with frontal area similar to a conventional upright bike, don’t expect to break too many speed records).The disadvantages are that it’s an expensive beast (£2,315), and a cumbersome one, although in recumbent tandem terms, the wheelbase of 1.4 metres and overall length of around 2.4 metres (two metres in child-carrier form) are not particularly long.

The child-adaptor is very neat.Whip off the telescopic section of the adult boom (you don’t have to, but this reduces the length and weight of the machine), clamp the adaptor to the remaining boom and shorten the chain to suit.The child-adaptor has 110mm cranks, and together with the laid back position, enabled our five-year-old to pedal with real efficiency.

One way or another, the Pino will carry anyone from a child of four up to a full-size adult, but the conversion is a slow and rather fiddly process. Had you been – for instance – roaring around the country lanes on Sunday afternoon with the missus on board, you’d need 30 minutes on Monday morning to rejig it all for the school run.

Riding

We were warned that the Pino takes a bit of getting used to, which is true, but most people develop confidence within a kilometre or so.The only real problem is steering lock, which can be a bit limited with certain seat/handlebar positions, so it’s essential to check that you have sufficient lock before riding off.The need for plenty of steering movement becomes clear on the first wobbly corner/steep ascent, because the longish wheel base, and slightly odd geometry force you to do a lot of juggling with the controls to stay upright.

Different riders, and slight movement of the front seat or handlebars will affect the amount of steering available. If you’re the sort of person who checks your dipstick each morning, you’ll give the steering lock a brief inspection before setting off. If not, you may find yourself checking it in the middle of the first corner, as we generally did. A recipe for disaster.

Recumbent aficionados are a vociferous lot, but this sort of monster is inarguably cumbersome compared to your average 16-inch folder.That said, we did soon get the hang of it, but only by removing the toe-clips – at low speed and in traffic, you do not need a delay in getting your feet down.With practice, the turning circle is a little under 4.5 metres, which is jolly good, but as with the Space Shuttle, the speed and angle of re- entry must be be gauged with care or you’ll be off (again).

On the open road, the outfit nips along very well.Tyres are the well-respected (and by some, hero worshipped) Continental Top Touring. Energy consumption at higher speed felt somewhere between that of a conventional tandem and a recumbent, much as you might expect considering the riding position.The Shimano Deore derailleur gives 24 gears, and a range from 20 inches to 114 inches, which covers most eventualities. Actually, the low granny gear is less useful than it sounds, because on a steep slippery climb, the rear wheel soon loses traction, the steering flails about and it’s all over.

With the adult boom fitted (but not connected), the overall length becomes clear. Steering from behind the passenger takes a little getting used to.

Unusually, there’s a freewheel in the middle chainring, so the front-seated stoker can stop pedalling if they want.The good news is that the pilot can both see and hear this and issue orders accordingly – on the Pino, there is no escape from authority.

Equipment

The neat child adaptor puts a pair of 110mm cranks just where they’re needed

Brakes are Magura hydraulic discs front and rear, which is generally considered to be a state-of- the-art arrangement. Recumbents should do well in terms of absolute braking performance, because on a traditional upright bike you’ll be flying over the handlebars long before a really good braking system runs out of steam. Riding the Pino ‘one-up’, the problem is a little different, because the rider is too high, and too far back to get enough weight over the front wheel to do a really good stop.The rear brake achieves a creditable 0.4G, but the front wheel tends to lock suddenly and unpredictably at anything between 0.42G and 0.5G, depending on the road surface – loose material can be fatal. Obviously, things are better with a load on the front. Carrying a 14kg dead weight (as opposed to a wriggling one), the front brake hits 0.65G, but results are, again, very much dependent on the surface.With both wheels locked (quite exciting), we saw 0.67G a couple of times. An adult on the front would help, but bearing in mind the sudden and unpredictable nature of the front wheel lock-up, we were unwilling to try.

Compared to an upright bike, stability under braking is one of those swings and roundabouts situations: in extremis, the bike would be unlikely to pitch you over the handlebars (although it might, with a light captain and a heavy stoker), but more likely to lock the front wheel and deposit you sideways onto the road.

Being German, the Pino comes equipped for riding in ‘real’ conditions, with mudguards, a bell and a good dynamo lighting system:Toplight Standlicht on the front and Busch & Müller Lumotech at the rear. A word of warning – the front light is fixed to the adult boom, so regular child-carriers would need an alternative arrangement.

There’s a conventional rear rack, and a large box of groceries can be strapped into the front seat, so the Pino could handle a fairly bulky supermarket shop if required.

Conclusion

Being terribly mean, we’d find the price a bit scary, and lacking the space, we’d find a Pino a nuisance day-to-day. On the other hand, children love it, and we’d guess that even a teenager might agree to a Pino school run.We’ll let you know. For the suitably extrovert, this machine could solve all sorts of transport problems.

Specification

Hase Pino £2,315. Weight 25.4kg (56lb). Wheelbase 143.5cm. Length (c/w adult boom) 2.4m Gears Shimano Deore 3 x 9spd . Gear Ratios 20” – 114” . Manufacturer Hase Spezialräder web www.hasebikes.com mail info@hasebikes.com tel +49 2309 782582 fax +49 2309 782586

A to B 47 – April 2005