Family Folding Bike from Taiwan in Chicago

As I rode past a playground on my way to work today I came across a great bike for carrying two kids and an adult. SRS is a Taiwanese manufacturer of folding bikes and this one is their family model. The owner was there and explained he had bought it in Taiwan and that he carried his two children on it, ages 3 and 5. It rides well, he said, and was not too expensive. And he told me that bikes like this are common there but unavailable here.  With some lights and some way to carry a backpack or two this could be the perfect bike for the school run.  There are other manufacturers of similar bikes and even electric drive options.

basic 21 speed Shimano Tourney derailer gear system, hi-ten steel frame,
small wheels for easy storage and transport. The rear wheel
is suspended almost like a Brompton or similar folding bike but the hinge
is in the frame in front of the bottom bracket and the bike folds like a Dahon.
The front wheel has a simple suspension at the top of the fork.

The front child seat has footrests and is height adjustable,
with a little handlebar to grab attached in front. 
The whole top bar with seat and handle pops off to fold the bike.
The bike maker provides a LED light/horn combo to entertain the rider.
The second child sits on the rear rack seat.

From the manufacturer's website,
this is what it looks like in your car trunk or closet.

If bikes like this are available elsewhere I'm not sure why they are not sold in Chicago. Simple, practical and inexpensive, with basic but functional components, this kind of bike could make transportation easier for plenty of Chicago families. 

Another Odd Raleigh Folding Bike for Kids 9-90

Our 9 year old's NEW 1966 Raleigh RSW16 Compact folding bicycle, seat in lowest position

The Raleigh RSW16 (Raleigh Small Wheel), made 1965 - 1974, preceded the better-known Raleigh Twenty (our post about it) by half a decade. It was an attempt to get in on the popularity of the original 1962 Moulton small wheel bike. There is a long interesting story about the end of Raleigh by Tony Hadland in books and on his blog, and on the Retro Raleighs section of Sheldon Brown's site. After a year of building the RSW16 as a fixed frame, a folding version, the Compact, was developed so that cyclists could carry their bikes in the back of their little British 1960s car. There was also a 14 inch version, the RSW14. Both of these little bikes will work for any rider from about 9 years or 4½ feet / 135cm tall, up to perhaps 6 feet / 180 cm.

Our RSW16 Compact is from 1966 and was sold in Washington DC according to the dealer's sticker.  They originally came with cream colored Dunlop 16 x 2 inch tires which had very supple sidewalls, in an attempt to make up for the lack of the Moulton's full suspension system. You can see these on Sheldon Brown's bike. Dunlop is long out of the bike tire business but 16 inch BMX tires still fit. We found some Maxxis Hookworms. They ride more stiffly and a little less fashionably than the originals, most likely, but they are available.

It also originally came with a white vinyl Brooks mattress seat, famous for ripping apart at the seam, and that's probably what happened to the one on this bike.  Even the (ugly) seat it has now is probably at least as good.

Is it really smaller folded

 than it is unfolded?

The folding system, described by Raleigh as being 'like a shotgun', involves pushing that flap just above the bottom bracket against the seat tube and lifting the seat while pushing the handlebars down. It clicks closed.  There's a photo of the warning decal below.



The handlebars also need to be folded down and the seat lowered as much as possible. The cream colored reflectorless pedals don't fold and the whole package flops around when carried, but I guess it fits in the car better.

The handlebars can be folded (utterly uselessly) into an intermediate straight bar position that looks wonderful for smaller riders until you actually try it.

Another step downward and the handlebars look like this. Undo the quick release seat tube lever and you're ready to fold the frame and pop it into the boot of your Morris Minor.








These are actually not terrible little bikes. There is a Sturmey-Archer AW 3 speed hub without a coaster brake, shifted with a then-newly developed handle grip twist shift (before the Shimano 333 grip that's on the left side?) and the brakes are surprisingly good for a Raleigh.

The front brake is pretty standard Raleigh. But despite the steel rims and the plain rubber pads, the rear brake really works well. It has a design that looks like a 1980s mountain bike brake, behind the bottom bracket, and the crossed levers amplify the braking.

The knob at the top of the stem is used to loosen the
handlebars so they can be folded

That huge oddly shaped rear rack was intended for a bag made of plaid or white vinyl around a lightweight plywood frame. The bag clamped between one of the wires at the front of the rack and a spring-loaded wire in the back. The sprung section still pulls out on ours (often this is rusted shut on others) but without the special bag it's not a very useful rack. We will probably try to fit angled steel brackets onto a milk crate or similar to take advantage of the connection system. The rack doesn't hold panniers very well at all.

To be safe for riding nowadays this bike still needs better visibility. There are neither pedal, wheel nor front reflectors and there is no lighting. A bell has been added and the rest will have to follow. We'll likely swap out the ugly new seat for an ugly old one, too.

I enjoyed riding my son's RSW16 Compact with its zippy small wheel maneuverability, though it is rather heavy and unwieldy to carry. It's got a real 1960s design feeling that may be the best part of the whole bike. Though it's fun enough for an adult, our 9 year old spent the morning zipping around on  the RSW and says "it's great!" What more do I need to tell you?

More on Folding Bikes

edited 9/2017

OK, so it might not be the best way to carry your kids and stuff around town, but a folding bike is unbeatable if you want to move quickly and flexibly around a city. We use one every day because of its versatility. You can take it on a bus, subway or El, Metra or in the back of your car. You can bring it in the building and hide it in a closet, under a desk, or near your knee. It can be in your apartment while other bikes are being stolen or destroyed by weather on the street. You can carry it if you need to or ride it and beat the cars, buses and taxis. Why doesn’t everyone have a folding bike?

For carrying kids, we already have a post, and we really do carry kids on a folding Bike Friday sometimes (though it doesn’t fold when the seat is on it). There are people who use ItChairs to carry kids on their Bromptons. (in fact, 9/2017, we've been using one for a couple years now - it fits kids in a pinch up to age 9 or so! Available if nowhere else from Cap Problema in Barcelona, Spain, the manufacturer) We’ve figured out ways to carry kids on Birdys and Dahons and probably on those knockoff Tern copies of Dahons. These things are more versatile than you think when you buy one.

But the real place these things shine is in the daily commuting, carrying stuff around with one person category. Going to work every day? Why not take a folding bike?  We’ve tried a lot of them over the years, and including things in storage or gone, we’ve had experience with Bromptons, Birdys, a Raleigh 20, a couple of different Bikes Friday; we’ve had a good look at Dahon and Tern, old rounded Euro “Falträder" or "Klappräder,” Worksman folders, and a few others. We haven’t had a ride yet on a Strida, nor one of those modern Giant/Schwinn/Trek folders. (9/2017: We did get on a Swift recently - available in steel from NYC and aluminum from Asia but, stable though it is, it rides only OK and just does not fold small enough to be worth it.) There are good comparisons among them from a dealer in New York, NYCE wheels.

Any of these will fit in a car trunk or a train car and any will be tolerable to ride from a cheap faraway parking place to the Chicago Loop or from a train stop to your company’s building. The prices range from dirt cheap (used loop frame 1970s Faltrad)  through $200 (Dahon Boulevard on special or used) to $1300 (midrange new Brompton) to even several thousand dollars (titanium anything, a new fancy Birdy,  Moulton [disassemblable not foldable, $16,000 for some] etc). There’s a guy who makes Brompton-like titanium bikes with Rohloff gears but who wants to put that much into a bike? (9/2017: there's a company on Kisckstarter from Toronto that's starting to make titanium folding bikes that are lighter and smaller than the others - haven't seen it yet in person) 

Many of these brands make less expensive basic models and also do more costly versions, custom built bikes that have the components and frame size you specify. This can be wonderful for riders who are shorter or taller than usual or who have unusual proportions of arm and leg lengths. Maybe one would fit your kid well. Any of these bikes are usable, but only some are enjoyable to ride, only some really fold up well, and only some can easily carry things. 

Since they don’t all do everything, you should ask yourself what it is you need to do with your folding bike. Some, like the racier Birdy or Bike Friday models and Moulton, are sold as replacement performance road bikes that are easier to transport, perhaps for taking with you on a vacation. They say that the low wind resistance makes them faster. Jan Heine didn't agree in Bicycle Quarterly but they are pretty racy bikes. Some are geared to bicycle touring. Others, like Brompton, are optimized more for multimodal commuting — riding the bike to a bus or train, then again from the station to your destination and back. And there are those that are just plain bikes but fit in a car trunk or closet better than most, like the Raleigh 20 ("Shopper") or Worksman (two models), or that Swift. 

Airplane Transport

Bike Friday in particular has specialized in this market niche, and all their bikes can be ordered with a suitcase that is ideally suited to protecting the folded bike and which can be easily converted to a bike trailer for touring or just luggage transport. These are great at what they do, though in our experience we could get an old Birdy into a smaller suitcase than the Bike Friday. 

1/2 folded- stem and bars come
off too but then dangle oddly

The trailer conversion kit (the wheels and trailer arm) is costly ($230) but hard to duplicate; to save money though, a similar suitcase can be bought cheaply in a thrift shop and you can use plastic plumbing parts to make the center support that protects the bike from being crushed. Bike Friday has really thought out the flying-to-bike-touring thing.

Lightweight and fun to ride

Bike Fridays themselves are nice to ride, as comfortable and versatile as a full sized bike, and they can be custom ordered or simply adjusted to feel sporty like your favorite road bike or upright like a good city bike. Most models can hold panniers front and rear (with an optional rack) and we had no trouble attaching baby seats. A New World Tourist with a baby seat was our favorite combination for a long time. Components and frame dropouts are almost all standard sized and easily replaced. You can only put on a generator light system with a lot of difficulty if you don’t have a front dynamo hub; the back light goes best on the seat post. Bike Friday prides itself on customer service, and they can almost get pushy sometimes helping you out (in a good way). And they can build (in America) those incredible tandems that fold into suitcases, including some that carry more than two people. Rapid Transit was the dealer in Chicago but now they are closed and you have to contact the manufacturer. 

The disadvantage of Bike Fridays is that most models don’t really fold up quickly or tiny and the resulting package has bits and pieces hanging off at odd angles. They addressed this a bit with the Tikit, a smaller wheeled quick folding model, but though it’s a good bike in many ways it is still an unwieldy folded package in our opinion and a little unreliable in the durability region. You might be able to use one for multimodal commuting — I wouldn’t try that with a New World Tourist type model — but then the Tikit doesn’t do the fly-to-touring thing as well.

They all have full suspension

new Birdys are a little different

Other bikes can be taken on airplanes pretty easily too. The Birdy fits in a suitcase with about as much trouble as the Bike Friday (take off wheels, pedals,etc), the Brompton just folds up normally and goes in a cardboard box (or an optional Brompton bag or suitcase that is not a trailer unless you modify it), Dahons, Terns, Giant/Trek/etc and Raleigh 20s and so on can all fly with various levels of protection in their transport bags or in bike boxes but it’s not their strong point. Here's a guy who made his R20 into a suitcase folder though.

Birdy in a Dahon bag

Multimodal Commuting
Though many of these bikes are used for this purpose, lots of them fold up into packages with loose bits or odd unwieldy pieces hanging off, so they are hard to carry well. The Bike Friday or Birdy are prime examples of this. You can more quickly fold a Dahon into a smallish space and put it in a bag, but even this can look like Carol Burnett or Dick van Dyke fighting a folding ironing board and losing. Any of these will work, and some (Tikit, Dahon) will work well, but on a crowded bus absolutely nothing we’ve seen beats a Brompton. Bromptons of all varieties fit into the same dense tiny package very quickly, no odd things dangle off, there is a convenient handle (the front of the seat), and the dirty bits are all inside the center of the package, so you don’t get grease on your clothes or on the guy next to you on the train. 

Bromptons are also the only folding bike that’s not a pain to fold — owners are always folding and unfolding them to show people. (Tikits come close) They come semicustom, ordered with colors and components you like and then built by hand in England and sent to you, which takes a month or two, or you can get a pre-ordered model from the local dealer (Comrade Cycles in Chicago; then Harris Cyclery (Boston area) and C.M. Wasson (San Francisco area) are big dealers, and there are many more listed on Brompton’s website). After riding Bromptons since 1999, we recommend specifying one with full fenders but no back rack, a front carry bag, a Shimano (cheaper but almost as nice as SON) dynamo hub, and either 2 or 6 gears since the tiny derailer weighs nothing. We'd replace the lamps with a B&M Cyo and a Topline Plus. Normal gearing (rather than 12% or 18% lower) is fine on the new bikes. Peter White Cycles sells a SON Brompton front wheel (down the page) that's worth a look and Cap Problema in Barcelona has some neat add ons. 

Though you can use Ortlieb Frontroller type panniers (as in the photos) on the Brompton back rack, they drag on corners sometimes (wear out) and the Brompton front carry bag is much better. It holds a ton of weight, especially the old Carradice type bags with welded steel frames, but it doesn’t affect handling or steering much at all. The Ortlieb bags are waterproof. Panniers on small wheel bikes tend to get into your heel space, too, so try them before you buy them. 

Strida makes a unique bike that after many model improvements is reportedly tolerable to ride now, though we’ve never ridden one. They do fold into a long thing like a baby stroller and we have seen them on transit. The owners have told us generally that they work well for this but that they aren’t the best bicycle for riding comfort on longer stretches.

With a nylon or Ikea type bag upside down over your bike for more cleanliness you can take these bikes anywhere, even on Metra commuter rail where they require the bags. 

not easy to carry on a bus though
it fits in a car easily

but nice to ride when unfolded

I wouldn’t use a Raleigh Twenty, a Worksman/old Euro Faltrad, or Moulton as a multimodal commuter at all. Bike Friday NWT etc and Birdy are in between. Remember also that many buses and trains can carry a small number of normal bikes — the folding bike advantage is that you always have a space and you can take your bike even during time periods like rush hours when regular bikes aren’t permitted.

and you can carry a lot in panniers

Bikes in the Car, in your Apartment, Etc

Any folding bike will fit better in a closet or car trunk than a non-folding bike, though it’s more of a toss up with a Raleigh 20, a Swift, or a Worksman type folder. This is what a lot of people are thinking as they look at a folder in the shop. I guess if you want the smallest bike the Brompton is again high on the list. Strida is another teeny option.

Carrying Stuff

Bike Friday with its panniers and trailer can carry a lot. Brompton carries plenty easily in the front bag and the rack is somewhat usable though low. Dahon/Tern has some good rack options. The Raleigh 20 carries front panniers on its back rack well. Otherwise, lots of these bikes can’t really carry much easily. You can often fit a regular rack to them or use a big handlebar bag, and the folding racks from one manufacturer will often fit on a competitor’s bike, but racks and things mess up the quick folding and change the handling of a lot of these bikes. When in doubt, try it out first.

Cheapness

Boardwalk

Dahon’s entry level Boardwalk is the best easily available choice we’ve seen. It’s not fancy but it’s a good combination of cheap and small and versatile, often about $200-$300. Boat shops and marine supply stores sometimes carry more elaborate folding bikes, many built by Dahon and rebranded, at lower prices than bike shops. When you get up to about $500-$700 the options expand a lot.

Used folding bikes are sometimes available but you need to look carefully at the hinges, the stress points of any aluminum components, and the sales receipt that shows it wasn’t stolen. 

from http://de.wiki-
pedia.org/wiki/Faltrad

Used Raleigh 20 and steel loop folders are pretty common and pretty cheap, maybe $150 or much less for the old steel loops, and we really like the R20 now that it is cleaned up and lubed with new high pressure tires. Our friends with the matching tag sale Worksmans like them OK, use them on trips, but don’t ride them much at home.

Folding bikes off the internet are widely available but with the exception of the Swift we haven’t seen any very nice ones up close, and some we have seen weren’t nice. Have a look at one in person before ordering; some are probably good options.

Theft

Obviously, the cheaper the bike the less trouble it is if it’s stolen.

Some folding bikes don’t have a good place to put a lock through the frame. The safest way to lock these tempting bikes up in most cases is to fold them up and take them with you wherever you are going. Again, we like the Brompton for this — fits in a shopping cart, under a desk, in the coat check, usually with no problem, and it does have a frame loop if you need to lock it outside for some reason. Most Bike Fridays and Birdys lock OK to poles, which is good since they are more of a pain to carry with you. The Raleigh 20 type shopper bikes just have to stay outdoors and take their chances. Maybe keep a plastic junk seat on them to make them less appealing.

Don’t forget the accessories

A good generator light, fenders, and a mirror are important to us. So-called Ergo grips are nice on these little bikes. Generators are not easy to put on many of these but we’ve always been able to do it — it’s a lot easier with a dynamo hub though. The fenders might fit best bought from the manufacturer, but Planet Bike makes some that will fit most folders. We like Mirrycle mirrors but they break now and then and the risk is greater on a bike you fold often. Also, don’t forget a bell that people will notice. Folding or easily removable pedals can save some space and trouble when folding.

Get out of the car and take your bike - we’ll see you there.



Added 4/30/2012:

folded, nothing holds it closed.

unfolded

A comment below wondered about a large wheel folding bike, the Montague. Here are some pics. It seemed heavy and cumbersome to me. Here's what a New York Montague dealer says about full sized folding bikes.  Dahon, CariBike, and Tern also make large folders. (9/2017: you see a lot of these with car brands on them lately. I don't think they are very practical, compared with the smaller wheel ones. Have a good look at them and don't spend too much.)

Added 5/12/2012:
why not look at AtoB magazine's folding bike guide for a brief rundown of the UK market? The site is full of goodies.

A Raleigh Twenty Folding Bike

The Raleigh Twenty was a little sometimes folding, sometimes not three speed bike with 20 inch (406 or 451) wheels that Raleigh started building after they missed out on selling the suddenly very popular small wheel Moulton in the late 1960s. At one point in the mid-to-late 1970s it was the most popular bike in the Raleigh stable, which earned it loads of similar competitors during the era of Disco and Punk. It has that chromed steel look typical of 1970s metal products and came with a wide variety of load carrying options (which is how I can justify putting it on a blog about cargo bikes, I guess...)

1969-1970 North American Raleigh 20 folding  bike with a few new parts.
(seat, handgrips, bell, mirror, reflectors and lights - original seat was a black plastic
Brooks mattress seat; handgrips were gray white rubber Raleigh with fins but were unsalvageable.
Otherwise all is stock including the Vinylon red stripe Raleigh tires)

Carrying Kids on Folding Bikes

A lot of young people have folding bikes for commuting or travel. Then along comes their first baby and they don't see how their flimsy folder can possibly get them around together. But don't throw the bike out with the bathwater! You can get a kid seat onto most folding bikes safely and easily. Possibly expensively, too, but we'll get to that.


Most of this information applies to regular nonfolding bikes as well.


We usually carry our brood and kilos of assorted garbage I mean cargo around in a big, heavy cargo bike. It's terrific for what it's designed for. But if you want to tootle off for the weekend for a bike ride through beautiful Oskaloosa with your happy threesome, unless you have a truck of some kind you're not bringing the cargo bike with you. 


We didn't think you could get a kid on a folding bike the time many years ago when we went to Holland for my friend's wedding and a week or two on bikes in Friesland, the northeastern part of Holland. We went with a Birdy and a Bike Friday New World Tourist, each in a suitcase (the Birdy packs smaller), and a Burley D'Lite two kid trailer. You can hook a trailer to most folding bikes pretty easily. (We quickly found out how unpopular a trailer makes you in a country with bike paths, however, since you block the lane nearly completely and all the commuters stuck behind you call you names.) We also wanted to try out the odd bikes they have there and rented every cargo bike and tandem we could find, which were pretty popular with the kids. 

The Onderwater Tandem we rented was a big hit.

But we took our folders and the trailer for our longer ride. Well, after a few days sitting squashed next to each other in the trailer with clothes and food, the kids didn't want to get along with each other anymore and no number of windmills or piece of yummy cheese or stroopwafel was going to calm them down. 

You can't hear the kids in the trailer in this picture, so it looks peaceful. 
This is a bike route in Friesland, not a picture from Chicago.

In desperation, we dropped by a little hole in the wall bike shop in a smallish city in Friesland and waited for a few minutes while two blue-gray overalled mechanics dug through decades of Sturmey-Archer parts and came up with a Bobike Maxi SC rear seat. A few more minutes and they found the ATB Adapter for it, then proceeded to bolt it on to the Bike Friday. Here's how it goes on:

The adapter is the curved arm that clamps to the seat tube, and the seat attaches to it with the little locking pin, then the supporting posts from the seat itself slide onto clamps on the seat stays. There's a lock wrapped around the seat tube in this picture but it's not related to the bike seat. You just need a hex wrench to attach the seat. It does make it impossible to fold the bike without removing the seat, but that is quick and simple, and you can't actually fold a Bike Friday quickly anyway. They're more disassemble-able than foldable.

The Bobike Maxi seat is a really good solution, but not completely perfect. Unless you cut the bolts shorter on the seat stay clamps or adjust your spacing just right, the bolt on the drive side can hit the chain in some gears. Which ones depends on the gearing system on your bike -- ours has a SRAM/Sachs 3x7 and it's the lowest (biggest) gear on the cluster that is tricky.