pumpkinslayer | RandoTips

My First Impressions of the Dahon Speed Comp

Well over the weekend I managed to get hold of my first real folding bike. The impression so far has been good, but many of my concerns about these small bikes are still there.

My only experience with folding bikes in the past was a sub-NTD2000 ($60) bike which was kinda fun, but so flexy and small that it was no good for any distance further than the end of the block. That gave me the impression that they’re all like that.

I was wrong. Here’s why.

First Impression

The first thing I noticed is that the bike is pretty light, with everything smaller than a normal bike it ends up being on the light side. It’s not as light as a well-specced road bike, but for a small frame made from 4130 chromoly and a seatpost to match, there is a good balance.

I was going to talk about body position and setup on such a small bike, but will save that for a later post.

All that I need to say for now is that for commuting it is a comfy position. I’ve set the handlebars to the same height as the saddle, which is a little more relaxed than my main bike.

Overview

The bike features the following bits and pieces:

folding frame (made of Chromoly 4130)
foldable pedals
double chainring (39/56)
eight speed rear cassette (with MTB ratio)
grip shift (three speed front shifter for only two chainrings? odd.)
16″ wheels
front and rear fenders
straight-pull brakes
dia-compe levers
ergonomic grips
curvy downhill-style handlebars (with less width)
massive, long seatpost
saddle with beam
rear rack
front/rear reflectors

Gearing

With two chainrings up front and an 8-speed MTB cassette at the rear, you get 16 gears to choose from. Plenty for city riding and commuting. These give a lot of range for climbing some smallish hills and moving along at cruising pace of up to 40km/h.

But I have a gripe. Of course I do.

Through the city I usually maintain a 20-25km/h pace, which is a balance between not going too slowly and not breaking into a torrential downpour of sweat. At this speed I am firmly in the bigger chainring and shifting amongst the middle cogs at the back.

But the mountain bike cassette has too much range. The lowest combination on this bike would be suitable climbing very steep hills, and I mean spinning the cranks while going at 5km/h sort of hills.

Just not necessary.

I’d rather have a road cassette with much closer gears for a lot of variety in the 13-28km/h range. The gaps between gears at the moment are just a bit too big.

With that said, the gearing all works as advertised. The front shifting is very stiff and takes a heavy twist to get to the big chainring. The rear shifting is smooth and precise.

Handling

There is inherently less stability when using smaller wheels. That’s one of those scientific things that teams of people in lab coats have spent years analyzing and found to be true.

Larger wheels roll better, roll over bumps better, give slightly better power output and are more stable at speed. Smaller wheels are lighter and more maneuverable.

I was actually expecting the steering and handling to be worse than it turned out to be.

My unscientific test (I should get a lab coat for authority) of stability is riding hands free. That balancing turned out to be very difficult, but doable. On an MTB or road bike you can keep riding without hands until you run out of road or trail. The effort to stay upright was almost not worth it as the constant counter balancing was very tiring. It is still doable however.

It should also be noted that one side effect of the small wheels is that although the overall size can okay after adjustment you are still perched very high the wheel hubs, which might be a contributing factor in the lowered stability. But that is inherent in the design, so I can’t really fault it for that.

Bumps are not fun and the super long stem and seatpost amplify the effect of stutter bumps on roads. Even at a measly 25km/h I felt something would break or I’d lose control. The leverage makes those bumps very much bigger and I’d warn you to ride them carefully, something akin to the lightweight riding style for cross-country mountain biking would do fine.

Braking

Well, I stopped. Good enough?

Not quite. The little wheels are not perfectly round which is not unusual for many wheels. They take a pounding over time, they’re not built quite right and they just end up slightly unround or not straight.

Unfortunately the same leverage that comes through when hitting bumps also comes through when braking. Just a small imperfection in the rims makes the braking very stuttery. This is mostly solved with a good wheel truing. If you can do that yourself, great, if not, it might be worth having a decent wheelbuilder tension the spokes correctly and work out any slight imperfections in the wheels before putting the bike into heavy use.

Having become accustomed to the feel and power of disk brakes, these do feel a little less powerful, but great for the slower speeds the bike is intended for.

Folding

I still haven’t figured it out.

I tried without the manual and was a little confused. “It’s not really that small,” was my first thought.

Well, as it turns out I’ve only had to fold it twice so far. Claimed folding time is less than two minutes.

I still have a soft spot for the Strida folding bike simply because of its super foldability. This doesn’t fold up as easily as the Strida’s 15 seconds, nor as small, but does give a range of gears that the Strida doesn’t.

Comfort

The ergonomic grips were good on my hands, giving support where needed.

The saddle is soft enough and well designed. Softer than a race seat, but not a big cushion. I’d say it’s a racing-shaped seat with cushion-like padding. Comfortable after and hour of riding.

The riding position is relaxed. If it doesn’t feel relaxed, get your local bike shop to help you out with that.

Who is this bike for?

Considering the makeup of the components and the price and quality of the bike, it would be ideal for a regular commuter who covers up to 10km on their daily commute.

It’s not a cheap bike, which puts it out of the bargain bike range, but it won’t be suitable for longer riding like touring. Big bikes are always more comfortable for longer rides, but if regular folding and transporting on public transport is required, this bike would do the trick and do it comfortably.

Step Into the Light – A Short Guide to Bike Lights

photo credit: richardmasoner

After two rides that ended up in total darkness it’s about time I took a look at lights.

Lights have become an accessory for bikes. Years ago it wasn’t like that.

When you buy a car or motorbike no-one says, “Would you like lights with that?” Somehow it has fallen out of fashion to have lights on bikes, when in fact they are very useful and a very important part of night-riding safety.

Why no lights?

The reason there are no lights most likely comes down to fashion.

As bikes became more and more hi-tech and racers migrated from being great all-round athletes who would go huge distances without support so the bikes adapted to meet that purpose. People would inevitably want a bike like their favorite rider, so slowly the “cool” bikes were made without adequate clearance for fenders (or even slightly wider tires), without eyelets for racks and without lights as standard.

So the vast majority started to do without them and now they have become an add-on part, not considered as part of a standard bike.

Which is a bit of a pity.

It keeps people from riding at night because you have to get something else to make it safe. That then means more expense which most people don’t really need.

So if you want to ride at night anywhere outside the city, where that inescapable glow starts to disappear, then you better get some. Although the options are not huge, there is a lot of quality stuff around, for the best you’d have to do some searching though.

Which lights?

The answer seemed pretty obvious to me before: whatever they sell at the bike shop.

But this does not start to cover the vast range of lights for those who spend more than just a few hours riding their bikes at night each year.

My typical setup in the past has been (usually Cateye brand)…

Front light – usually with 3 or 4 batteries, previously halogen bulbs, more recent years it’s LED
Rear flashing light – 3 to 5 LED lights, usually powered by 2 batteries

A full charge will give quite a few bright hours on the front light and many more hours of “just enough”. The rear one will flash for a lot longer before needing replacement.

Beyond these I have had a dual-light with big rechargeable battery before which gave a decent amount of light for a pitch-black 5km tunnel ride before the tunnel was officially opened. Being of the older Halogen-bulb sort, the battery would not even last two hours with both lights on.

Enter the dynamo

In Germany, every bike sold is required to have a dynamo (front hub that generates electricity) and front and rear lights. And that is by law. And enforced.

So that’s a good place to start.

Having to install these things on every bike for such a long time, a huge number of high-quality front hub dynamos are produced in Germany.

The first thing that came to mind was exploding lightbulbs. But thanks to much improved technology and electronics the better dynamos will not destroy any lights as they are limited by electrical circuits and the power produced is smoothed off too.

They’ve also become more efficient. Almost to the point where it would not be noticeable. I mean like less then 5 minutes lost through inefficiency for every ten hours of riding, and for the amount of light they can produce it beats carrying a big, fat, heavy battery for the whole trip. You’re also saving the environment by saving batteries and you get that tingly feeling of self-sufficiency.

Lights

Along with everything else, the lights have taken a few big steps in their efficiency and maximum output potential. The most notable difference is the introduction of LEDs. With up to 50,000 hours of use compared to a few hundred hours for halogen bulbs, there is a lot to like. They also use less power than halogens.

They also come in a huge range of shapes and sizes too most of my information comes from Peter White Cycles headlight page where he covers the spill of the lights and a lot of information for anyone looking to compare lights.

For the moment

I am still to pour any big amount of money into lights. That was my intention, but I’ve been less drawn to investigating recently.

The main drawback has been the price. Most of these products are from smaller companies who specialize in these parts, which makes them expensive, or at least out of touch with the currency of Taiwan. For some items the price is only suitable for an enthusiast with money to spare.

So if you’re doing any night riding, make sure you’re kitted out with the right lights for your rig.

The Broken Seatpost

I take a long time to learn my lesson.

There are plenty of documented times when bike maintenance should have been done, but didn’t get done, resulting in a not-so-good ride. There are other times when I’ve done some slightly crazier offroad riding and broken parts, which is to be expected, and that is all in good fun.

But this time the blame falls squarely on crappy bike parts.

The Start

I was heading off on a ride early in the morning, I started at 4:15, which was a little later than planned, but that’s par for the course.

The destination was the 600m peak of the hill between Shrding and Pinglin on the 106A. To get there I had to head off towards Nangang, pass by Academia Sinica Road then head on.

Now, the most obvious way to Shrding is by going over the 109, but I wanted to try something new. With Google street view on hand I planned a decent looking route over a smaller road that would achieve the same elevation, but add some variety to my ride.

A Little Lost

The main turnoff to the road up the hill was where the Google car had decided to go the other way, so I was on my own to figure out which roads went where.

I made it through the first intersection unscathed, keeping to the left and avoiding a detour to a deadend in the middle of nowhere. But my luck would change.

Later I was faced with a similar choice.

The road to the right didn’t seem to have any more lights while the road that dropped sharply to the left was well lit. So I took the path down.

Grab a Fistful

Something I love about roads in Taiwan is that there is no maximum grade. If that’s where the road has to go, then that’s where it has to go.

Back in South Africa there were some steep hills, but they were all limited in how much they would challenge my breaks when needed.

So on the way down this “little” road down I ended up braking so hard that I had to carefully alternate front and rear brakes to give them time to recover from the glazing over that occurs during heavy, continuous braking.

And…

It was the wrong turn…

just a dead end…

should’ve taken the other turn, so I had to slog back up after trying to check my location on the map (BTW a map on your phone is only really useful if you have a GPS to pinpoint your location, duh, I don’t have a GPS).

So up I went, kept following the road, the lights returned and then I started heading down.

The Bang

Riding in the dark requires and abnormal amount of trust in the state of the road you are riding on.

Very few bike lights will light up enough road to allow for evasive maneuvers when travelling at 30kmph+

So I was following the road as usual, keeping to the parts of the road I could see, or at the very least not riding off the edge of the road.

When I spotted a construction team I had to change tact and move left into a darker area….

Whack…

Slide…

Quick recover…

Although my front wheel made a big move to the right I did manage to stabilize and continue.

But something wasn’t right. The saddle felt strange. I put it down to the seat being shifted slightly during the little incident that just occurred. I continued, and finished a wonderful ride to the top of the big hill.

Holiday Time!

So I headed back to the office and went off to the Taipei main station for a slightly early holiday (on a Thursday, a got the day wrong in the video).

Disassembling my bike outside the bus terminal and shock and horror I see my seatpost is bent, no quick realignment of the saddle needed, but a full replacement of the seatpost. And this is the third one I’ve had that’s bent, just none of the others have bent so far.

The insanity is that until more recently Giant have insisted on installing 27.2mm seatposts with a big old shim, whereas the inner diameter of the seat tube is actually made for a 30.9mm seatpot without a shim. Dumb, dumb, dumb, raise the skinny one to a height suitable for me, put my fat ass on the saddle and the poor seatpost doesn’t have a chance.

Well, all should be good and well in seatpost land from now on.

Here’s hoping.