Kell
Veteran
- Location
- High Wycombe/London
I've got the standard marathons on mine and not had a puncture in 2,000 miles of commuting in London. (Almost guaranteed to get one tonight now.)
As for price, From memory, mine came out at £1,080 and I paid the £80 cash as a deposit to secure the order of the bike and then paid the balance with the £1,000 from Ride to work. (Actually, it wasn't ride to work, it was another scheme, the name of which escapes me right now.)
I went for the 6-speed because of my journey at the 'home' end of the commute. I live in high Wycombe and often have to climb a pretty steep hill on my way home. To give you an idea of how steep, I normally top at 44mph coming down it, but average about 4mph going up it.
Otherwise 3-speeds might have been enough, but I'd have had to go for one which had a higher top end speed. I know this as I hired one for about a month from the docks in Ealing (there are others and there may be one near you: https://www.bromptonbikehire.com/) and found that I was spinning out far too easily. They are all fairly standard 3-speed M-types, so it might be worth hiring one to see if you feel the gearing is right, too low, not enough range etc. It's £2.50 a day and you can keep the bike for as long as you want. I used the one I hired for about a month while mine was being built.
Alternatively, if you can get to the Brompton Junction in Covent garden, you can take out various combinations of bar type and gears, but I found it was hard to tell which suited on a 2-minute jaunt around the block.
As for bars, I found due to my height that an M type was probably the best fit, but I didn't like the look. So I ordered an H type (even higher) and fitted low riser bars to it. The result is something that's a little higher than an S and a little lower than an M. It's ended up with the bar height being the same as the seat height which, at my age (and 'what with my back') is very useful, but still allows me to press on a bit. you can do the same by starting off with an S Type, but I was worried about the cables being too short, and whether or not it would fold properly. The H type has the fold slightly higher up, so the higher bars don't scrape the ground.
Here's what mine looked like on ordering:
And after some 'fettling':
Also, this is the diagram I used to help me come to the conclusion that an H'-ype would work best for my plans:
As for price, From memory, mine came out at £1,080 and I paid the £80 cash as a deposit to secure the order of the bike and then paid the balance with the £1,000 from Ride to work. (Actually, it wasn't ride to work, it was another scheme, the name of which escapes me right now.)
I went for the 6-speed because of my journey at the 'home' end of the commute. I live in high Wycombe and often have to climb a pretty steep hill on my way home. To give you an idea of how steep, I normally top at 44mph coming down it, but average about 4mph going up it.
Otherwise 3-speeds might have been enough, but I'd have had to go for one which had a higher top end speed. I know this as I hired one for about a month from the docks in Ealing (there are others and there may be one near you: https://www.bromptonbikehire.com/) and found that I was spinning out far too easily. They are all fairly standard 3-speed M-types, so it might be worth hiring one to see if you feel the gearing is right, too low, not enough range etc. It's £2.50 a day and you can keep the bike for as long as you want. I used the one I hired for about a month while mine was being built.
Alternatively, if you can get to the Brompton Junction in Covent garden, you can take out various combinations of bar type and gears, but I found it was hard to tell which suited on a 2-minute jaunt around the block.
As for bars, I found due to my height that an M type was probably the best fit, but I didn't like the look. So I ordered an H type (even higher) and fitted low riser bars to it. The result is something that's a little higher than an S and a little lower than an M. It's ended up with the bar height being the same as the seat height which, at my age (and 'what with my back') is very useful, but still allows me to press on a bit. you can do the same by starting off with an S Type, but I was worried about the cables being too short, and whether or not it would fold properly. The H type has the fold slightly higher up, so the higher bars don't scrape the ground.
Here's what mine looked like on ordering:
And after some 'fettling':
Also, this is the diagram I used to help me come to the conclusion that an H'-ype would work best for my plans:
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