A few price adjustments for overseas subscribers. In the current jargon, this might be described as enhanced customer choice, but all it really means is a price increase. Due to unreliable delivery and increased costs, we’re no longer sending magazines by surface mail. However, economies of scale have enabled us to reduce the airmail rate from £19 to £17.50. Great news if you’re buying in pounds, but not so good in US dollars, because the current exchange rate puts the price right back up again. Ah well, it’ll all come out in the wash.
A particularly full magazine this time – revised Brompton, new Sturmey Archer 8-speed hub, new folding electric bike (don’t get too excited), a review of 16-inch tyres and a great deal more, naturally. How do we do it for £12/£17.50?
Several problems with renewals lately – if yours is due, it should say so on the envelope, and there should be a little form inside the magazine. This time, we’ve also enclosed a red subscription flyer for everyone.This does not mean your subscription is due, but do please pass it on to someone who would appreciate the A to B message!
The image of the school-run 4×4 is an enduring one. Range Rovers, Shoguns and Land Cruisers may seem like gas- guzzling bad jokes, but as this book by American journalist Keith Bradsher shows, the laugh is on all other road users, not to mention the entire planet. Working as The New York Times’ man in Detroit, Bradsher was well placed to knock down a few SUV myths. Like safety. SUVs have four-wheel-drive and are built like small trucks, so it stands to reason they are safer than flimsy economy cars (not to mention cycles and scooters).The reality is that they’re less stable than cars, so are more prone to roll-over accidents. And if they hit a smaller vehicle, they can crush it, and its occupants. Pedestrians and cyclists get sucked underneath. For every life saved by an SUV calculates Bradsher, five are lost.
My wife owns a SolarTracker SLB electric bike – a special model with 20-inch wheels introduced for riders of smaller stature. She’s a volunteer helper at Age Concern and once, sometimes twice, a week, is a DJ/night leader for hospital radio in King’s Lynn, which necessitates riding home very late at night. She does the twenty-mile round trip into King’s Lynn several times a week and at first was delighted with the bike, but now we’re not so pleased.
I’ve recently come across a ‘Minifold’ bike. It measures little more than 36 inches in length, has a cast aluminium frame, and tyres and wheels from a Raleigh kids bike circa 1960. I suspect this is an expensive and sophisticated prototype – the wheelbase is too short, and the ride terrible. I think it has a Swindon connection, possibly from the Vickers aircraft factory. If anyone has any information, could they please contact me at Cyclecare Purton.
Tim Whitty, Cyclecare
“I was interested to see the solar electric recumbent in A to B 38. It occurred to me that if you could power a recumbent tricycle with two solar panels, one could probably power an electric rickshaw with three or four such panels?”
Clearly, in this case, we’re looking at a very much smaller power requirement, from a correspondingly small solar panel. First let’s look a bit more closely at the power demands of a bicycle front light. A typical conventional or halogen filament bulb for a bicycle front lamp consumes two watts.That’s manageable, but realistically, few people would want to carry around a solar panel large enough to provide that sort of power, so we need slightly cleverer technology to reduce the energy demand. Fortunately, as regular readers will be aware, Light Emitting Diodes are advancing very rapidly and can now provide an adequate light output with much lower power consumption.
Multi-speed hubs have a long, and not particularly glorious past. Just about every bicycle hub gear (and most automatic cars, trucks and trains) involves an epicyclic gear system – a set of ‘planet’ gears whirling about a central gear, called the ‘sun’ for equally obvious reasons.
Although Sturmey held some key 8-speed patents, development work was shunted into a siding following the company’s collapse and eventual acquisition by Taiwanese company Sunrace. Consequently, Shimano was first out of the starting blocks with an 8- speed hub in 2003.
The story has it that American recumbent manufacturer Vision developed a small race- bred tyre, and licensed the technology to Cheng Shin in Taiwan, who succeeded in producing an everyday racing tyre for an everyday road price.The magic ingredients were a near-slick tread, and strong, but paper-thin reinforced sidewalls that rolled and flexed much better than the conventional kind, yet lasted almost as long.What also impressed about the Primo was its strikingly low weight of 201g a tyre – a saving of no less than 137g over a Raleigh Record. As if by magic, small wheeled bikes started to go much, much faster, and weigh less too. Strangely enough, considering the Primo’s light, supple construction, the tyres proved to be relatively puncture-proof, and (on tarmac, at least) the lack of tread has no negative effects. Needless to say, this is not a tyre for muddy or loose surfaces, and the sidewalls will be damaged if used with a dynamo, but the Primo remains a firm favourite with some.They’re surprisingly hard wearing too. With care (ie, no dynamo and no riding whilst flat), a Primo should last up to 3,000 miles and puncture around every 1,000. Eventually, the sidewalls become a bit frail, and cuts in the tread harbour glass and flint shards, causing more regular punctures.
By the late 1990s so many Brompton customers were fitting their own Primo tyres that Brompton decided to develop a road version for themselves. After a number of experiments, the now familiar ‘snakeskin’ tread pattern first appeared in early 2000 and was soon standard on all Brompton models, apart from the lowly C3.
The Marathon is a newish tyre, allegedly developed from the long-established Swallow, which sold here back in the days when the Brits were a bit suspicious of the Germans and preferred to buy products with British-sounding names. Still, we’re all friends now, eh?
The Stelvio is considerably narrower than the 37mm tyres, but as it retains the same ‘aspect ratio’ (ie, ratio of width to height), it also has a smaller overall diameter.The tyre will stretch to fit the 20mm rims fitted to the Brompton and most other 16-inch bikes these days, but the reduced tyre diameter means you’ll have to recalibrate your speedometer, and accept slightly lower gearing.
Briefly, nothing folds smaller (without exception), no other 16-inch folder rides so well (without exception, unless the Russians have produced something we haven’t seen yet), and nothing folds so neatly and so fast.These are the killer attributes that have made the Brompton the commuter bike par excellence and kept the order books full for this small British company, now possibly the largest bicycle manufacturer (as opposed to assembler – ie, bolting on bits) in the UK. One could argue that Pashley still has the Post Office bike contract and the Taiwanese claim to be making things, rather than assembling them, in the Welsh valleys these days, but enough hair-splitting.
We thought we’d need a micrometer to spot the change, but with the bike unfolded, it leaps out at you.Where the curved section of the frame tube used to reach almost to the handlebar stem, the straight bits either side of the hinge give the bike a noticeably different form.
We mentioned this back in October, and although it may not sound the most exciting advance, CAD techniques have enabled the Brompton boffins to reduce the weight of the front pannier bag frame from 690g to 400g.This substantial cut has been achieved through a mixture of light alloy tubes and nylon castings. It’s all very high-tech and Bromptonesque, and makes a noticeable difference to the weight of the pannier bag.With the panniers down in price to £40 – £70 (according to spec, and including the new frame) there’s never been a better time to upgrade that front luggage. If you have a serviceable bag already, the new frame costs about £25.50 on its own.
The dynamo lights on the Brompton have changed out of all recognition in the last few years. Early dynamos whined and seized, while dim bulbs fought to provide illumination.The arrival of a Basta LED rear light and halogen front lamp brought a dramatic improvement a few years ago, and there’s now an Axa HR dynamo too. It’s hard to say how useful this is, but it’s quiet, it rolls easily, and light output, even at low speed, is excellent.
Another small, but worthwhile development. A tiny plastic rod is fixed into the brake calliper and the previously exposed inner cable is protected from the elements by a flexible rubber gaiter. Brompton brake cables are prone to water ingress because the cables point upwards, so this tiny change should help improve cable life and braking performance on all-weather bikes. Unfortunately, older bikes can only be upgraded by drilling the calliper, but the gaiters cost only £1.50 each.
A long long overdue change – the handlebar locking catch has been replaced with a new design that should help to keep the folded handlebars under control, and prevent them flying open at inconvenient moments. A great safety upgrade for older bikes at £3.71, and highly recommended.
This review was published in February 2004. The Bliss has long since disappeared, and electric bikes have changed a great deal. Interesting historical item though!
This is the neat bit.The brushless DC motor measures only 130mm in diameter, and 100mm in width. So if the engineers at Pashley, Brompton or Dahon are reading, yes, this sort of thing could be squeezed into the front wheel of your folding bikes. At a rated output of 180 watts, it’s not particularly powerful, but the peak power of 288 watts at 8mph is useful enough, and combined with the low gearing, gives the Bliss a capacity to climb just about anything, albeit at a fairly sedate speed. The motor doesn’t so much buzz or whine, as emit a pleasantly high-tech harmonic, just like state-of-the-art Millennial machines are supposed to do.
The Lowlander leaves London at close to midnight, splitting and arriving in both Glasgow and Edinburgh just after 7am, while the Highland portions leave London at 9.05pm as one massive 16-coach train (currently the longest scheduled passenger service on Britain’s railways) before splitting at Edinburgh into more manageable chunks. Despite a leisurely schedule, arrival times are 7.35 in Aberdeen, 8.30 in Inverness, and 9.43am in Fort William. Coming the other way, all trains are scheduled to arrive in London between 7.30 and 8am, making the sleeper something of a favourite with businessmen facing an early meeting in the capital.
In the south of England, Rogart would be considered a hamlet, but in Highland terms, it’s quite a regional centre, with a good pub/restaurant and the sort of general store that stocks everything from bootlaces to smoked salmon. For walkers, the moors and peaks are just off the station platform, and we spent many happy hours dodging sleet showers to peer down at our tiny carriage from wind-blasted peaks with unpronounceable names. For cyclists, all roads except the A9 are quiet, back roads virtually car-free, and the local drivers courteous without exception.The easiest ride of all is to take the train ten miles up the valley to Lairg and cruise back: down hill all the way, with a prevailing tailwind.
How do you explain Jan Lundberg? He isn’t at all what one would expect from his family background. What do you say about a man who has torn up his driveway and planted a vegetable garden in its place? Perhaps he is just odd, or maybe it is because he lives in Arcata, California, a small town in the far northern part of the state. Arcata is in redwood country – cool, damp and foggy. Life among the redwood trees takes some strange turns for some people. It has happened before.